I'm 20, and my ex is 22 and he broke up with me a few weeks ago.

My previous relationship had been a long, abusive one that took me a lot of time to talk myself into leaving for good. This one, however, was nothing like it. He was the sweetest, most caring guy I ever knew. We always understood each other, never had awkward moments, always found things to talk about, and would make time to see each other on weekends when we weren't too busy with school. Most of the time we were in sync about things. We occasionally disagreed but never got into big arguments.

When he broke up with me, he told me he felt like he needed time to work on himself. He was dissatisfied with himself personally and needed time to work on himself. It wasn't until towards the end of the night that he said that besides feeling stressed out, he also felt like he lost his feelings for me.

In talking more about each other after breaking up, we found out that we bad both been depressed and unsatisfied about ourselves for a long time. We think that these are things that we couldn't easily sit down and talk about because both of us are the types who don't like to talk to other people about how depressed we're feeling.

I asked him how long ago he started to lose feelings, and he said it happened when I started to become agitated by him. He was with me during a series of stressful situations a few weeks before where I wanted him to stop talking for just a few minutes until I could get things done, but he wouldn't stop (being the goofy person he is) so I ended up speaking to him with an agitated tone. However, when I was done being agitated, I would feel so horrible about myself.

Although both of us have friends, we weren't especially close with any of them. We found a lot of comfort in talking to each other about everything. It was as if we were both lovers and best friends during the relationship, and he still wants to stay best friends because he wanted to keep the system of respect, trust, and support between us because other than each other, we have very few people who we trust enough to lean on for support.

I still love him and want to be with him. He tells me he still loves me and cares about me, but not in such a way that he would want to be in a relationship with me right now. We want to keep in contact and hang out with each other in the future and stay close, and he even brought up the idea of being “friends with benefits” because he doesn't want to date seriously anymore until after he is done focusing on school. The friends with benefits idea confuses me a bit, because as of now we are both still attracted to each other's personalities, and we are still attracted to each other physically.

Because of these two things, I feel that if we were to be best friends and friends with benefits, it would almost be the same as getting back together, except we're not. If that's so, then could he really have lost feelings for me like he said, or was it made unclear to him because of the stress and depression that both of us had been going through?

Move on and leave your ex in your rearview, my ex did the same thing to me. She broke up with me and gave me the time apart let's be friend's speech and I went for it because I loved her so much and she knew this. For 2 months it killed me not being in a relationship with her but she still wanted me around playing the boyfriend roll. He is just wants you on the back burner when the grass isn't green on the other side. Move on with you life, don't talk to you ex no matter what, stay way from your ex. You don't need an in your life because life itself is to short for ing games.

Exes can never be friends when one is still stuck on the other. Friends with benefits may be great for him but will torture you to death. Since a relationship with you is no longer his wish, leave him alone and find your own thing to do because you will just be an option for him to fall back on when he has nothing better going on.

No need to be in that position at all.

So true and I agree with you 100%