Dear Dr. Love,One week ago my girlfriend of two years abruptly ended our relationship. I didn’t see it coming at all. Everything was going excellent in our relationship, as it had been for the past two years. Her reason for ending our relationship was that she didn’t feel the same way about me anymore. She said that it wasn’t me, but her and that she still wanted to be really close friends. Furthermore, she said she may feel differently a month from now, or maybe 3 months, and that we may go out again.I am madly, insanely in love with her. Everything about her makes me fall deeper in love with her. I dream about her every night and of the 16 hours a day I am awake, I think about her 15 and a half of those hours. She is constantly on my mind and I really, really, really want her back. She attends the same university as me and I she her almost everyday of the week. We still talk and things aren’t that akward, but I want her back. Sometimes I feel that she wants me back and other times she doesn’t pay much attention to me.For example, last friday and saturday night she was hugging me and paying a lot of attention to me. And on saturday night I bought her dinner and when I dropped her off at home, later that night, she gave me a passionate hug in which she squeezed me and I squeezed her (for about 20 seconds). It was not just a friendly hug. This happended twice that night! She says she still cares for me and loves me as a friend.Dr. Love, this ordeal is tearing me apart and I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to give her space and not calling her on the phone as much and it seems to help (One night she even called me out of the blue). Nevertheless, I really need her back because I feel empty and incomplete without her. I am planning on asking her out again in a month (depending on how things go). I truly am madly in love with this special woman.Please Dr. Love help me by giving me your advice on what to do and how to get her back because I’ve decided I can’t live without her.Sincerely, Madly In Love
I understand how much you are suffering. You have lost someone that you love, which is so painful. When a loved one is ill and eventually dies, at least one has a chance to prepare and say goodbye. Your girlfriend left you without warning. It’s as though she died suddenly, only she didn’t. She is still alive which leaves you hoping. What’s more, she has encouraged you to hang on to your hope by telling you that maybe she’ll come back to you.Had she simply ended it, without any hope of a future, it would have be easier for you to grieve and move on. I have to wonder if she really means that you may get back together or if she simply told you that there was a chance that she would come back to you in order to let you down easily. Perhaps she thought that this was a kinder way to break up.If she has no intention of getting back with you, she needs to say so. You need to find out the truth of her intentions. If she really means that there is a chance that she might get back with you, then she needs to begin letting you in on her inner thoughts and feelings. She needs to tell you why the relationship went sour for her, why her feelings changed, and how she thinks time will make her want to return to you, etc.If she isn’t willing to talk with you about her inner process, then you are really out in the cold and there is no relationship and no hope. To wait around and hope that someone who isn’t sharing with you will return to you feels like pure torture. If she is willing to to clue you in on her inner process, then you have a chance to win her back by being responsive to whatever it is that she says wasn’t working for her in the relationship. If she maintains that the reason for the break up is due to her own issues and that moreover a part of her truly wants to return to you, tell her that she shouldn’t be so quick to end the relationship.Mixed feelings are normal. All of us have moments when we want to hit the road. All of us are afraid of intimacy, dependency on another, afraid to lose a beloved, and so on. If these are the reasons for her mixed feelings, then leaving you isn’t the answer.Breaking up is to run from the human condition. She can run but she can’t hid. These feelings will rise up whenever she gets close to another person. If she admits to having these fears, she should enter therapy and work these issues out.Meanwhile, if it is true that the problems are hers and not relationship based, you will be forced to accept one of the hardest lessons in life: that there are many things you can’t control or change, one of them being another person. I hope that she starts talking and is willing to stay in connection with you while she works on the relationship and/or herself.