[emp4th]

Hello everyone. I’m sorry for the long post but I needed to get it all out.

I have been with my boyfriend for just over a year. I am 23 and he is 27. He lives about a 5 hour train journey from me so I have not seen him since March. During that time he has had many relapses with his gambling and weed addiction. I have stuck by him through all this, even when it meant I was getting very badly hurt and pushed away. I can’t even count how many times he has broken up with me during discussions about our relationship and his addiction problems. Each time he has come back apologising and promising to get help.

Due to the lockdown, I have not seen him since March. The last time I saw him, he broke up with me because I tried to discuss our relationship with him. He smokes a lot, spends almost all of his time with his friends, plays on his Xbox constantly and generally has not given me a lot of time during the especially bad times in our relationship. He struggles with depression and anxiety, has low self-worth and had an extremely difficult and traumatising childhood. He had been living at home with his mum and brother, but has been living with his friend for about 6 months, which we both knew would be very unhealthy as all of his friends smoke and gamble and this would obviously exacerbate his problems. He also lost his job just before lockdown.

We got back together during lockdown and had been talking consistently throughout the day. Everything seemed fine. Then one day I asked if he would like to talk on the phone (we very rarely do this) and shortly afterwards he told me he was struggling with anxiety and needed the weekend to get his head together – meaning he wouldn’t be talking to me. I understood completely having struggled with anxiety for many years. However, this weekend break turned into a month of him not contacting me. I managed to get a few messages out of him when I became panicked and asked if this was the end and what was going on with him. He contacted me briefly last week to say he was moving in with his brother as his family were very worried about him and he felt this was a positive step and that he hoped to be feeling better soon. I eventually managed to get him on the phone a few days ago and he explained to me what had happened. It turns out that he was spending lots of time with his friends and them talking about how much money they had whilst on furlough had made him feel depressed and he stopped going out with them, sitting in his room not eating, smoking weed all the time and playing video games. He completely let go of himself and his personal hygeine. He told me his anxiety and depression was so bad he felt he couldn’t talk to me on the phone and was barely speaking to anyone at all. This didn’t surprise me as he has had periods of time like this before, eventually having a complete breakdown when he can’t handle it anymore. He apologised a lot for putting me through the uncertainty, told me he wanted to be with me and even talked about planning a holiday. He said he would start talking to me again and has done. He also said he had stopped smoking weed and was looking for jobs, has been out to play cricket which he hasn’t done for months and went out to play golf with his friends.

However, this morning I became very anxious. He is not forthcoming about his feelings whatsoever and the fact we haven’t seen each other in so long had me doubting his love for me and his commitment to our relationship. He very rarely tells me he loves me and is not really very romantic over text at all, and its incredibly difficult to get him on the phone and feel any sort of security. I asked him if he would mind calling me for 5 minutes so I could get a little reassurance. I told him I was struggling with the distance and that I just wanted to know if he loved me and still wanted to be with me. He could not give me any reassurance whatsoever, asking me why I was doing this now. I said “so do you not love me anymore?” and he responded that he didn’t know, and eventually said that no he didn’t. I told him I guessed that was it and hung up the phone and blocked him immediately. I should also probably add that he got very drunk last night and so was hungover this morning when I asked to speak to him.

I guess I’m just looking for some kind of reassurance here as well. I’m finding it extremely difficult to process that he doesn’t love me anymore. I can accept that we are not together anymore; it has been very unhealthy and has broken me many times, but he told me just a few days ago that he wanted to be with me and wanted to plan a holiday. He has done this sort of thing before – in the past if I have questioned him about our relationship or his state of mind or addictions, he tells me to go home and that he doesn’t want to be with me. He explains afterwards it’s because he becomes overwhelmed and will do anything he can to not have to deal with it. I realise this is a bad situation and the best thing for me is to move on with my life and blocking him is the first step as I have never done that before. I don’t plan to get back together with him – after all he told me he didn’t love me. I guess I’m just wondering if it’s possible he said this due to his addiction and depression, and didn’t really mean it, just wanting to get rid of me because the situation was causing him stress. I can handle the fact that we are perhaps not good for each other at the moment, but accepting that he doesn’t love me at all is really difficult. Thank you so much for reading. I would really appreciate any words of comfort, as my family are done with the situation having seen me get my heart broken by this man so many times.

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