Help me understand my breakup

Post date: 2020-09-19 14:01:29

I just had a really awful breakup and I need help understanding it. I was happy and then we were broken up within an hour. I want to know how I could have done better so that I don't make the same mistakes again.

This is going to be long-winded – apologies in advance!

My boyfriend and I have been dating for four years altogether but we've both really struggled with it in different ways. I had extremely controlling parents that I was trying to please for a long time. He became an alcoholic, which was very hard. We had geography issues and were long distance for a large part of it. We broke up multiple times. We both have challenging jobs on top of all of this. We love each other an incredible amount, and I think that's what has let us stay together for so long. I love him so much. I miss him a lot. Covid has been tough because we've gone four months without seeing each other because of it. We've honestly had to deal with such a bad hand, and I genuinely think we've tried to make the best of it.

We usually call multiple times a day, and I called him this afternoon to catch up. It's been a long day for both of us, and I think that definitely made it all worse. We're both going through a stressful time at work, and he is sleeping badly. We both talked about work for a little bit, and then I started talking about a hotel I wanted to visit. He told me that no one goes there and only people from the nearby city ever visit. I told him that I want to go because the hotel is interesting, not for the location. He kept saying that there's no reason to go. I also talked about an event I'm attending tomorrow and how the friend I invited declined my invite because she had other plans. He said that it was just her way of letting me down easy because she didn't want to go. I told him that I knew her, and she really did want to go but she had to attend another event she had already committed to. He disagreed.

By this point in the conversation, I wasn't feeling the best. It felt like our conversation had been quite negative. He had recently sent me flowers, and I mentioned that I wanted to use the same florist for our wedding because I love their bouquets. We're not engaged, but we've talked about my moving to his city next year and becoming more committed, and I was really excited to share that I loved the florist so much. He said that it was unhelpful that I said that and I need to stop. He said that I always talk bigger than what I'm willing to do. I said that I was serious about it, and that he needs to be able to take me seriously. Somehow we got onto the topic of sex toys. I wanted to try them with him, but he kept telling me that I always talk a bigger game than I'm willing to do, and that it's unhelpful. I told him that I mean it and that if he wants to try it, he should take me at my word. He repeated that what I was doing was unhelpful. I asked him what he means, and he said he didn't want to talk about it. That's when I honestly got pretty frustrated and upset, so I ended the call and said we should talk later. I was really hurt honestly. I was trying to connect with him and I was really so excited, and I felt completely shut down.

The context behind all of this is that he wanted to get married two years ago, gave me an ultimatum, I agreed but then backed out of it because I wasn't ready. Then I proposed to him and we talked about eloping but that also didn't go anywhere. I was trying so so hard to be ready to be married because I knew how important it was to him but in the end I just couldn't force myself to do it. I completely understand how that destroyed a lot of our trust. I know that I screwed up. Recently the way I feel has completely changed. We've talked a lot about it. I'm not scared anymore. I feel finally ready. I'm excited for our future together. I told him I am ready to be married, I want to move to his city next year, and I want to figure out how to live a life together. I've told him I'll pay for his mortgage if he loses his job. I've already told my parents I want to move next year. I've been talking a lot more about commitment. I've been planning trips for us. I know that my previous commitment phobia really scared him, and I've been trying really hard to show him how much I want to be with him. But I think it hasn't been enough.

Back to what happened today. After that prior conversation, I was so upset that I sent him an email asking him what he meant. It was probably more upset and frustrated than it should have been. I felt like I couldn't do anything right, that I couldn't talk to him about marriage or commitment anymore because I wasn't ready two years ago. He replied back that commitment is more than just words, that it's building a life together.

We got on another call right after that. I told him that I really wanted to know what he meant by "unhelpful" because I didn't understand. By this point I was frustrated and angry. I told him I felt like our whole conversation was so negative and that he was lashing out at me. That how he responded to my talking about the hotel just felt like his putting me down, that his insistence about my friend felt like the same, and that I really didn't understand what he meant by telling me that I was being unhelpful. I told him that I had been genuinely excited and wanted to connect with him, and I want to understand if I did something wrong. I told him that if I said something that upsets him, or that if I can be doing more to show him I'm committed, I want to understand and to better support him. He told me that he's working so hard and he's so tired that he can't figure out what was wrong about what I did. He just can't tell me. He told me that my interpretation of what happened is so different from his that it's like we're on Pluto and Mars. I have a flight to visit him next week (we were both so excited and it was our 4 year anniversary!) and he told me that based on what I said, I shouldn't come. He told me that we're clearly just so far apart in our interpretations that we couldn't understand each other. I told him that all I wanted to do was to understand him! I told him that and I was frankly so angry at this point that I also said if he thinks that, then we should just break up because we're not going to see each other anyway. He said okay we should. And I hung up. I was so angry and SO hurt. I don't know. The anger died away and now I'm just sad and heartbroken. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. And now... I don't know what I'm going to do.

I know that this is it for us. We've broken up before, but I really don't think we can handle our hurting each other like this over and over again. This is it. It's the end. It's over. I know that a large part of it was because our relationship was already weak, so something so small just completely broke us. Maybe we're just incompatible. We've been through so much and it's so stupid that this was what ended our relationship. I know that he never really felt sure of my change of heart. I know that contributed to it. We're both tired of this merry-go-round.

Can you tell me what I did wrong? How could I have handled that conversation better?

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