Is there still hope?

[Penraab2]

Hey everyone, this is my first post and i apologize for the length but i really need some honest advice. 

Me (23) and my (ex) girlfriend (22) had been together for 2 years and 4 months with the last 12 months being extremely long distance due to work and grad school. We saw each other every month during the long distance and everything was going fantastic. We had made it through some major ups and downs and our love for each other always showed through and while we had some issues come up related to her depression it never got in the way of us. We talked about not just marriage and kids, but how many kids and what to name them. We didnt just talk about about a future together but were actively planning for it and when i visited in early march, we made the final decision ( which had been the plan all along) that once i graduated i would move across the country so thag long distance would be over and we could be together. She wanted a promise that marriage was in the near future (12months) and i felt fully comfortable giving that promise. 

Then due to Covid, we continued to plan and picked out an apartment together and got furniture and all of that but between the beginning of march and the beginning of July we never saw each other in person and obviously this left us both feeling a sort of distance between us but i at least was confident that was only due to the long distance which was ending. On July 4th i arrived with my moving van and we moved in together with the help of her family and while i could tell something was bothering her i didnt push her. That week she told me she was going to help a friend and stay with them for a day and then really went and stayed with her mom. And when she came back she told me that her depression had come back really bad the last couple of months and that she needed some time alone to go figure things out and so she was moving back out to be with her mom. I handled this poorly and probably pushed her to not give up on us too much but nevertheless she moved out and had two weeks with barely a text conversation between us and certainly no phone calls or in person meet ups. 2 weeks after she asked for some space (last saturday), i reached out to see how she was doing and if there was anything i could do to help her and she responded by breaking up with me saying that our relationship was not helping her mental state and while she still loves me and i did nothing wrong, i needed to let her go. 

We ended up meeting in person and she continued to talk about how much she cares about me and how she knows i will be fine because i am the best guy she knows and we were happy together but something inside of her has changed and she knows it wont change back so i need to let her go. And that i cant be the one to be there for her during her depression because i had my chance and didnt take it.

On top of this i found out that 3 of her close male friends had all asked her out within a few days of me and her having problems and so she was dealing with that as well as the depression and what was happening or not happening between me and her.

There are a lot of other details and i am happy to go into them in the comments, but the breakup feels so sudden because as recently as mid June we were talking about how we were ready for kids together and i had no idea that she was this unhappy until she told me. I know that all of the things she said were wrong with the realationship can be fixed if she just gives me a chance and i know that we could have been happy together for life if we had just made it through the end of the long distance phase. 

 

I guess i just cant help but feel that this bout of depression she is in explains the 180 degree turn she made from she would wait for me forever if she had to, to now the relationship is not only on the rocks but officially over. Am i crazy for still thinking there is a chance? For holding out hope? I know either way i need to give her space to figure out things, but I dont want to lose her if there is a chance she is pushing me away because of the depression or to protect me because i really feel like this girl is the one for me and if i give up on it now and find out that i could have saved us i will never forgive myself.

Thoughts? Advice? Anything?

Tldr: long distance ends and girlfriend says she is dealing with bad depressive episode and we are over. Never got chance to work things out and cant give up if there is still a chance.

[d0nnivain]

I'm so sorry she sprung this on you.  Her depression may be a part of it.  Covid most likely made everything worse.  

I think she liked the romance of your relationship & all the dreams but once you took meaningful steps to make them a reality, the depth of those consequences scared her & she freaked.  Having other men ask her out probably reinforced the scary idea that she was on the way to forsaking all others.  You can't fix this but you may be able to be reassuring.   Try sending her flowers with a short note saying you are OK with taking things slow, not living together but still dating.  Give that a day or two then call her & ask her out to dinner,  

[schlumpy]

You may feel she is the one but when they tell you what a great guy you are it's because they've lost interest romantically. Pursue to your hearts content but I don't think you will be able to re-establish what you thought you had. She told you. "something has changed inside of me and it won't go back."

Seems pretty clear to me. Why don't you see it?

It's time for no contact and to push her out of your mind.

[DarrenB]

Lockdown was just shy of over 3-4 months depending on where you're located, and in this time a lot of people were suppressed to a lot of negative thoughts and worry about what the future may hold. It would have definitely had more affect on someone if they had pre-existing medical conditions (in this instance depression).

Often when you're unsure of what to do, you tend to resort to making irrational decisions and in honesty it sounds as though she sold you a dream with the future planning together.

It's a crappy situation to be in but you cannot move forward with the intent that you'll get back together. I also wouldn't recommend waiting and moping around for her to potentially come back because you'll only cause yourself more harm in the long run

[Ladiixmk]

I personally agree with everyone else in this thread, especially as a female going through something similar as well. I say go no contact with her. If she wants to restart the relationship, she will come back. But based off of what she said here, she has already made up her mind.