Hi everyone. I don’t really have a question but more of feel the need to just vent and tell my story.
My story with my avoidant ex starts all the way back in the summer of 2022. We dated for 6 months. We matched on a dating app and our first date lasted for 10 hours and was instantly hooked on her. It literally felt like a hallmark movie. She was from NYC and I was from upstate NY and she was in upstate NY for a month just to get away from the busy lifestyle of a big time job in the city. At first, it was just supposed to be a month long fling between us but we ended up seeing each other every single day for that month and by the time she was going back to the city, we were a couple. Every weekend after she went back home, I was going down to NYC or she was coming upstate and it never felt like a chore with how in love I was falling for her.
About a little over a month into our relationship, she found she had to move out west for her job. We stayed together with the possibility of me moving out there with her because we still had about five months to decide what to do. I noticed over the next few months it was hard to get her to have conversations about it and also just hard conversations about emotions and feelings in general. She would just kind of freeze and not say much but I didn’t think much of it because it was a new relationship and I get that it can take some time for someone to open up. Finally a few months later, we had a good conversation about it and decided that she was going to move in with me for a few months to see how we are together in an environment living together and then go out west together.
Two weeks before she was going to move in with me, I went and visited her and it was great and everything felt normal. The day after I got home, she called me and broke up with me out of nowhere. I originally thought we broke up because we had only been dating for 6 months and moving across the country was scary which I was also terrified doing but I believed in us as a couple and thought we were going to get married one day. I was in complete shock and just never seen this version of her that was just cold. For weeks and months I felt terrible and just sick to my stomach about not knowing what happened and just never felt this kind of pain in my life. I always felt I had very good mental health until this break up.
In the spring of 2023 I was doing better and started going on some dates and she reached out to me and found I was going on dates and we got into a huge fight about it (though she said she wasn’t jealous of me dating). This fight turned into us reconnecting and me going out west to visit her for a week. The week went great and felt nice to see her again and at the end of the week I told her that I still do love her and that’s when she panicked again. Later that day she said she loved me too when she was more calm but didn’t want to be in a relationship. I said that was fine and said that if that’s the choice then we need to cut off contact and we can’t keep going back and forth with each other. The very next day I came home from visiting her, she called me and said she wanted to be together but she wanted me to move out west and get my own place. I of course said no that wouldn’t work with me. I realized later on she wanted that scenario since there would be zero pressure on her if we broke up and there would be zero change in her day-to-day life. I was willing at that time to uproot my entire life for her and me moving in with her felt like the one compromise I needed from her even though I know moving in together is a huge step in a relationship but we are also in our 30s.
Since that time I visited her, I have not seen her in person again but later in 2023 she would reach out and breadcrumb me and tell me how something made her think about me and then as soon as we started to get closer again she would distance herself and ghost me. When she would come back she would tell me how she thought we both needed some space. At the end of 2024 she gave me the usual something made her think of me but I thought maybe she finally changed. Silly me for thinking that! She told me how she still often thought of me and us together and I fell for it again and reconnected with her and then about two weeks later she ghosted again. I told myself after that I was done and for a year and a half I didn’t text her and she didn’t text me until this past weekend. She reached out to me and gave me the good ole “I’ve been thinking of you” and in the moment I felt fine but the next day I felt sick to my stomach and it made me cry because it’s been so long since we talked and I thought it was over. I’ve just been spiraling a bit the last few days and it sucks. Thank you to everyone who read all this and let me do a nice vent session telling my story.