u/ThrowRApashol

I started meditating two years ago, but it’s been an inconsistent, on-and-off journey. About a week ago, I decided to give it another real shot and stay consistent. Looking back, I realized what made me quit so easily before: I could never stop ruminating or overthinking my problems. I never truly surrendered to the experience or reached that deep state where you finish the session feeling like a completely different person. I know people say this is just part of the beginner phase, but does it really get better over time? How did you overcome this?

I wanted to wait for the dust to settle before reaching out, after everything these past weeks churned up, maybe for you too.
There's a truth I can finally put into words, and I needed to tell you, because you're part of it.
I've always known my mother's death changed me deeply. I thought I'd made it through, but really I'd just learned to build my life around her absence, to keep myself safe. Then you came and offered me a kind of emotional safety that made my whole defense system obsolete. Every lock I'd installed to never feel that kind of loss again started breaking. You became so real, so present, that my protections no longer fit the person I was with you. It threw me completely and I didn't know how to be without them anymore.
I'd found my balance in the world I'd built. And you, just by being yourself, walked in and shook the entire system that had learned to keep me intact.
That's what I was clumsily trying to explain these past weeks, with the few pieces I had. While I was struggling to understand something I couldn't even name, you were catching the fallout. This clarity is mine now, whether you're here or not — but you'll always be woven into it.
I don't want to go back to what we had; it wore us both out. But I won't confuse the container with what it held. I won't throw away what exists between us just because the frame cracked. If I ever truly walk away, it will be because our paths diverged, not because the road got bumpy. I don't want a bad season to be a death sentence. I'd rather have the guts to stand by what I know is real than pretend I've outgrown it. For my sake, for yours, for what we lived.
I can write this today because I'm not where I was when we ended. I'm not claiming I'm transformed, that kind of inner rebuilding takes time. But I've sat with the hard questions too. I asked myself if I was just building a story because I miss you, if this was grief dressed up as truth. The more I sit with it, the more the pattern holds.
I don't know how this lands for you. I just needed our story to be seen, once, with everything we couldn't see at the time. What looked like not trying was something else entirely. Less dramatic maybe, but deeper, a whole way of being that was slowly, quietly coming apart.
I'm leaving the keys on the table. You decide.
If you ever want to talk, I'd welcome it. And if there's one thing I know today: I will love you for the rest of my life. Not from fear of losing you anymore, but because loving you this way has turned out to be one of the truest things I know.
Having you in my life has meant so much. I hope it continues, whatever shape it takes. Because beyond everything I feel for you, I genuinely love the person you are. And that person, I don't want to lose.

I wanted to wait for the dust to settle before reaching out, after everything these past weeks churned up, maybe for you too.
There's a truth I can finally put into words, and I needed to tell you, because you're part of it.
I've always known my mother's death changed me deeply. I thought I'd made it through, but really I'd just learned to build my life around her absence, to keep myself safe. Then you came and offered me a kind of emotional safety that made my whole defense system obsolete. Every lock I'd installed to never feel that kind of loss again started breaking. You became so real, so present, that my protections no longer fit the person I was with you. It threw me completely and I didn't know how to be without them anymore.
I'd found my balance in the world I'd built. And you, just by being yourself, walked in and shook the entire system that had learned to keep me intact.
That's what I was clumsily trying to explain these past weeks, with the few pieces I had. While I was struggling to understand something I couldn't even name, you were catching the fallout. This clarity is mine now, whether you're here or not — but you'll always be woven into it.
I don't want to go back to what we had; it wore us both out. But I won't confuse the container with what it held. I won't throw away what exists between us just because the frame cracked. If I ever truly walk away, it will be because our paths diverged, not because the road got bumpy. I don't want a bad season to be a death sentence. I'd rather have the guts to stand by what I know is real than pretend I've outgrown it. For my sake, for yours, for what we lived.
I can write this today because I'm not where I was when we ended. I'm not claiming I'm transformed, that kind of inner rebuilding takes time. But I've sat with the hard questions too. I asked myself if I was just building a story because I miss you, if this was grief dressed up as truth. The more I sit with it, the more the pattern holds.
I don't know how this lands for you. I just needed our story to be seen, once, with everything we couldn't see at the time. What looked like not trying was something else entirely. Less dramatic maybe, but deeper, a whole way of being that was slowly, quietly coming apart.
I'm leaving the keys on the table. You decide.
If you ever want to talk, I'd welcome it. And if there's one thing I know today: I will love you for the rest of my life. Not from fear of losing you anymore, but because loving you this way has turned out to be one of the truest things I know.
Having you in my life has meant so much. I hope it continues, whatever shape it takes. Because beyond everything I feel for you, I genuinely love the person you are. And that person, I don't want to lose.

I'll try to keep this as structured as possible, but I'm exhausted and heartbroken, so bear with me.

Context: Three years ago, my mother died unexpectedly at 42. Looking back, I now realize I never truly processed what that loss did to me. I thought I had healed because I had learned to function again but what I actually did was build an incredibly sophisticated survival system.

I met him a year ago and started dating 6 months ago. He made me feel emotionally safe in a way I had never experienced before. Ironically, that's exactly when everything I thought I had healed started resurfacing.

Last week he told me that over the last months he felt like he was carrying the relationship emotionally. He wanted more initiative, more spontaneity, more emotional investment from me. He eventually told me he wasn't happy anymore, that he felt like he had done everything he could, and that he didn't want to gamble on trying again because he had too much to lose emotionally.

I wasn't consciously pulling away, but I became hesitant, anxious, overthinking everything. I sometimes lacked spontaneity or initiative because I was constantly trying not to "do the wrong thing."
The difficult part is that I don't think either of us was completely wrong. I don't think he carried everything. I also don't think I was absent or didn't love him. I genuinely tried with the emotional tools I had at the time that were blunted by grief, by illness, by survival mechanisms I didn't even know were running.

He knew almost everything about me. He knew about my mother's death, my fears, my past, my health issues and some of my deepest insecurities. I felt safe enough to tell him those things. On the other hand, I realized after the breakup that I knew surprisingly little about his inner world. I've never been to his place, I don't even know exactly where he lives. He rarely shared his own vulnerabilities, fears or emotional struggles with me. He expected me to be constantly "on", initiating, planning, entertaining, available, while he remained emotionally guarded.

Looking back wonder whether that imbalance made it harder for me to understand what he needed emotionally. It's difficult to support someone in the specific way they need when you don't really know what they're carrying.

The past few weeks have been particularly brutal: My grandmother passed away at the beginning of June. It reopened everything I thought I had sealed around my mother's death. And on top of that, I live with an autoimmune condition that sometimes steals entire days from me. During his last week before the breakup he was overwhelmed with work and waiting for important professional news. He repeatedly told me he needed space and was putting his phone away. I genuinely believed that respecting that request was the most loving thing I could do. He later told me he experienced that same week as proof that I wasn't emotionally present enough.

I think we were acting from completely different interpretations of the same situation. After we argued, he wanted space. Ironically, that crisis is what finally pushed me to connect all the dots between my mother's death and the way I'd been functioning in relationships. Within days I realized things about myself that I genuinely hadn't understood before.

From my perspective, I had finally started understanding what was happening inside me just as he decided he couldn't continue. From his perspective, it probably felt like it had taken reaching the breaking point for things to finally move. He told me he still loves me and probably always will, but doesn't want to restart the relationship because he no longer trusts the dynamic. He told me he didn't want it to come to this, that it was killing him, that he'd probably love me his whole life. He said he could see I was finally getting my head above water, that I was changing, becoming myself again, but that he felt too worn out, too used up, to be able to receive it. He said it was the most rational choice, even though he could see the light coming back in me and he was completely shattered. He wants me in his life, even as friends. But I don't know if I can do "just friends" with someone who told me I'd be the love of his life.

I'm doing a lot of work on myself, not because I hope it will guarantee getting him back, but because I don't want these patterns to define the rest of my life. I want him back. But I don't know if that's possible, or if I'm deluding myself. I don't know if I should wait, reach out, or move on. I don't know if "friends without ambiguity" is a door or a wall.

So I guess my questions are:

Does this sound like genuine incompatibility or does it sound like two people who loved each other but got caught in trauma and misunderstandings?

If you were in his position, is this the kind of breakup you could ever reconsider months later if you genuinely saw lasting change, or does trust usually not come back once you've reached that point?

I'm looking for honest opinions, even if they're hard to hear.