GF moved out out of nowhere - totally devastated

[Gaeta]

Why it didn't work with the boyfriend she moved in with?

[elaine567]

On 12/23/2020 at 8:46 PM, Gaeta said:

She did not leave because of the snoring, she left because her feelings died.

Ok but her feelings may have died due to the snoring.
Snoring is very unattractive, it is the stuff of Dads and GrandDads, not the stuff of sexy young studs.
It is annoying for partners and leads to poor sleep, frustration and anger.
Add in the reticence of the OP to get it checked out and treated, it may well have been a significant factor in why she ultimately decided to leave.

[tart6245]

15 minutes ago, Gaeta said:

Why it didn't work with the boyfriend she moved in with?

She was being cheated on constantly. Said she kept giving him second chances and he did not stop. 

[Gaeta]

 

 

23 minutes ago, elaine567 said:

Ok but her feelings may have died due to the snoring.

I understand for some people it may be the source of their love dying BUT op's girlfriend wanted to accelerate the relationship, she wanted to move in with him, she wanted to get engaged and she desired all those things notwithstanding the fact he was a snorer.  If the snoring was the real issue she would have asked him to solve it before moving in, and moving the relationship forward, no? Here are her complaints below, half of it is about him not moving the relationship forward. 

• feeling like she had to clean up after me during the day
• to my snoring
• to me enjoying going out and her not doing so
• frustration with how long it took me to introduce her to my family and push the relationship forward.
• She said she was sure we weren't anywhere close to an engagement
• She also brought up how she was the one that pushed to move in together

[tart6245]

1 minute ago, Gaeta said:

 

 

I understand for some people it may be the source of their love dying BUT op's girlfriend wanted to accelerate the relationship, she wanted to move in with him, she wanted to get engaged and she desired all those things notwithstanding the fact he was a snorer.  If the snoring was the real issue she would have asked him to solve it before moving in, and moving the relationship forward, no? Here are her complaints below, half of it is about him not moving the relationship forward. 

• feeling like she had to clean up after me during the day
• to my snoring
• to me enjoying going out and her not doing so
• frustration with how long it took me to introduce her to my family and push the relationship forward.
• She said she was sure we weren't anywhere close to an engagement
• She also brought up how she was the one that pushed to move in together

Please keep in mind the only reason I brought up delaying the move in was due to the pandemic that began after we picked out the apartment we were to share together. It was a force that was beyond my control. I did not try to delay because I was not ready. However, that’s the only way she interpreted it but she moved in anyway. 

[elaine567]

I did not say that snoring here was the only issue but living with a snorer day after day, night after night...can be quite a different thing from dating a snorer.

Living together is usually a trial run to see if a couple can  make it long term.
Here they gave it a go, it didn't work, it happens.
Younger women can often want to "play house", but the reality does not often live up to their expectations.
She is only 26, she no doubt thinks she can do better.
The negatives kept stacking up until she decided to leave.
All her reasons for leaving are valid and common.

[tart6245]

On 12/25/2020 at 11:49 AM, elaine567 said:

I did not say that snoring here was the only issue but living with a snorer day after day, night after night...can be quite a different thing from dating a snorer.

Living together is usually a trial run to see if a couple can  make it long term.
Here they gave it a go, it didn't work, it happens.
Younger women can often want to "play house", but the reality does not often live up to their expectations.
She is only 26, she no doubt thinks she can do better.
The negatives kept stacking up until she decided to leave.
All her reasons for leaving are valid and common.

I understand her frustrations. I just wish she had been clearer and more firm about them and just packing up and leaving. I am in the process of seeing a specialist just as I promised I would. 
 

I do hope we can reconcile someday. This just doesn’t feel right and these problems are easily fixable. Dragging my feet was a bad decision on my part, but 9 days before she left she kept telling me how much she wanted me and didn’t know what else she could do it assure me of that. Just seems so cold that she’d leave 9 days later unless she was lying about it all. 
 

I’m glad I resisted wishing her merry Christmas yesterday though. As much as I wonder if showing her I’m taking initiative to right these wrongs will bring her back, I know this needs some time. 

Edited December 26, 2020 by tarheelian

[maggiemtn]

I don’t really see any evidence of cheating as others have suggested but anything is possible, I guess. 
 

My ex also broke up with me a few weeks ago and I also felt like it was out of the blue. But honestly now that I’ve had a little while to process it, the issues we had were wearing on both of us. Both of our behavior toward each other changed ever so slightly but it did change. I’ve learned there are sometimes just those situations where little things snowball and some people keep it to themselves how much something is actually bothering them but internally reassessing and pulling away. I definitely don’t think she made her decision in a day, but she was definitely thinking about it. Just because she didn’t tell you, doesn’t mean she wasn’t reevaluating the relationship. I speak from personal experience. But does it matter? Either way the decision is done and your best option is to go NC. It really, really does help to reframe your thoughts. It goes from “Are they going to text me, call me, change their mind?” to focusing on yourself and your own future. It’s hard but very worth it. 

[maggiemtn]

I literally said those exact same words to my ex: “these problems are easily fixable.” It’s not about those problems anymore. You’ve gone well past that. It’s a bigger picture scenario now. Please take it from someone who literally just said those things in begging mode last week: don’t waste your time. The problems already rose to a level of breaking up, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. 
 

As for the fact she had to say she didn’t know what else she could do to reassure you, I encourage you to seek counseling. This is something that needs to be addressed within to better yourself. It sounds like you have a lot of relationship anxiety and I can also speak from experience that nothing good ever comes from seeking reassurance. Counseling will help you see that you’re enough, and constantly needing reassurance from others just drives people away. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by maggiemtn

[Wiseman2]

Agree, it doesn't seem like someone else is in the picture.

This seems more like the typical case of a little too little a little too late.

Unfortunately there's too much under the bridge here to try to backpedal and finally after she moves out, decide to address the concerns 

All you can do is next time, pay more attention to discord, even if subtle and avoid just coasting along sweeping stuff under the rug .

[timble9]

On 12/25/2020 at 11:32 PM, tarheelian said:

She told me I could not use the pandemic as an excuse or explanation for anything when we broke up. She never saw how the pandemic changed life for everyone and made things more difficult. That was a major frustration for me. When I did try to delay the move it, it was 100% because I was worried about us both trying to work remotely in a one bedroom unit. Had this pandemic never occurred, things would’ve been much different and I’d never had told her we should delay the move in. 
 

Both her and her family discounted my concerns as me just making excuses to avoid living together. It was very upsetting that it was spun that way. I felt my concerns were valid at the time. Nevertheless, I thought our living together was going well aside from my snoring issue. 

Hi tarheelian I feel like I share your frustrations and I agree with your logic. My partner left me as well because I was not able to escalate our relationship to the point of moving out when I thought it was an irresponsible idea given our financial situation/job insecurity/lack of available options given the current housing market due to COVID. I can't help but agree with what others are saying that there may have been someone else involved, if not directly then indirectly. Maybe she had been casually messaging someone and realized she wanted something more....that's what I have been starting to think happened with my ex. It hurts so badly to think what "may have been" if you would have done things differently....but I don't think you did anything particularly wrong. We do the best with the information we have at the time and if somebody doesn't have the kind of love for you which persists through difficult times then they are not the person you are meant to be with, no matter how perfect they may seem at the time and not matter how badly you want things to work. I'm sorry you're having to go through this but know you're not alone.

[tart6245]

4 hours ago, Wiseman2 said:

Agree, it doesn't seem like someone else is in the picture.

This seems more like the typical case of a little too little a little too late.

Unfortunately there's too much under the bridge here to try to backpedal and finally after she moves out, decide to address the concerns 

All you can do is next time, pay more attention to discord, even if subtle and avoid just coasting along sweeping stuff under the rug .

Hopefully next time, I won’t be living through a pandemic. I firmly believe if this pandemic never happens, we’re still together. We wouldn’t have the worries over job security, living situations, lack of travel and lack of things to do.  But as someone else said, if she was unwilling to stick with me through the most difficult times, she isn’t the one for me. 
 

I still do not believe she had someone else lined up before she did this. 

[Gaeta]

A lot of couples did not make it through the pandemic, including my relationship. I think the pandemic only accelerated separations that were meant to happen anyway in a near future.

[trident_2020]

The pandemic has made existing problems worse with couples in conflict and brought couples closer together when things were good to begin with. I'm in the latter group.

[Ruby Slippers]

3 hours ago, tarheelian said:

I still do not believe she had someone else lined up before she did this. 

I don't get that sense, either. I heard someone say that a man leaves a relationship for another woman - a woman leaves a relationship for herself. 

[Ruby_Red]

11 minutes ago, Ruby Slippers said:

I don't get that sense, either. I heard someone say that a man leaves a relationship for another woman - a woman leaves a relationship for herself. 

Truth! Especially the first part .... men hardly ever leave just because the R is bad. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Ruby_Red

[tart6245]

21 hours ago, trident_2020 said:

The pandemic has made existing problems worse with couples in conflict and brought couples closer together when things were good to begin with. I'm in the latter group.

That's true. I guess I just look back at the things she said that concerned her and many of them were entirely due to the pandemic and how it upended life. Her parents also moved about a block away from us during the pandemic as their jobs became fully remote. Looking back, that was not a net positive for us either. I never knew how they felt about me aside from her father claiming I was always making up excuses not to move the relationship forward. 

But as you said, had she loved me enough none of that would have mattered. Obviously, that was not the case and we both failed to communicate and listen properly to each other. I did not listed to her as I should have and there were things she failed to communicate to me - and in retrospect, where she lied to avoid conflict. Especially in the days leading up to her moving out which I will never believe was decided 18 hours before she left. 

[tart6245]

21 hours ago, Ruby Slippers said:

I don't get that sense, either. I heard someone say that a man leaves a relationship for another woman - a woman leaves a relationship for herself. 

Just knowing how shy and introverted she is, I cannot believe she'd meet or carry on any form of romance with another man while she was living with me. Her personality is something I struggled to understand and left me feeling like she was never happy while dating me. I wish I had not kept asking for reassurance, but I just never felt she really wanted to be with me, despite her saying she did even 9 days before she left. It's unclear whether she lied about wanting to be with me at that time to keep me from suspecting she was planning to leave or what. 

It would just be so unlike her to do something like that. I just think we had a breakdown in communication and there was likely things going on behind the scenes with her parents that ultimately caused her to abruptly leave. Whether we ever get back together or not, I will work through the issues she laid out. If not for her, for the next relationship I have. 

Edited December 28, 2020 by tarheelian

[tart6245]

23 hours ago, Gaeta said:

A lot of couples did not make it through the pandemic, including my relationship. I think the pandemic only accelerated separations that were meant to happen anyway in a near future.

I understand that as well. It's possible we just never were meant to be, pandemic or not. But it certainly did delay things or make things more uncertain than they otherwise would have been. I do understand her frustration with me not pushing the relationship along, and I regret it in retrospect, but I had come out of a bad previous relationship and was being very cautious with this one. Despite the delay, I thought we were moving forward as she had plans to spend the holidays with my family and had been seeing my family on a regular basis which seemed to make her happy. If that never was going to be good enough, I wish I had not gotten my family invested in her like they were - they had gifts and cards and a stocking for her at their house ready for Christmas.

[Gaeta]

55 minutes ago, tarheelian said:

 I never knew how they felt about me aside from her father claiming I was always making up excuses not to move the relationship forward. 

That says a lot. It was you against all of them. Now it was the marriage, then it would have been something else, kids didn't come fast enough, house was not in a good enough neighborhood, your job was not high paying enough....etc etc etc. 

What was your time line in terms of marriage with this woman? 

[tart6245]

11 minutes ago, Gaeta said:

That says a lot. It was you against all of them. Now it was the marriage, then it would have been something else, kids didn't come fast enough, house was not in a good enough neighborhood, your job was not high paying enough....etc etc etc. 

What was your time line in terms of marriage with this woman? 

Perhaps it was not always, but he did say I was just making up excuses not to live with her when I expressed my concerns about our life situation in April. At the time, I had moved into the flat where we were going to live while we waited on her lease to expire - then the covid shutdown happened and we both found ourselves working from home. When I told her I thought we should delay the move-in until life was more certain, she took it as I just didn't want to live with her, despite that we chose a building and a flat that would be accommodate what she wanted. I visited that building 3 times to make sure the flat I chose was to her liking. That's when she said her father said I was just making up excuses and my concerns weren't valid.

It also did not help one of her few friends announced in front of her mother, two months after this allegedly happened, that I told someone at a gathering this summer that I regretted moving in with her (which I did not remember ever saying since I never said that to anyone I knew, let along a stranger). I interpreted that as a hit job to hurt me in the eyes of her parents. If that had actually occurred, why did her friend wait 2 months so she could tell her in front of her mother? Seems too convenient. 

I had envisioned an engagement in 2021. I told her weeks ago when she brought up not liking to push me that I planned to marry her and wanted a family with her. It did always feel I had the cards stacked against me and she never really integrated me into any of her friendships she had outside of my friend group. I probably went to maybe 4-5 gatherings with her friends in the 2.5 years I dated her. When I told her it made me feel unwanted that she kept me from her friends, she said she just did not have many friends like I had and would get defensive whenever I expressed that feeling to her. 

Edited December 28, 2020 by tarheelian

[Ruby Slippers]

4 hours ago, tarheelian said:

I never knew how they felt about me aside from her father claiming I was always making up excuses not to move the relationship forward.

I agree with her dad. Two and a half years is more than enough time to start making concrete plans to get married. I also think your hesitation about moving in together during the pandemic was another indicator that you were dragging your feet.

The bottom line is that the two of you were not on the same page.

[Ruby_Red]

Well - Not everybody always wants to get married. If her dad felt that way, then that’s her dad’s “problem”. He’s not part of that relationship. And while I do understand that he’s on his daughter’s side and wants the best for her, that doesn’t mean that long-term couples can’t be happy without a marriage license. I mean - you gotta ask yourself what the girlfriend wanted? Did she leave you because everything took too long? Did she want to move forward? To me it looks like that - no matter what she said - she was as reluctant as you with the relationship in general. Did she voice anything in particular?

[Ruby Slippers]

8 minutes ago, Ruby_Red said:

Well - Not everybody always wants to get married. If her dad felt that way, then that’s her dad’s “problem”. He’s not part of that relationship. And while I do understand that he’s on his daughter’s side and wants the best for her, that doesn’t mean that long-term couples can’t be happy without a marriage license.

Most women in their 20s hope to get married and have a family. From what the OP says, she had already made her intentions for marriage and family very clear and they were discussing it. Most women aren't going to stick around to "date" a man for years on end. If they haven't had a concrete discussion and started making plans within 2 years max, most women are going to start to check out, which makes perfect sense. While women are having kids later and later, all the numbers start to drop around age 30, so women don't have time to wait around for years.

[tart6245]

31 minutes ago, Ruby Slippers said:

I agree with her dad. Two and a half years is more than enough time to start making concrete plans to get married. I also think your hesitation about moving in together during the pandemic was another indicator that you were dragging your feet.

The bottom line is that the two of you were not on the same page.

I get that - but we moved in together and all she told me was that she was happy there aside from my snoring. And I already told her I wanted to get married and planned on moving that way in 2021. Aside from showing her a ring, I don't know what else I could do.