I walked away after years of trying and now the “what ifs” are killing me
Asslamualaikum brothers and sisters,
I’ve been a follower on this thread for a while and have built the courage to share what I’m currently going through, I don’t have any family members/siblings that I could trust and get advice from. I have created a disposable Reddit account as myself and my ex partner are Redditor’s.
Here goes:
25 M here, did anyone else ever walk away from someone they genuinely loved because the relationship became too emotionally exhausting to carry?
I’m struggling with a lot of guilt recently because deep down I know I didn’t walk away due to lack of love. I walked away because after years of trying, I genuinely felt mentally drained and like I was slowly losing myself.
When marriage got involved there were a lot of family and cultural issues. There were comments made about my ethnicity/background, extremely high financial and cultural expectations (although I would’ve been the groom everything had to be done to their tribal standards and likings) and I found myself constantly trying to gain approval and acknowledgement from her family while also trying to keep peace within my own as their family were being awkward and made it clear that they didn’t want this to go ahead, throwing my parents off the idea. I spent a long time defending the relationship at home and even fell out with my own family over it because I genuinely believed love and patience would eventually make things work.
The problem was that I was failing to get my family’s blessing in all of this as well the promises that things would improve, nothing really changed. There were constant arguments, suspicion, emotional pressure and very little actual progress towards marriage for almost 2 years after the initial family meeting. Sometimes I felt like there was always energy for conflict and gossip, but never the same urgency when it came to actually fixing things properly or moving things forward. Everything required absurd financial demands in order to proceed forward.
Way before any type of meeting between the elder parties/walis/the thought of marriage occurred I also want to be fair and not make this seem one-sided. During the earlier years of the relationship I was younger and immature whilst going through college and I was unfaithful at one stage mixing in with wrong crowd. Alhamdulillah I deeply regretted that period of my life and used it as a wake up call to repent, become more serious about my deen and genuinely try to become a better partner moving forward. I’m not perfect and I know I also contributed to the breakdown in different ways and definitely don’t want to sit here making it out like I’m a perfect human being.
I got to a stage where I felt like I couldn’t catch a break mentally. Even in istikhara I’d wake up with a heavy heart. Even during difficult moments in my personal life, including grieving family loss, arguments, dealing with my own illness’ would still continue. Looking back now, I honestly think I became emotionally burnt out to a point that all I wanted to do was bed rot failing to groom myself or do the things I enjoy like hiking or sports.
The confusing thing is that now, 14 months later I mostly remember the attachment, love and good moments. My brain keeps replaying “what if” scenarios and making me question whether I made the wrong decision by walking away, even though another part of me remembers how unhappy and overwhelmed I became towards the end.
What makes it harder is that I was hiding this relationship from my family ever since the meeting to a point that I’ve now met someone else through family who Alhamdulillah genuinely seems like a good person, someone I can vibe with and brings me a lot more peace and hadn’t once made anything about financial requirements but I still feel guilty over my past and sometimes feel extremely guilty towards both parties I’m emotionally stuck between grief and moving forward.
Has anyone else experienced this after ending a serious relationship? How do you stop romanticising the past and make peace with a decision that hurt even if it may have been necessary?