ghosted

[Ethrea]

hello. im a 22 year old girl. im in a LDR with a guy who is 2 years younger than me(but his birthday is on september so that makes him still 19). he is from italy and im from malaysia. we had been in a relationship for one year and 5 months. this is my first serious relationship with a guy and i think of him as my first love..we broke up 6 days ago..or from how i actually see it, he left me and then never messaged again after that.

 

before i go into the details of the breakup, ill tell how our relationship is. im sorry but it will be pretty long to read. we started while meeting in an online game. at first he wasnt serious, he was just flirting with me and he continued to flirt for weeks. i know he wasnt serious at that time, but i also can tell that hes not the type who would flirt with just anyone. if theres one thing i know better about myself its that i can kind of tell how the other person personality is just from having a conversation with him. i started getting attracted to him and later i pursued him. i never thought of myself as the type to be in an online relationship before because i knew most were not serious, especially in games lol. but with him i can tell that hes different from others and most importantly hes genuine and sincere. so thinking that, i started to respond back to him. and then for a while when he saw me getting serious he avoided me because he was scared of making it serious. but i told him i really like him and pursued him. we exchanged skype contact already before and from then on i kept messaging him everyday. then after weeks, he finally said to me he realized that he really likes me too and from there our relationship started. i think for 6 months into the relationship, we were always in good terms with each other. we never fought and each day our love just become stronger and stronger and i realized this might be what they call a honeymoon phase in a relationship. i never really love someone as strongly as i do for him and i couldnt imagine how my life would be without him. before i met him, i was kind of depressed because of family problems. as a result of that, i am very quiet and i confined myself to my own thoughts. i rarely shared to other people, and i have no friends who i shared my personal problems to. so during the time while we dated, he made me open up and slowly made me not afraid of showing myself. each day i feel like he is helping me to get out of my shell, to make me more confident of myself. and he did. after a year i think i have changed for the better because of him and i cant tell how grateful i am to have him by my side.

 

after 6 months into the relationship, when we slowly started to become more and more comfortable with each other, thats when we start to fight. at that point, i thought it was just normal for couples to fight. i mean every couples fight so this is just a normal thing if you are in a relationship, thats what i thought. he thought so too. but later as the relationship progressed, i discovered that he actually is really short tempered and impulsive. i only knew this then because before this he has never got mad at me. and to make things worse, i also have quite a temper and when im mad i tend to say hurtful things to him. i apologized and promised that ill fix that because it really hurts him. i did try but its really hard to stop a habit...but sometimes he would also get mad at me for something that is not my fault. he also has some family problems and financial problems. everytime when his problems came up, he would get angry. and eventhough his anger is not because of me, but one way or another it affected the way he talked to me and it just made me annoyed. because of this, or rather because of his problems, we would always end up fighting. sometimes we would fight so often that it has almost become a routine to at least fight once every week. sometimes can be thrice every week. it got so frequent that i started to think that this is in no way how a normal couple would be. but i love him so much and i keep telling myself its because of his home problems and not really his fault if he is stressed over it. i also have this habit of insisting to stay with him even if he is mad..so it got him even madder. but we always made up after a few days. i would approach him and apologize and after that we would make up.

 

3 months ago, he told me hes not happy. that even if hes spending time with me, he doesnt feel happy. he told me its because theres something(he said its something thats unrelated to me) which bothered his mind all the time. he told me he has issues. i told him i know im aware of that, but what makes me sad is he doesnt share with me his problems to lessen his burden. while me, i would share everything to him even the smallest problem and it would always make me a bit happier after. i could never say to him i dont feel happy while spending time with him. he was never like this before, but as months passed he just talked less and shared less to me. sometimes when we had good conversation i would think im just being paranoid afterall. but later it would lapse back to him talking less and sharing less most of the time. when i asked him why didnt he wanna share his problem with me and he told me it was because its his own problem and he didnt want to burden me with them. sometimes i forced him to tell me sometimes i just let him be because he is stubborn.

 

then this month i just celebrated my birthday 2 weeks ago. i celebrated it with him. by that point we already acknowledged each other as bestfriends and also lover and we practically talked about just anything that crossed our mind. we clicked together but theres only our temper that made it hard for us everytime we fight because neither would become a pacifier, each will just continue to get angrier and angrier until finally its out of control. then he usually will be the one who will leave the fight and i would get even angrier because he doesnt wanna work it out at all. he just left most of the time and then later forget and then move on. our recent fight was like this, we have no pacifier and we just got even angrier at each other.

 

what happened was that we usually would talk each day. that has become a routine. i can be quite childish and i would sulk if he doesnt give me attention for a day. he was busy with work recently, he worked part time aside from schooling. and i really felt so much less time spent with him these days, but i know hes having it hard so i understand it and try to not be too childish about it. but sometimes i just sulked because i couldnt help it because i got too used to spend time with him everyday that when i couldnt see him the whole weekend, i just sulked. but i wasnt actually mad. and also im studying medicine currently and he had told me early that he doesnt like me being in medicine. but he doesnt stop me from studying it. however he just doesnt wanna listen to anything of what im doing in my studies.

 

so last week, i couldnt see him the whole weekend and when we finally got to talk he doesnt seem interested to talk with me at all. i waited for him the whole weekend and when i feel like he wasnt interested to talk to me i kind of started to complain. and then it started. prior to this, i was talking about the stuffs i do during my studies. and he kind of didnt wanna listen to anything of it and it got me annoyed because before that he told me to go ahead and tell everything. so we started fighting. this is how we usually start fighting. over some small petty stuffs. its usually nothing big. i usually blamed this on our long distance, if i was just there and i could see him or hear him maybe things would be different. in real, i would opt more for comforting if there is a fight but online where we could only throw hurtful words without even seeing each other's expression or even hearing how each other sounded like we are bound to think that the other was simply just purely mad, no regret or hesitance nor sadness. from words in chat alone, it cant help to convey other emotions other than anger. and i always told him this, he is a rock. he never tells me anything that could make him look weak. thats why if i just could see him while we were fighting and if i just see other emotions other than anger in his eyes, i would probably stop being angry and just hug him or something. but i cant and i always cursed that this has to be a LDR. Im sure i have met the one i really want to spend my life with, and i even can imagine my future with him. he told me too that if he can imagine the future, he wishes that ill be in it. because of this, i have really invented so much emotionally in this relationship. i even told him i would go and meet him if he cant meet me right now(because he has financial problems). but he wouldnt allow me because he doesnt want me to spend anything for him. he wants it to be him who spends for me. eventhough i keep insisted, but he still didnt allow me. he even got mad later. it was frustrating for both of us.

 

that petty fight last week somehow escalated into much more. before i knew it he was already saying to me he is leaving me. even until now i dont even know the reason for him leaving me because he never told me. i kept asking myself why. i kept thinking he didnt just leave me simply because im studying medicine or because i sulked at him for being away for a whole weekend, i always think its because of a much bigger problem underlying it. but he never told me. he had tried to break up with me in the past, but i always managed to ask him to stay and then later when we talked about it, he said hes grateful that i did what i did, that i didnt make us break up because he said it will break him too. so i never thought when he said he would leave me, he meant it seriously this time. after he said goodbye to me and left, i got so hurt, mad, rejected and disappointed that i practically let my anger took control and i said all i wanted to say to him. and because of my anger i even told him that yes a breakup might be good for us. but i know in deep i didnt mean it. then later in the day he messaged me all the infos i kept with him(hes returning everything back to me), and then he said he has also deleted all my pics, videos basically all memories about me. he also deleted his account on fb so that i couldnt message him there anymore. i have never felt this hurt knowing all these. i got so hurt that day that i cried the whole day. i stayed in bed and couldnt do a thing. sleep was the only thing i could do to forget what had happened. i couldnt bring myself to focus on my school and studies because i would think of him and what i did wrong all the time. the whole week ive been trying to contact him, asking him to come back to me and promising to him ill stop doing everything that he hates. i probably has reached to the extent of begging him to come back to me. i messaged him everyday but he ghosted me each time. i couldnt count the number of messages i have sent him already. its too much and he ignored every one of them. this whole week i was lethargic all the time, i slept anytime i can with hope that the next morning maybe he will reply something back to me or in hope that the pain lessened and i can forget him as the time passed. until now, i still couldnt believe after more than a year of relationship where i basically think of him as my world, he left me on my own. he knew i was dependent to him. he knew i love him a lot. but then he left me and even ghosted me after that. today i even messaged him saying if he really wanna breakup, then ill accept it if thats what he wants but i deserves an explanation, a reason, a cause for our breakup. i even told him if theres even a little bit of care left for me in him, then thats the very least he can do for me to lessen my pain. i saw that he read the messages, but even then he still ghosted me...i really dont know if i can forgive him or move on for what he had done. i trusted him so much and he also made me promise that if one person wanted to leave, then the other should not give up and try everything to make the person stay. im so sad that he doesnt even give me a chance to fix it this time, or even let me hear his reasons. if i could just hear an explanation from him, maybe it wouldnt hurt this much for me. everytime i remember this, it would just make me cry. i still love him like i did the very first day we started and i was so devoted to him that i couldnt think of anyone else other than him. but to think that he could leave me without saying anything, it really broke me..

 

i dont know why he left and i dont know how i should proceed from now on. i posted it here to ask for advice because i dont know where else to ask from.

 

im sorry it has gotten this long.. but i want u to know how it is for me and him to get an idea of what kind of relationship we are in.

[Michaelroyale]

Hi there I'm thinking you haven't actually physically seen each other yet..The problem with this kind of dating is it isn't actually real, the romance you are feeling is idealised into something you want and feel is real, you start to believe you are in love when in reality you don't know this person at all.I been there myself be very careful with your emotions.best fall in love with a real person who lives near you and who you can get to know.love grows and it's wonderful if you are fighting walk away and listen to good advice..love will find you and best not over the Internet. ....

[ExpatInItaly]

OP, I'll best honest that I got lost in the details of your post and so may have missed this, but can you clarify:

 

Have you ever met in person?

[Ethrea]

@michael thank you for your kind advice. i appreciate it.

[Ethrea]

@expat in real, no. but we do video calls from time to time.

[Steven1]

@expat in real, no. but we do video calls from time to time.

 

 

I know how this can feel. My ex girlfriend and I started off very long distance and we would talk on MSN/Skype then video call etc..and I was always scared that one day I would wake up and she wouldn't be online without any explanation.

 

I think though that you need to look at this and try to rationalize it a bit as much as it hurts...this is someone you never met or were never physically involved with. I know it's hard, but I think it may be best if you cut contact for a while or indefinitely and do what you need to do to move on. It could have been a lot worse if you had met.

[TheArtist]

@expat in real, no. but we do video calls from time to time.

 

If you haven't met then it's not a real relationship, it's more an infatuation with someone on a screen. While it's quite possible to connect that way, until you meet in person you won't know if there is any chemistry there.

 

What looks good in text and on the screen doesn't always translate to reality. I wouldn't worry too much about it, keep him as a friend and play games with him, but don't think of him as your boyfriend.

 

Now that you have experienced flirting, why not try it on some boys a little more locally? It's more fun, I promise!

[Ethrea]

personally i admit that yes i am very young to love. i havent dated much. and this is also my very first relationship that i would like to think of as serious, but unfortunately it had to be online and also LDR. if i could have just one wish i wont want it to be LDR. both me and him agonized over this a lot, we want to meet but our situation made it hard to meet. i at first think it might just be an infatuation too. but later i thought this has to be love because this has been going on for a year and more and my feelings of adoration for him never fades..if anything it just grows more and more the more i know about him. we spend time with each other almost everyday for hours. we frequently exchanged pics on what we are doing almost everyday too. and now everything stopped suddenly and it becomes hard for me to cope with this..

[Ethrea]

@steven yes exactly..im always afraid because the only way i can reach him is online. sometimes it makes me insecure that i had to ask every single time to know what hes doing.

[ExpatInItaly]

@expat in real, no. but we do video calls from time to time.

 

Then forgive me, but how can you describe yourselves as lovers?

 

You've never touched each other.

 

I say this not to invalidate your feelings, but I think you need to get some perspective...which in turn, will help you move on. This was an online friendship, but it's not dating. You cannot, by definition, be dating without ever having gone on a date.

 

I think once you change the way you're describing this, you will actually feel better because you will realize that what you had was a friendship, a close online buddy. Not a boyfriend. Thus, you haven't lost a boyfriend.

[Ethrea]

@expat i actually would feel really glad if we are just simply close online buddies. then i could be spared from this pain which felt like i have just got my heart broken. maybe it being online made it seemed like its not serious or maybe me and him are just too into it but we did have deep and intimate moments which dont feel like a normal relationship to me.

 

thanks for your advice. maybe if i could really think of it as just losing a close online buddy, then the hurt will be less.

[Steven1]

I can relate to this in a way as my view of it when I first started speaking to my ex online, is that I viewed it as a relationship in that I was with her but it just wasn't physical. I got to know the real her etc for her personality. Obviously meeting up eventually was something we knew we would do so that obviously made things easier. But I think you can get extremely close to someone mentally and classify it as a 'relationship' of sorts, without meeting them first.