Her mother had been dead less than a month when my girlfriend told me she needed a break from our relationship. She said she didn’t want to see me, and when I begged her to forgive me for missing the funeral, she replied, “I will never forgive you for this. ”
I had been with this woman for two years. We lived seven hours apart while I finished school.
When her mom passed after a short illness, I dropped everything and took the first bus down to be with her. I stayed for almost a week. The problem was, the very next week was finals week, and her mother’s funeral landed on the same day as one of my exams. I had already lost a week of study time, and I told her I couldn’t make it.
She said she understood. I went back to school and started applying for jobs in her area so I could live there over the summer. I landed a phone interview and set up an in-person interview for the following Tuesday, which meant another seven-hour overnight bus ride. We texted every day and Skyped once.
She was quieter than usual, and she stopped saying “I love you” as often. I asked her three times if she wanted to talk about anything, and she always said no. I figured she was just depressed about losing her mother, so I looked up ways to support her. Most articles said to be there for her in the long run.
I apologized several times for missing the funeral, and every time she just repeated, “I understand. ”
The morning of the funeral, she messaged me: “You should be here. ”
I apologized again, saying I would if I could. She replied, “You could be.
I would have done anything to be there for you. ”
I started to panic. I explained how stressed I was because of the week I had already missed and how much money I had just spent on bus tickets for the interview. That’s when she told me not to come down for the interview at all.
She needed a break from this relationship. She didn’t want to see me. I sent her a wall of text, apologizing profusely and explaining that I hadn’t realized how important it was to her that I be there. I said I hoped she could forgive me someday.
Her only response was that she would never forgive me for this. After that, she ignored me. I was completely lost. I just wanted to talk it over in person, but she told me not to come down.
Looking back, I know I could have handled it differently. The only time I could have rearranged my final was Tuesday morning, and I had to spend Monday studying for a different exam. In hindsight, I should have just crammed and taken whatever grade I got. Some things in life you move heaven and earth to be at, and this was probably one of them.
But I couldn’t change what I had already done. All I could do was hope she would someday forgive me. Four months later, things were still in flux. I had been asked to update the situation, but I hadn’t because nothing was final.
Now, final decisions have been made, and I’m closing the case. I’m going to try to be honest, but honestly, I screwed up. Please be kind. I don’t really deserve it, but believe me, anything bad you can think about me, I’ve already done to myself.
When I first told her I was going to bus down to see her, I hoped she would be at the station to pick me up. Otherwise, I would take the next bus back. It was Mother’s Day weekend, which I knew would be difficult for her. I figured it was better to be there and be unwanted than to not be there and be needed.
She responded and said she would be there. I stayed for a few days. We talked about things a few times, and I got the impression the situation was improving. But just before I left to catch the bus back to school, she told me in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t sure about our relationship right now.
She was still really hurt. After I left, she traveled to the UK with her family to hold a memorial service there. She ended up staying for several weeks to take care of her aging grandmother. We talked on the phone a few times, and I found a cheap UK calling plan, so we Skyped as well.
I tried to stay positive for her because she was getting pretty depressed, but she seemed very distant, not just geographically. I didn’t want to burden her with my own anxieties about our relationship, so instead of talking to her about them, I wrote her a journal. Every time I wanted to talk to her about something, I wrote her a letter in this journal. I had bought her two for her birthday so we could both have one for just such a purpose.
One day, I finally asked her why she was so distant. She told me she was still really hurting and feeling betrayed. I read her the letters I had written. She thanked me, and we ended the conversation on ostensibly better terms.
She flew back to the States, and we continued our long-distance thing. She grew more and more distant, and I wrote more and more letters. Then one day, she got drunk and messaged me a bunch of really lovely things, stuff she hadn’t said to me since before her mom died. But after a few hours, the tone turned somber.
Suddenly, she told me she didn’t think she could do this relationship anymore. I asked her why. She said she wasn’t sure about the two years apart thing. She was still upset about the funeral, and her family didn’t like me.
She apologized later and said her family didn’t not like me. But she told me not to come visit that weekend. She was going to be visiting my school town instead, to see some friends, and we were supposed to go to a wedding together in about ten days. She visited.
She had second thoughts about breaking up. We went to the wedding, and she agreed to give our relationship another go. We had a great time together. Except for one thing.
She asked me if there was anything I was hiding, because I had cheated on her when we first started dating and had lied to her about smoking weed. I know. I told her I had shared what was essentially her deepest, darkest secret with a friend. I obviously can’t tell you what that secret was, but it affected both of us, though it affected her the most.
It was deep, and it was dark. She took it really well, and we continued on. A while later, she texted me and asked if I had told anyone else her secret. I told her I had also told one of my roommates.
Go ahead, be mean. I deserve it. She was upset for a few days but seemed to forgive me. I visited her once, and then shortly after, I visited again with a couple of friends.
The latter time, she was pretty distant, and she had been distant over text and Skype as well. A few days after that, she texted me and asked how I thought the relationship was going. I told her it was cold but felt like it was improving. Then I asked what she thought.
She didn’t respond. I asked if she wanted to Skype, and she said yes. We Skyped, and unsurprisingly, we ended it. She said she wanted to be with me and loved me, but she was just so angry about all the betrayal.
She said I had been the perfect boyfriend the last few weeks, and the relationship was healing, but she wasn’t. We are attempting to be friends right now. It’s been about two weeks. She really wants to be friends, and I really want to be more than friends.
She tried really hard to stay with me and forgive me, so I owe her at least an attempt at being just friends. I’m confident this relationship is over, so I guess I’m not really asking for relationship advice. Except maybe this: should I try to be friends with her? Probably not, for both of our sakes.
I was almost on his side when he had the final on the same day, assuming it couldn’t be moved. Then came the buried lead of cheating and telling her secrets to people. It wasn’t even a straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a boulder on top of the whole ton of bricks the camel was already propping up.
Some universities are strict when it comes to rules, and getting bereavement exceptions because of a girlfriend’s relative passing is distant enough for some places to not accept it. When my grandmother passed, a cousin was denied bereavement leave because apparently grandparent wasn’t considered immediate family. But then came part two. Screw this guy.
“Being the perfect boyfriend. ” Look inside. I cheated on her early on in the relationship and betrayed her privacy. The man makes skipping a funeral look like a selling point, not a letdown.
It just got worse and worse as the story went on. My fiancée and I had a wedding planned for about a month from now. This past weekend, she went on what was supposed to be a girls-only camping trip to a lake. She was completely out of touch from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening.
I was okay with this because she said she really needed the break. When she got home, she didn’t even say hello. She just started doing laundry, which I thought was a little suspicious, but she said it was because all her stuff was dirty, which made sense. As Sunday night went on, she kept slipping that there had been guys there.
At first, it was just her friend’s boyfriend. But it turned out the guys actually outnumbered the girls. I accused her of trickle-truthing me. She said I was being a dick.
As we were fighting, a text came on her phone. I swear it said, “Well, at least you got the bachelorette party out of the way. ” It was from someone named JJ, and I couldn’t for the life of me think of who that was, nor did I have any context for the conversation as a whole. She said the text didn’t say anything like that and accused me of spying on her.
I said it wasn’t spying if her phone was on the couch between us and the message was on her lock screen. She got furious and left. I haven’t heard from her in two days. She turned off Find My Friends, so I have no idea where she is.
What the hell do I do here? I know what my instincts tell me, but my instincts aren’t always right. The way she reacted, and the way she slowly eked out the truth the night she got home, showed that maybe she had a guilty conscience. When called on it, instead of having any kind of legitimate answer, she turned it around and called me a dick.
She immediately washed all her clothes. She got a text from someone I didn’t know, referencing a bachelorette party happening early on a trip with men she lied about. Why? Probably for the same reason women who lie about their bachelorette parties lie about them.
And it’s not because they were chaste. When called on something suspicious, she yet again had no response other than to gaslight me and turn the situation on me, making me the paranoid, controlling fiancé instead of showing me the message and proving I was wrong. Why didn’t she? And instead of acknowledging that she could see how I would be suspicious, she left for days without contact.
The advice was simple: pack her stuff up now. Tell her it’s over because she couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge her actions or be honest. That’s not a foundation for marriage. Tell her when to pick up her stuff, then block her everywhere so I wouldn’t have to hear the lies she spent the last few days trying to come up with.
I’m 21. Get out before I find out the kid isn’t mine and have to give her half my stuff and pay child support. She was angry that she got caught. I got lucky finding out before the marriage.
Two days later, I did a small update. I still went to the catering meeting yesterday afternoon, even though I hadn’t heard from her since she stormed out on Sunday. I texted her Wednesday morning telling her what my plan was. The text was delivered, but I never got a read receipt like usual.
I went to the meeting. She and her parents were no-shows. The caterer said they didn’t cancel, so she was expecting them. I waited about thirty minutes and went home.
When I got home, I saw her, her parents, and about five of her dad’s employees, still in their work shirts, packing up stuff from my house. She hurriedly got in her car and drove away. Her mom was super rude to me, but her dad said he was really sorry. He said he thought he had raised her better than this, but this was for the best.
I asked him where she was going. He said he didn’t know, but I think he was lying. I stayed in the house to make sure they only took her stuff. For those asking, she never wanted a ring, so there wasn’t one to get back from her.
Our lease was up at the end of the month, and the landlord said he’d fully refund the deposits, or I could stay if I wanted. I wasn’t sure what to do there. Later that evening, a friend of hers called to check on me. It was the first real information I had about why this was all happening.
This friend had been on the camping trip. My fiancée had really hit it off with some guy, and they had spent the whole weekend at another campsite by themselves. My fiancée wasn’t telling her friends anything either. I guess I had been left for the camping guy.
I had no idea. She hadn’t responded to any text or call, and I didn’t even know how to find her if I wanted to. I know most people are going to say this is for the best, and I know in my head they’re right. But this hurts so much.
I had been with her for three years, and I thought we had a great relationship. We fought, but in a healthy way. Never in a million years did I think this could happen. What makes it so hard is that I don’t even really know what happened.
Even her closest friends seem to be speculating. If it was this guy, that sucks. If it was a long-running problem she never told me about, that sucks too. I’m just really sad and in a state of shock.
It’s a predictable ending, but that doesn’t make it any easier. He dodged a few bullets, but he definitely got hit by one. If she no longer wants to marry and wants out of the relationship, that’s fine. But I wish people would stop being such giant cowards and learn to break up well.
Not via cheating and tantruming. That guy was her life partner for years, and he wasn’t worth one single clarifying conversation. She couldn’t face him or even send a breakup text. She specifically picked the time they were supposed to meet the caterer to start moving out, knowing he wouldn’t be home.
The really sad part is that she now has a better understanding of who she is and what she’s selfishly capable of, and she will take no accountability for the wreckage she leaves in her wake. Everyone around her is just forced to adjust their new understanding of this person they thought they knew. Her parent’s quick actions and timing and resources give the appearance that this wasn’t their first rodeo. The affair partner is going to find out how easily she’ll move on one way or another.
The dad apologizing and saying he thought he raised her better than this was heartbreaking. The mom being rude made me feel sick. What a piece of crap fiancée. Zero remorse.
Stop trying to get married at 21. Rarely goes well.
