Here's my deal. In fall 2004 I met the girl of my dreams. Beautiful, funny, brilliant -- getting her Master's at MIT -- and just a little crazy. Just my type. We start going out and stay together for two years, constantly surprising and delighting each other. It was the best time of either of our lives.

But then in September 2006 she had to leave the country. She was from Germany and her visa was expired. She had tried to do everything she could to stay in the country, applying to all the schools she could think of but didn't get into any of them except one safety she had applied to in Europe. I applied to a ton of jobs over there but didn't get a response from any of them, probably because I don't speak German. She needed to pursue the PhD she needed for her next step, so I told her she had to take the opportunity with the school in Zurich, Switzerland, it too good to pass up. Marriage could have let her stay here, but she'd be unemployed and not able to pursue her PhD. Somehow we convinced ourselves we'd make it work.

So she leaves and I continue my job back here in the states, and she starts her program over there. She was depressed, miserable, and started having panic attacks. We couldn't afford to visit each other more than 3-4 times a year, and even was adding to already significant debt. I spent Thanksgiving 2006 with her, she came to stay with me and my family through Christmas 2006 and New Year's, we saw each other in Paris in May 2007.

We both started to suffer serious anxiety. Normally someone who's completely confident, I started having this deep, crawling utterly distracting feeling. I couldn't sleep. I had night sweats. I had my first real panic attack and ended up in the hospital in July 2007. That fall she and I saw each other again and we were both okay, but there was a confidence and passion gone, and both of us were not well.

And there was no end in sight. She came up with the rather brilliant idea of me getting an MBA program over there so we could be closer, but I had $50K in credit card debt from all the traveling, and it would be a few years until I could have paid down enough to secure a student loan.

Christmas 2007 I went and stayed with her and her family, and it was okay but we were both still stressed out and frustrated. Not knowing what else to do, I suggested maybe we should try splitting up, maybe it was too much, and we should stop until we knew when we could physically be together again. She was furious. She felt like I was betraying her. On getting back to the US I went to a doctor, who again said it was all anxiety and prescribed me Klonopin, an addictive anti-anxiety drug.

Two months later, in February 2008, after a long night out with my sister's family in California and having just run out of Klonopin, I woke up feeling great, and knowing what I had to do. I got the first connecting flight to LAX, called her from there and apologized deeply, saying she was the only thing in my life that mattered, and that I never wanted us to be apart, and that I was going to make the business school in Europe plan happen no matter what.

She was suspicious but ultimately gave in. She said she too needed to make it work. Elated, I got on the plane for a 6-hour flight back home and on the way my euphoria began to wear off. Later I learned it was likely caused by withdrawal from both Klonopin, but I was hit by wave after wave of the worst, immobilizing panic I’d ever felt. It lasted six hours and didn't go away until the flight crew paged the plane for Xanax. But she and I continued talking almost every day.

I stayed off the Klonopin but a shrink I started seeing instead put me on Paxil. She came to see me for a friend's May wedding that goes okay, and except for a minor attack the next day, was overall a great time.

On June 1, 2008 she flies back to Europe. This is the last day we would officially be together. We make plans to see each other over there in July for a short trip. By the end of June the Paxil has really started to take full effect. Thinking back over how much pain each of us has gone through, and knowing how much she hurts, how lonely she is staying in every night where she’s living, and completely devoid of all emotion thanks to the Paxil, I decide we really do need to call it quits. We can’t keep going on like this, as it’s destroying both of us. I call her, and tell her as much, and she spends two hours fighting the idea.

She says we’ll make it work somehow. We need each other. That I love her and she loves me. That we’ll get better. That I’ll get into school soon over there and it’ll be all better. But still significantly in debt and not yet accepted anywhere, I know it'll still be two years at a minimum, likely more, and tell her we need to stop trying until we know it’s really, absolutely possible – that it’s killing us. She says if we break up we can’t ever be together again because she won’t be able to trust me – I need to be absolutely sure that this is really what I want, because if we break up, that’s it. It's over forever. And not feeling anything like my normal self, I say yes, we need to do it for both of our sanities. Crying endlessly, she finally agrees.

I start taking KAPLAN classes to prepare for the GMAT, and just having a concrete plan on what to do next seemed to help a great deal.
She and I both briefly date other people but it doesn't go anywhere, and at the beginning of November my girl leaves on a trip to rural South America with some friends and is out of contact for a few weeks, and I realize the deadening effect the drugs had had on me is starting to wear off. I miss her like hell.

She gets back from her trip and it seems she’s been feeling the same way, missing me terribly, and begs me to come be with her for the holidays. I’m still almost dead broke from the trips in May and July, determined to get into school there, and can’t afford a round trip ticket to Europe in addition to needing to pay everything down all my debt entirely in order to be able to be with her in school the next year -- I’m aiming for a January 2010 start date at a school in Paris.

I tell her we just can’t afford it right now, that we need to skip any trips for just the next 12 months and then that’ll be it and we’ll have finally paid it off. She says she’ll pay for it all, we’ll make it work, anything, but I hold fast that we have to just try to get through the next year so I can be living there as soon as possible.

Just before Christmas she says we need to take some time off, that we need to practice really being apart, and she wants to go just two weeks without contact. Willing to give anything a shot if it might help, I agree, though call on Christmas and try again on New Year’s. But she holds to our deal and doesn’t call back until January 2, 2009.

From then on things are different. She’s changed. She’s bitter, but in anger she’s found strength, and it’s clear that while she’s doing better emotionally, she’s going to continue to be resentful of the two years of pain we shared and how I didn’t do more to get over there and be with her sooner. On my end I now feel almost like my old self again, though a someone who’s now losing the person he cares most about in the world.

She starts dating one of coworkers in February 2009, and then one of my friends from Paris -- a girl I was good friends with in college – invites me to come over to Paris to become her first son’s godfather. I agree, and ask my ex to join me there for the weekend. I was considering buying a ring and going over there and trying to resolve all our issues at once with a proposal anyway.

While she was at first shocked at the suggestion that I wanted to just be together again and said she’d have to think about it, she talked it over with her friends who of course all advised her to refuse. I still had this idea that if we could see each other, now in better health and with finally a clear plan on how to be together, we would both feel it and come around. Deluded? Yes. Still hopelessly in love with what we’d had? Absolutely.

While I couldn’t get her to agree to come to Paris, I offered to fly into her city, get dinner with her, stay at a hotel and then take a train to Paris the next day. She agreed. At the end of April I flew into her airport on a Friday while she was at work, and walking to the cab stand she appeared out of nowhere. She walked up and clung to me, saying over and over “I love you. I just have to get out of here. I just have to get out of here.” It was hot out but her bare arms were covered with cuts she'd made on herself.

She took me to her place so I could crash on her spare bed. The new boyfriend was out of town for the week. We got dinner downtown and talked about nothing. She discussed the guy she'd dated briefly the fall before, I mention the girl I saw briefly. We don't discuss her boyfriend. She goes to the bathroom for 30 minutes, comes back and apologizes, saying "I've sorta developed a little bulemia". We go home, and I want to stay up and talk, but she heads outside to leave her boyfriend a voicemail, then comes back in and wants to sleep, and we do.

The next morning she takes me to get the train to Paris, and we head almost silently to the station and I get on. I look outside and see her just standing there looking miserable. I dash outside and pull into my arms, telling her that it’s all for the best, that it’s all going to work out. “I love you”, I say, “More than you’ll ever know”. “I… love you”, she stammers, and I turn to get back on the train.

Two hours into the trip I get a call from her. She’s crying, saying she’s just so sad. That she thought she’d be okay, and was doing fine, but she didn’t realize how hard it would be until I left again. She said she at least would always have all the great memories we had of us being happy together, whatever else happened. The phone breaks off.

I wrote her an email back telling her we had to try to make 2009 the best year it could be. She had the potential for a new, great relationship, we both needed to focus on our work and probably get some serious therapy, but that if at the end of the year I got into school over there and we were both still unhappy, we would stop messing around and stop trying to be together but just do it – and let me spend the rest of my life making the only girl I ever really loved happy. Her reply: "DEAL!! :-) I love this idea." She called me a few times in Paris over the next few days but ran hot and cold, and I flew back to the US a week later.

We didn't talk for a month, then she called and we both almost broke down at hearing each other. But it was just small talk, and we hung up again after half an hour. We talked two more times that summer but nothing important was said.

I got my application in for the one program that started in January 2010 and it looked like it was going well. I had two good interviews but last October I got waitlisted. I heard nothing and finally in December 2009 I learned I was rejected. I forwarded her the rejection email and she called immediately, ecstatic, thinking I'd gotten in, but then realized I hadn't and said "Looks like you just f%#&ed around all fall like you did when we were together." We hung up a short while later.

I sent her a Christmas present that she called to thank me for this past January, and I began applying to seven programs that all started in September 2010. Work has been going well and I've been able to pay down most of the debt over the past year, and a few weeks ago I received notice I'd been chosen to interview at Oxford.

So I booked a flight to the UK, stopping over in Zurich to see her on the way back. I hadn't heard from her in months and realized things were probably pretty good with her new boyfriend, and they'd just had their 1-year anniversary. But I needed to see her to be sure she'd really moved on, and when I called her she agreed we could meet for dinner again.

So I flew over there a week ago, interviewed at Oxford (I think it went okay), then flew to see her. Checked in at the hotel and called her, and she said she really didn't want to come into town, that she had lots of work to do later, and maybe I could just come to her school's bar for a quick beer. I did.

Getting there, we meet up and it's very awkward. She's extremely thin, and I'm pretty sure she'd continued to be bulemic. Her shirt is unwashed with multiple stains. Her pants are ripped. She's obviously been cutting herself again a lot more. And she begins throwing jab after jab at me, at everything I say. She begins listing all her new boyfriends great "qualities", such as "he plays many instruments", "he's part Italian, so you know he's very romantic", "his place is so amazing", and so on. Nothing about how he treats her or how in love they are.

We get a beer and she begins describing this bizarro version of our past where I was only a , and maybe we weren't in love at all but she just liked hanging out with my friends. And then in the middle of the insults she throws out "If we did ever get back together, how can I know you wouldn't just leave me again the next time I'm depressed?"

I had a thousand answers but I tell her that it's because I adore her, and would not be able to go through the pain of losing her again. That the only reason we broke up is because we couldn't be in the same country -- or even know when we could -- and that if we got back together we would be living with each other, and there would be no more fear of being apart. I remind her of our deal.

But she dismisses it, saying she doesn't remember any deal, that I need to get over it and move on, that she only hopes her new b/f doesn't leave her, and that she needed to get back to work. She wouldn't listen to any more attempts at discussion, and she walked me to the bus. We hugged without really touching and said goodbye. When I get back to the hotel she IMs me, saying she's sorry, she's just bitter and bored and hates everyone and only really cares about her cat right now. She rambles for awhile about nothing, and I finally wish her the best and cut it off.

So now I'm in a place where I clearly need to move on, and can. She's a mess right now but it's not my place to help her anymore. Yet I can't help but think she's repressing all her emotions, and it's coming back out in harmful ways. I don't sense that he's treating her well, and that they are really deeply in love, but it's not my choice.

I don't know what to do. I should probably just shut up, do NC, and let her go immediately. But I still love her and want to find a better way to apologize, to let her know I really never wanted to lose her for good.

I don't know anything now except that I've gone on way too long, and appreciate the feedback from anyone who's had the patience to read all this. Many thanks in advance.

Do you two really love your "prospective" careers and required education more than you do each other? Why wouldn't you just sacrifice the extent to which you'd follow your education, and settle with either of the jobs you have now. Why are you both so desperate to advance in your careers at the expense of your HAPPINESS?

I don't understand why you couldn't just choose who's career was most profitable and have that person peruse it while the other settles for something less than what he/she was originally aiming for. Would that be so bad?

I honestly don't know. I don't have any answers but, needless to say, those are the questions I feel compelled to impose.

Would you rather have your careers or each other?

I actually read all of that because I found it interesting. You are correct that you must go NC. She's more than just a little crazy - she's mentally unstable (cutting herself, bulemic.) you know that she's not the best for you and you're not at the right point in your life for a relationship anyway. Wait till you can piece your life back together and live a stable life before you try to bring the drama of a relationship back in. I know you've invested a lot of time in her but it's time to let go. Don't tell her you're letting go or try for one last attempt at closure. Just let go. There's no need for more drama when it tears both of you apart.

Ther4 -- I think she would have given up her career for me, but I wouldn't let her. She loves her work and it would have taken something away from her. But she doesn't make much, and wouldn't have been able to support me if I'd gone there, and I can't get a job in Europe without a better degree.

Reckless -- Thanks for getting through that book, and yeah, I think you're right. I need to just focus on where I'm going and settle that before working on a relationship. I just can't help but still care about her and feel guilty that I may have contributed to her unstability.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is her conviction that I wronged her unforgivably by saying we should break up until we could be in the same country together. Does anyone really think this was unreasonable? To the point where she really *shouldn't* ever forgive me? I never stopped loving her, I just couldn't stand having a girlfriend who I never saw for another 2-3 years.

I don't know what to do. I should probably just shut up, do NC, and let her go immediately. But I still love her and want to find a better way to apologize, to let her know I really never wanted to lose her for good.

A better way to apologize is Not your solution, but going No Contact and reading the stickies in this forum, for insights that will help you move on, is. It may take a long time for you both to deal with your individual issues, so YOU better get started.


I just couldn't stand having a girlfriend who I never saw for another 2-3 years
I completely agree. Now let her go!!

I don't know if that's fair, talaniman. I read all the Stickies, but saw none that applied to what two people should do who are great together but forced to be far apart by circumstances. I did see:

"The Breaker does have the responsibility to prove they are more committed - and again, the breakee has less pressure in this dynamic...so enjoy the role of entitlement for a while - but don't be mean."

I have the chance now to be back over there, and I know that under the wall she's put up she still cares -- but just doesn't really trust me to not leave her again because of advice she's taken from her friends. Even though that situation wouldn't happen again if we weren't in separate countries.

So you're saying given all this, I still shouldn't try to prove or even mention why I believe the relationship would still work before I move on? Seems like a fairly defeatist rationale. Basically to me the advice boils down to "If she's still pissed at you for the wrong reasons, then don't bother explaining yourself, just ignore her forever after."

My advice is to let your emotional dust settle, and give yourself time for clarity, so you can make your decisions based on facts, and not just feelings, as a person who cuts themselves, and has problems with bulemia, seem to have personal issues that have nothing to do with you, and I doubt you can help.

Further, you can only have an opinion as to what's in her best interests, but for sure you know what you want, but her words, and actions say different, and the fact she has a boyfriend makes for you getting something else to do, and leaving her alone.

Even though you clearly don't want to, so you are free to do as you please, and good luck with that. Let us know how your solution works.

Me, I just want you to be able to see clearly, and make good decisions for yourself. And that may take some time, and a lot of thought.

Taking the time to see clearly is fair advice. And I'm obviously not sure that I can help with her problems, though I know she never experienced any of those things when we were together. To me they most likely come from self-esteem issues I helped contribute to and which New BF isn't helping resolve.

Yet her friends are all probably taking the wrong approach and trying to "help" her by convincing her I was a useless jerk all along, which causes her to bury her feelings, and produces things like the cutting, which is usually a reaction to not being able to face one's own emotions clearly.

My solution right now is to write a handwritten letter clearly stating my perspective and reasons for what happened, taking the blame whether I believe it's due and otherwise wishing her the best of luck. After sending that I plan to maintain NC.

Does anyone see a potential problem with this approach? No, it won't fix anything probably, but at least it'll leave her knowing clearly where I'm coming from, which I may have been too emotional in the past to state clearly.

I'm completely open to feedback, though, and if this kind of final letter is a bad idea somehow then I can definitely reconsider. I'll give it a few weeks before sending to let it settle in my head.

My advice is to let your emotional dust settle, and give yourself time for clarity.

Yeah, you know, after thinking this through I've concluded that you're right, and it's best just to leave it and move on. There's nothing to be gained from "one last contact". I hate that someone who once meant so much has been led so far from the truth by her friends and her own inner voice, but I can't fix that and it's not my problem now.

I guess I'm pretty good. Time to get me in stellar condition. Stellar Condition Me is pretty freaking great from what I recall, though not sure, it's been awhile. :rolleyes:

Took a while to get through it, but it really is a sad story. I have no idea how you could break up and have a plan to get back together one day. It would kill me to know someone I love so much is just passing time dating other people.

She sounds like she really needs to seek emotional help from a professional. Bulemia is a really really serious problem. No such thing as a "little bulemia". The problems she has are too involved for you to help with, so it is probably best that you go with out contact, just in case your contact is aiding in the problem.

Your problem is unique because you aren't doing no contact to be spitful, or with any anger - you love her and that is clear as day - sometimes when you love someone - you have to let them go because it is what is best for them. No contact is the way to go.

I think this entire relationship (ups and downs included) was a huge lesson for you, to help you find out what you can and cannot endure in a relationship. You'll find another person that you can have a more normal and healthy relationship with sooner or later - Everythign happens for a reason.

Go get your stellar on!

Thanks, bella... that helps a lot. I've still been going back and forth on whether I should send her "one last letter" to summarize that I never left her because I didn't care for her or want to be with her, but only because of the separate countries with no end in sight. Yet like you say, my contact may just be making her worse, so it's probably better to just let it go.

Funny choice: soothe someone's ego by letting them know you never ditched them but rile up their emotions, or soothe their emotions by ignoring them completely but leave their ego scarred. There's no "both".

Also, you need to think about your motives behind sending that letter. If she doesn't respond- how will that make you feel. If she responds angrily, how will that make you feel? If she is upset - and wants you back - is that going to make you feel better?

None of those actions are going to give you what you are hoping for which is a nother chance at what you had in the beginning. You can't ever make it the same again.

Got to let life run its course and move on. You never know what's in store for you in the future, and if you keep hanging on to memories of her you might miss out on something terrific.

Also, you need to think about your motives behind sending that letter. If she doesn't respond- how will that make you feel. If she responds angrily, how will that make you feel? If she is upset - and wants you back - is that going to make you feel better?

I wasn't thinking about sending the letter to try to win her back or even get a response. Right now there wouldn't be one. If I sent it at all (which I guess I won't), it'd be just with the hope that it'd help ease the pain she seems to be feeling now that I dumped her because I didn't want to be with a girl like her, even though it was clear at the time that I only did it because the distance was too long and there was no solution in sight. She's now pining with worry that her new boyfriend will also dump her, even though they don't have the distance issue.

I wanted to send something that would help her confidence, to hopefully get her on a steadier keel so she can feel better about what she has now. But me trying to help with her new relationship is both unnecessary and a little messed up, I guess, so no, I won't do it.