We’ve been together for 5 years. When we met she had also lost a brother to suicide a year before. She has told me she thought her mom’s bpd has a lot to do with his suicide and she also told me that she has had depression for a long time but that she would never commit suicide because of what happened to her family when her brother did it. 

I love this woman more than anything in the world. Our whole relationship she has pegged herself as the problem, someone who had a very hard experience growing up under abuse from her mother and dysfunctional divorced parents and thinks she is always the problem to be fixed. She has told me she might not believe that anyone could ever truly love her. I have spent so my time and effort and love trying to help her feel loved and appreciated but it’s never enough. She also told me she realized lately that she doesn’t want kids because she’s worried about this getting passed to them. 

She also just graduated grad school a month ago and has been suffering from depression most of her adult life. The part two years have been extremely rough as we loved to LA together so she could attend grad school and then she had to go through grad school in the midst of depression and grief.

I did not have her experience. My parents are together and as happy as any married couple. My grandparents were therapists, my mom is a therapist, my dad is a em elementary principal and his whole existence is conflict resolution, and I have a psych BA. Despite all this, I do not think our family is better or did things right, we’re just two different families with different experiences. But she can’t help but feel like she’s the odd one out, the one who brings others down, the one who is constantly having trouble.

Again, I love her with all my heart. We don’t have fights beyond regular relationship arguments and voices being raised when it comes to topics like me needing her to get help for herself. Because of grad school stress, and our dynamic of her thinking she’s the problem, we have not really had much of a physical relationship at all. I told her whatever she needs is okay and I’ll be there for her in whatever capacity she needs as we work through this, but it’s never enough. I don’t need sex. I need a partner with whom I can experience, share and receive unconditional love and support and that is not a thing she has ever had.

She told me she wanted to get out of town and see friends and I said it was a great idea and she should leave and clear her head.

That was when she confessed that she’s been talking with someone else from her past and starting to have new feelings for someone else. Not like to start a relationship, but she said the thought of having those feelings was enough to make her wonder if our relationship is at a breaking point.

I know our relationship is tied to a lot of her trauma since we got together when she was having a hard time. But when we met I just just moved back home after leaving a 3 year abusive relationship, leaving my career behind because it was giving me depression and anxiety, leaving my friends who had become toxic drunks, leaving my band who had been my best friends but three had left the state. I had lost and deliberately given up EVERYTHING for a chance at a new start. 

Everything in my life had fallen apart and it was like we both met when we needed each other the most.

5 years later I’m laying here at 6 in the morning crying my eyes out sleeping on the couch because she told me she’s been lying in bed and texting him and I just couldn’t be in that bed last night.

I don’t know what to do. The ball is in her court. I’m heartbroken and lost and wondering if I’ve been a fool for trying to keep this relationship alive. 

I’m 35 and having to contemplate moving home, moving my business back home to where my family is upstate and I’ll have emotional support and a few good friends. Moving from the city where I’ve met friends and grew my business, but I was only here for my beloved.

I’m scared, sad for her, sad for me, sad for us, and wishing maybe I hadn’t tried so hard to help her so she wouldn’t feel like there was something wrong with her. 

My heart is in pieces.