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The original was posted on /r/twoxchromosomes by /u/WorryTulip on 2023-09-04 13:44:36.

My ex?-boyfriend (31M) of eleven years has ghosted me (31F). I’m pretty sure it’s over and I don’t know how to feel about it. Any advice?

I never get this personal on Reddit, I’ve probably posted ten times total between my two Reddit accounts in the last five years but…I dunno y’all. I’m tired. Not literally though as it’s almost 5 am and I’ve been up since 2:30, but you know what I mean. If you wanna read and even comment, please do. Thanks and I hope it’s okay that I’m here.

This is a convoluted, long story and I just tried to type it all out. I wrote a first draft but by paragraph 8 and being maybe 2/3rd through the details I realized I can’t make everyone read this dumb winding thing, so I deleted it. Brevity has never been a skill of mine but I’m gonna try again. I’ll obviously be leaving some things out but it’s either that or a novel here ya’ll.

Attempt #37, or at least it feels that way:

This is hard to admit but I could use a place to vent or get some outside perspective. I (31F) have/had been with my boyfriend “Jake” (31M) for eleven years. We met on the first day of our junior year at university and started dating three weeks after we met. It started as a whirlwind in a good way, as it often does.

It’s been a rather strange relationship (a lot of distance even though we live in the same city) but it worked for us for a long time, or at least I wanted it to work. But it wasn’t fine. We never seriously discussed marriage or moving in during our 11 years together and he was never happy when I even tried to jokingly or gently bring up the subject. We lived with our families after college in the same town but he never wanted to stay the night even though my family always was fine with it. (My mom likes him more than me almost) You would think we lived on opposite sides of the country by how we were. I constantly pretended it wasn’t weird to not have a future after a decade of dating.

We just stayed stuck for a long time because I refused to make him uncomfortable by pulling that thread. From two years of dating in 2014 to six years in 2018, we stayed the same title-wise but got more and more distant physically and emotionally.

So I went to grad school in 2016 very close to home and Jake started his job as a police officer in that same nearby big city. My school was maybe 20 minutes from his work. I was rather shocked when he had told me his plan to join the academy the year before. He was a science kinda guy who was having trouble finding a career in his degree’s field and he didn’t ever seem to have that cop vibe, but I supported him. He’s a good guy and we need good guys on the force. He loved/loves being a cop and he’s good at it, but he’s a different guy than before. And I understand that, who hasn’t changed from their early 20’s to 30’s? I certainly have. But things became so different; the change in him over those two years affected me slowly but now it’s so obvious that it happened.

I broke up with Jake in summer 2018. I wanted more than he seemed to want to ever give me and it took forever to get him to admit the answer to our future was “no”. I finally pulled that thread. That same day we called it quits and I was a silently weeping mess for days. I finished my degree soon after and we decided to give each other space.

I soon started to date someone else, a guy from grad school that I never let myself see myself with even though we had insane chemistry because I refused to break up and hurt Jake. Other guy had moved states to switch schools and we kept in touch while Jake and I were together. It’s embarrassing but I admit it moved from friendly chat to flirting to emotional affair territory over time. I just felt so ignored by my boyfriend and I kept saying I had to break up with Jake but I kept putting it off. Other guy gave me the push I needed to have the talk and that’s when I broke up with Jake. The break-up was for lots of reasons, some I’ve mentioned here, many I haven’t, but it was easier knowing other guy wanted me. I’ll always be sorry that I had any part of that. Jake did plenty of wrong things but nobody deserves that. It will never happen again.

Looking back, other guy was obviously a rebound. We only dated for three months. It was a long-distance relationship since he was across the country for his new grad program and I liked having that distance. He was insanely romantic and I know he loved me but what Jake didn’t want of me, other guy wanted everything. He was talking about me moving to his state and getting married pretty quick. I got scared and broke it off in November of 2018.

Jake and I found each other again right after I was single and we started trying to take things slow and see what happens. I know, what a mess, but we loved each other and he made a move so we got back together like two weeks later. I never got the courage to ask him to define the relationship until three years later, so we stayed in limbo. Even when we were officially dating again in May 2021 once I finally asked him to talk, it was always more like “together” for another three years, to current day. He’s changed even more in a direction I don’t recognize and we found ourselves having less in common each time we saw each other. I never told him because I couldn’t stand to hurt him, I can still see his face when I drove off on the day we first broke up five years ago. I can’t believe we’ve been back “together” for that long.

This year, we’ve basically haven’t talked at all besides maybe weekly texts (that I almost always initiated, to be clear) for months now. I’ve been on medical leave for chronic pain while I wait for diagnoses and surgery and he’s insanely busy as a cop, so I used that excuse for a while. But now he’s completely ghosted me for almost a month. Jake’s left me on read after I had sent a couple serious “miss you babe” kinda texts and now I’m just…done.

So that’s it. I don’t want to text or call him because this is on him and I’m trying to break my pattern of calling him when he ignores me. It’d feel more petty if I hadn’t been the one to initiate almost major step of our relationship. I asked for his number way back on the day we met, I kissed him first, I asked if we wanted to date, I asked him to spend the first night at my apartment, I mentioned the future together here and there for years until I got defeated by indifference.

So I guess it’s over. I read a Reddit post recently that said not every relationship needs to end with closure or a long drawn-out conversation, maybe that’s for the best in my case. I could just use some advice, i guess, if anyone feels they can spare the time.

Insert cliche but true “If you made it this far, thanks for reading” ending here.