He blamed me, but really he just wanted to be a bachelor

My ex and I dated for ten years. We had our own little world and language basically. Nobody has ever cared about me more than he did. Well, other than my family. He adored me and practically worshipped the ground I walked on for so long. It has been a year since the break up, but I am having a particularly hard time this week.

I went through a traumatic experience a year or so before we broke up, and things were never quite the same between us. I was slightly dissociated at times/not as carefree as I used to be, but I still have so many videos on my phone that remind me we were having good times and still loved one another. He was struggling at work with stress during this time. We were both struggling with getting our careers off the ground.

He broke up with me when I asked him when he would be home from hanging out with his buddies (he was becoming obsessed with hanging out with his friends) to help me clean up our apartment before my family came over. He got home and told me that he wanted to break up and that was the last straw. I was never a bossy girl friend, but there were times when I expected him to be a grown up. He didn’t want that. He is 34 and all he wants to do is play video games, drink expensive alcohol and hang out with his friends. He is part of a cool group of people now, so it’s getting to his head.

He told me that he didn’t want to deal with his stresses at work only to come home to hear about mine. He didn’t want to solve any more problems after work. This was not the same person I knew. He said that he lived with too much pressure growing up and now he just wanted to have peace in his life. I can say that I wasn’t in the best space in life at the time, but I wasn’t a black hole or anything. I was struggling and lost part of myself while I was recovering from the traumatic incident in my life. He said he just wanted to find peace, hang out with his friends, and focus on himself. He tends to quit things that challenge him I’ve noticed. He takes the easy way out!

Oddly enough, TWO MONTHS BEFORE we broke up, he told me that he knew we were both struggling and that he wouldn’t want to attempt life and growth with anybody else, just me. And that we would be successful together.

Anyway, I have done so many things to better my life. And I am almost certain he knows, because his friends and family follow me on social media and have seen my career accomplishments since the breakup. I cannot believe I am doing this without sharing it with him. It feels awful to finally achieve what I was working so hard for while we dated, only to not have him to share it with. I’ve been crying so much this week.

How could he do this? Why was I so easy to dump off. He deleted me from all social media when we broke up, like I was a plague or something. It feels like I got rejected by a family member and that I am defective in his eyes. He said that he was devastated by his decision to break up, and that talking to me made his chest tight and his heart race. He said we can’t ever talk again. The last time I saw him, he couldn’t look me in the eye. He was nervous, which was the first time I had ever seen him nervous in ten years. I still, after a year, cannot wrap my head around this. I need help processing it all.