[Anonymous]

This is long but It is comprehensive and I have spent two months in such pain that I could probably write a novel. 😛

If you wouldn’t mind reading and letting me know your thoughs and feedback, it would be such a great help.

The beginning – We met, Im 26 and she was 24.. It was perfect, amazing, beautiful. I had never found this kind of connection before in my life. We fell in love. 50/50. We were so happy and so excited about our future together.

She was funny, understanding, thoughtful, strong minded, good morals. Just genuiny a great person. We both had a passion for adventure, culture and meeting people. All the people in the office we worked in loved her as she was so lovely and always said we were perfect for eachother. She is an experienced traveller who has been around the world. I had never traveled before but have always desired to.

Her issues –She was brought up in a loving family but her parents have not been happy ever since she can remember. They fight all the time (sometimes physically), sleep in separete rooms. They only stayed together for the children. Her mother also sufferes from depression. All in all, good family but she has been shown an example of a very unhappy relationship. She hates being at home and is dead set on travelling as a way of life. Wants to find herself. She works, saves up and as soon as she gets home she plans her next trip. Doesn’t have any carreer goals but still wants to find something in her life she has a passion for that really matters. She feels travelling is a great way to grow as a person while she is deciding what she wants in life.She has commitment issues as is scared of a relationship holding her back from travelling.

My Issues – Until I feel comfortable and secure in a relationship, I have a tendancy to become a bit clingy. I grew up with a mother who suffered from manic depression and was somtimes suicidal. I often felt rejected by her. Also In different, unfamilier situations I sometimes suffer from anxiety and breathlessness (panic attacks). Which causes me to withdraw myslef and just focus on trying to keep calm. I want to travel though and love adventure!

What happened – She went away to travel (already had it planned) – I supported her as I wanted her to follow her dreams and didn’t want to hold her back. During our LDR (4 months) I was a little insecure as she was over the other side of the world. I got a bit frustrated if she didn’t call when she said she would but she understood and said if it was her in my situation she would be much worse. She began to freak out about the relationship holding her back from her dreams of travelling. It is my dream too so i reassured her it is something we can do together. Even though she was over the other side of the world, I sent her gifts, flowers, letters and did all i could to show her how much I cared for her.

She wanted me to go out to travel with her( we missed eachother) – I got a second job, saved up, gave up my jobs and went to the other side of the world to be with her. We were both quite nervous as my reaction to the initial distance put a bit of pressure on her and also her commitment issue left me feeling a little unsettled as this was a big thing for me to be doing.

When we were away unfortunatly my anxiety reared its ugly head and I was breathless and panicky for 90% of the time. She took the lead and didn’t like it. Planning most of our activities and places to stay. I lost myslef due to the way i was feeling. She would get upset/angry with me for not enjoying myself, showing initiative. She felt like she was organising everything and that I was not willing to input. This is just because of how I was feeling. When you feel uptight, panicky, generally terrible and you are in a completly new situation it’s so hard to be an organised, pro active, fun person. Then because of her frustrations with me things got worse and bagan to snowball. She was dissapointed with me and i was upset that she was not understanding my problems. Friction occured and we would bicker all the time.

We aggreed that if we wern’t in this difficult situation so soon in our relationship then the issues that were occuring would not exist, so we decided when we get home we would give ourselves the chance to work on our relationship. Since the very beginning there was pressure on us and we decided that we never really had the chance to be in a normal situation (date eachother) like most couples do at the start of a relationship ( 5 weeks of honeymoon, 4months of LDR and 4 months solid in a tent together) . When we got home gradually she became more distant and after only two weeks of being back she broke up with me. She told me that she doesn’t think she should be in a relationship and that relationships are far too complicated when travelling is concerned. My heart was crushed. She said she felt like she is losing her best friend and that I am the nicest guy she has ever met but just feels differently.

We have been broken up for two months now. I am healing a little but Im finding it so hard to swallow as I feel I have met the one.
I am working on my anxiety now and feel so much better in myself! No more breathlessness, no more panic attacks! 
I just can’t get over the fact that I am the person she fell in love with in the beginning. I just had a difficult time adjusting to travelling because of my anxiety and was not the exciting, enthusiastic, life loving person I am at home. However there are reasons for that and I feel that my resolvable health issue has ultimatly caused her to fall out of love with me. She understands why things were the way they were when we were away but still that understanding is not enough. My anxiety is resolvable. It seems her lost love for me is not. She fell in love with the person I am, the real me. She fell out of love with a small part of me that was magnified due to the situation.
We havent spoken for two weeks. Its better that way for now as I felt her getting uptight and frustrated with even the lightest conversation. I just want to make her see the real me as I believe her image of me became distorted because of my anxiety. We were together for such a short time before we went away and the rest of the time we were in difficult situations.

Without this girl in my life I feel lost. Yes I am feeling a little better but i feel like I have lost the one person in my life I have met who I feel is like the missing part of me. How can I make this girl see that I am still the man she fell in love with? I just struggled in a new, challenging situation. I feel that I have been doing all that I can to make us work. I encouraged her to follow her dreams, put up with an LDR early on in our relationship, worked night and day to be with this girl and she couldn’t even give us a chance at home. It hurts so much. Not because i lost a girfriend, because I lost a person who I truely believe is my soulmate. The person who showed me how to feel a love that I never knew could exist. Also it hurts because I totally gave her my heart, which is why did everthing in my power to be with her. I believed she loved me as I did her which is why I went to the other side of the world to join her. I just find it so hard to beleive that her love that once seemed so real can be so easily disolved. My feelings for her never changed. I guess thats what love is. What I felt for her was real…… Maybe she never truely loved me……

Is there anything I can do to win back her heart?

Thank you for reading this, I know it was long but just writing this has made me feel a little better. 

[April Masini, your AskApril]

It sounds like she’s no longer interested in you, and it’s going to be futile to win back her heart because she gave it a really good try. Look at it from her point of view: She committed to you and she tried different tactics, and still it didn’t work. She’s done, and you need to learn from the experience WHY this match didn’t work out and what to do differently next time.

From where I sit, it really seems like you didn’t choose wisely, knowing that you had this anxiety condition. Anyone with anxiety needs to understand that stress will exacerbate the anxiety and that anxiety will take a toll on the relationship. You chose someone who told you up front that she’s a travel bug with no career plans and from what she didn’t say, no plans of settling down. If you’re admittedly clingy, she sure didn’t give you much to cling to, by her nature. This is not who I would have matched you up with given your anxiety issues.

It’s great that it took this loss for you to realize how important curing your anxiety issues is to a relationship, and if that’s the only gift you take away from this rejection, it’s a big one. When you enter into any relationship, you have to understand at that moment who YOU are and what YOU bring to the table, and who the other person is, and decide if the math adds up between you to give it a good go.

I’m sorry you’re so hurt, but if you can take a few steps back, you’ll understand that dating is a process, and the quicker you learn, the better chance you have of meeting and keeping Ms. Right. I hope you’ll get my book called Date Out of Your League that I’ve written for men who want to get the girl. It’s got a lot of advice that you don’t have now, and that will help you quell your anxiety (because I understand, too, that curing that anxiety is a process and not an overnight fix). Here’s the link where you can buy the book: [url]https://www.askapril.com/relationship-dating-advice/date-out-of-your-league.html[/url].

Also, please join me on Facebook. I want to see you as a member on AskApril.com on Facebook at this link: [url][/url]. It’s free! 😀

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