It’s weird to think that you can go from a happy relationship to restarting the foundation and building back up. We haven’t broken up but for him, he needs to think that we are. The issue was that he didn’t know whether he genuinely wanted to do something or because he wanted it because I wanted it also. Not exactly sure what that means. I would think the easy answer is whether you genuinely enjoy doing it. But apparently that’s not enough. Sometimes likes and wants mesh together in a relationship anyways. You learn more about something, become interested in it, and learn to like something.

I do agree that we never really had a solid foundation. We went from friends kept at a certain distance, not sharing much, because of the interference of our mutual attraction in our current relationships to, suddenly becoming a couple mad in love. We kind of skipped the whole dating phase and went straight to being a couple. We went from not sharing much at all to sharing everything, and it’s a bit like culture shock.

Hopefully this is for the best and hopefully he does begin to fully love me again. “I do love you, but not at a boyfriend level.” I’m not going to lie, that hurt a bit. We were so happy and in love just a few weeks ago on vacation.

Hopefully we both come out of this together and stronger than before.

I do honestly understand that he has things he needs to work on himself and he has a lot of past traumas and emotions to process, which can suddenly sneak up on you. With PTSD, I can definitely understand that. It frequently happens out of nowhere and puts you in an identity crisis spiral. It takes time to process the emotions and thoughts to regain a sense of who you are.

Third times the charm?