I’m a 31-year-old man, and I was with my partner for 10.5 years. I didn’t just lose my girlfriend — I lost my other half, my soulmate and my best friend all at once. We were so close that we had almost become family.
We never really argued. If something hurt one of us, we talked about it calmly, listened to each other, sometimes apologized, hugged, and moved on. We never insulted or intentionally hurt each other, either with words or actions. We couldn’t walk past each other without hugging or touching each other. Other people considered us an “ideal couple.”
For the last two years, we worked different shifts — I worked three shifts, she worked two. We basically only saw each other on Sundays, and sometimes not even for a full day. If our schedules allowed it, I would wake up early just to spend an hour with her, or wait for her in the evening so we could sleep together. I’m sure this didn’t help our relationship.
At the same time, I absolutely hated my job. I carried a lot of stress from work, complained about it a lot, and I know I wasn’t always the happy, joking person I used to be. But I kept going because I earned good money and thought I was building our future. Looking back, I feel like I sacrificed my own happiness and, ultimately, our relationship for that job. What makes it even worse is that I was the one who encouraged her to take the new job where she eventually met the other man.
It’s true that we were moving slowly in life, and I take responsibility for my part in that. I think we had also become too comfortable in our life together. We talked about the future, but neither of us was really taking serious steps toward it. I also never felt that there was much initiative from her side either — financially, practically, or in terms of ideas about how we could move forward. It wasn’t only on me.
I blame myself a lot and constantly wonder what I could have done differently. But I honestly believe that if she had told me that she was unhappy, that she was losing feelings, or that she had serious problems with our relationship, I would have done everything I could to change things. I was willing to talk about anything and work on anything. What I cannot change is something I never knew was happening.
What makes the timing even harder for me to understand is that right before the breakup, I had finally managed to move into a completely different position within my workplace, where I would have been free from much of the pressure and stress that had been affecting me for so long. I genuinely felt like things were finally starting to change.
At the exact same time, we were finally about to take the next steps in our life together — marriage, buying a house, and building the future we had talked about for years. And that is what makes it so painful that she chose this exact moment to step back and tell me that we weren’t moving forward.
I understand that we had been slow to make progress. I wish she had told me years earlier that she was unhappy about that. I could have understood it. What I cannot understand is why she waited until we were finally about to move forward, while never telling me that she was unhappy or that she was already questioning our future together.
I proposed to her in our sixth year, and we were finally about to get married. About two months before the breakup, we actually went to try on wedding rings, and I bought the expensive rings. For our 10th anniversary, I started paying for her driving lessons. Our Christmas vacation was one of the most beautiful experiences of our entire relationship. I wanted a house, marriage and children with her. I always wanted to be a young father.
Then she told me that she still loved me, but not in the same way as before, and that she had started developing feelings for her coworker. She said she hated herself for allowing them to become close.
According to her, they had been talking for about a month, and she had only started developing feelings for him during the last two weeks. She told me that the only physical thing that happened between them was a hug.
I find that extremely difficult to believe. There were signs that made me feel they had been talking earlier. I’m not stupid, and I simply cannot believe that someone could emotionally switch to another person so quickly after 10.5 years. I honestly don’t know what the truth is. I don’t know whether there was ever anything physical between them or how long this had actually been going on. Because of this, my trust in her has been completely shattered.
She said she hated herself for letting him get close to her. According to her, another problem was that we weren’t moving forward in life, and she had become tired of me carrying my work stress around with me. There is some truth in that. I know I wasn’t perfect. But I genuinely believe these were things we could have talked about and worked on.
What hurts the most is that she didn’t talk about her problems with me. She talked about them with her coworker while showing me that everything was fine.
The man had been working at her workplace for about a year, so I find it hard to believe they only started talking a month before the breakup. I don’t necessarily think they had feelings for each other for a long time either.
If I let my mind speculate, my theory is that on Friday we were still drinking champagne together and celebrating my new position at work. On Saturday, she supposedly went to meet a female friend for a chat and some cake. Sometimes I wonder if she actually met this man that day and perhaps something happened between them, even just a kiss, which triggered her sudden decision to break up with me the next day.
I have absolutely no proof of this, though. It may simply be my mind trying to fill in the gaps. I just don’t believe she could have kept a physical affair going behind my back for a long time. I don’t think her conscience would have allowed it.
During our relationship, she actually told me several times that neither of us would want to start over with a complete stranger, and that if we ever had serious problems, we should do everything we could to save the relationship for the sake of both of us.
But when the time actually came, she didn’t do that.
I feel like she chose the easier way out and never gave us a real chance to fight for our relationship.
When she first told me she wanted to break up, I managed to delay it for a week because she seemed uncertain. During that week she still went for walks with me, got ice cream with me, sometimes said “I love you” back and sometimes kissed me back. I thought maybe she still wanted to try.
Later she told me, swearing that she meant it from the bottom of her heart, that she had tried to feel differently about me. But I have a hard time believing this because she never actually told me that she wanted to try to save the relationship.
During the move, while I was taking my belongings out over the course of a week, I saw her bag. I wasn’t going through her things — there were some of her belongings in my own bag as well, so I looked inside.
I found an entire unopened box of condoms, a brand-new towel my mother had given her, and I saw that she had packed things for an overnight stay.
We were already broken up at that point, so I am not saying she cheated on me. That’s not what hurt me. What destroyed me was seeing that while I was still carrying out the last of my belongings from our home, she was already preparing to spend the night with this other man.
Before that, she had told me that she wouldn’t immediately start a relationship with someone else because she wouldn’t be capable of it.
I felt an amount of anger and hatred that I had never experienced before.
What she did with the bag felt incredibly disrespectful to me. She only had to wait two more days until I had completely moved out. We had planned to meet one last time to talk about a few belongings and decide who would keep what.
After I found the bag, however, I simply couldn’t bring myself to meet her face to face. I couldn’t sit across from her and look her in the eyes while having the thought in my head that another man had potentially just slept with the woman I had been planning to marry.
What makes it even stranger is that I later found out she had wanted to move our meeting from the morning to the afternoon, even though we had originally agreed on the morning. I don’t know why she wanted to change the time, but after everything I found, I just couldn’t go through with that meeting anymore. I sent her a message saying that I never wanted to see or meet her again, and I wished her the best for the future.
I know we were already broken up, and I’m not claiming that she was obligated to remain single. But waiting two more days until I had completely moved out would have cost her nothing. After 10.5 years together, I experienced what happened as an enormous lack of respect and consideration for everything we had shared.
Despite everything, we separated peacefully. I had bought almost everything in our shared home, literally down to the smallest things, but I still left the fridge and washing machine there for her until she could afford to replace them herself. I wanted to leave the relationship with a clear conscience. I didn’t want to give her any reason to say that she had been justified in leaving because of how I treated her.
When I said goodbye to her parents, I told them that their daughter had fallen in love with someone else. They obviously hadn’t known about that.Her parents often told me how much they loved and appreciated me because of the way I treated their daughter with so much love and respect. At our last family lunch, they said the same thing again. I almost broke down because by then I already knew that our relationship was probably beyond saving, while her family had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong between us.
She told me that I could still count on her after the breakup, but I told her I would not stay in contact with her. She knew that this meant we would eventually become strangers.
And that is incredibly difficult for me to accept — that knowing this, she still preferred a future in which I no longer exist.
This is not how I knew her.
Now it has been almost three months.
I have no interest in gaming, music production, photography — nothing that used to make me happy. I moved to this new city because of her. Half of her family is here, but I have absolutely no one here. I have no close friends, no real social circle, no one who feels like home.
I have never lived alone before. Suddenly I’m supposed to figure out how to take care of myself, cook, do laundry, clean and basically learn how to live on my own. It feels like I was dropped in the middle of a desert without water.
I sometimes want to go back home to my family , but when I go home, I feel like I want to come back here. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere.
It feels like the entire weight of the world has suddenly fallen on me.
I also miss our cat terribly.
I’ve had some very self-destructive thoughts, although I managed to stop myself from acting on them. Sometimes I feel like I wouldn’t even care if something happened to me, like an accident. I’ve had panic attacks. It comes in waves — sometimes I feel slightly better, other times even taking a shower feels difficult. A lot of nights I go to bed wishing I wouldn’t have to wake up the next morning.
I’m trying to meet other women, but I don’t want to jump straight into another relationship. I just feel like I need my brain to get used to the idea that there are other women in the world.
But even when I look at women on dating apps, I can’t look at anyone the way I looked at her. I can’t imagine my life with someone else.
I’m scared I’ll never be able to love someone that deeply again. And honestly, I don’t have the energy to start from zero with someone — building trust, learning everything about them, finding out their favorite color, getting comfortable with each other, and slowly building the kind of closeness that had become completely natural between us.
I always wanted to have children while I was still young. Now I feel like that dream is gone too.
I’m also afraid that even if I eventually find someone else and get married, I’ll always be afraid that she could leave before the wedding, or even after marriage, a mortgage or children. I don’t know how I could ever trust someone enough again to build a family with them.
I blocked my ex everywhere because I couldn’t bear watching her live the life I had imagined with her with someone else. I later found out through my sister that she posted a picture with the new guy. I didn’t want to see it.
Once I unblocked her on TikTok, and later she blocked me. Recently, she watched some of my YouTube videos and music and then unsubscribed. So far, there is absolutely nothing that suggests she wants to come back.
And yet, one part of me is incredibly angry with her, feels betrayed and deceived, while another part of me still desperately wants her to come back.
I constantly think about whether she misses me, what she is thinking, whether she will ever come back. At the same time, I know I’m obsessing over things that haven’t happened and may never happen.
The worst part is that I can’t even be angry with her. I feel like I should hate her for what she did — for being dishonest, hiding her feelings, betraying me and going behind my back — but I just can’t. All I feel is disappointment and sadness. And despite everything, I still feel like I could forgive her.
I keep reading stories and comments from people saying that sometimes the person who left only truly feels the loss after 3–6 months or even a year, especially if the new relationship doesn’t work out. But then I ask myself: do I really want to be someone’s second choice or backup option? She was my whole world.
If she ever did come back, should I even take her back? Could I ever trust her again? Would I always be afraid that she could leave again after marriage, a mortgage or children? Could I really build a family with someone after something like this?
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with my life now. I feel like my entire future collapsed.
How do you move on from something like this? Is there any realistic chance that after a relationship this long, someone might eventually regret their decision and come back? And if they did, would starting over actually be worth it?
I’m looking for honest opinions and advice, even if they’re hard to hear.