2 and a half year relationship ending (long post/vent)

[timble9]

Hi everyone, apologies for the very long post in advance, I'm writing this as a way to vent my thoughts/feelings and to receive some insight, if you have time to read through it all it would be appreciated but I will include a TLDR. The last few paragraphs will have more detail about my current thoughts.

Backstory 

3 years ago I walked into a new university class and my attention was instantly drawn to this girl. We had some group work together and would chat, but she was in a relationship so I never tried to take it further. Fast forward a year and we started a new research unit and I overheard that she was now single and ended up becoming research partners for the year. We discovered that we shared a lot of similar interests, played the same sports and started playing these sports together.  I was 25 at the time, and was blown away by the fact that she was 28 - she looked like she was 18, very fit and healthy, as was I. I had a few "prospects" at the time (girls I knew who were interested in me) but the first time I went on a real date with her, none of the other girls mattered and she became my only interest. I would consider this my first "real" and serious relationship. 

The first issue arose around month 3. Now I said I would consider this my first "serious" relationship but I had one a few years ago where I got very clingy, told her I loved her after a few months, she told me she loved me as well and broke up with me the next day and ended up breaking my heart. This made me fearful of wearing my heart on my sleeve and made me adopt the mindset that actions spoke much louder than words. My now girlfriend told me she loved me during sex and I froze. She got very upset and I explained to her my experience on the "love" word and felt like my actions demonstrated my feelings much more and my previous experience with "love" and she understood. In retrospect I also don't think I was "quite there" yet as I had uncertainty about our future. We both studied in fields where a graduate job would most likely send you to a rural location for 6-12 months and we had both agreed in conversation that long distance relationships don't work, so I guess this made me hesitant to allow myself to fully commit to her.

Anyway the next year and a half were great. We got through the rest of university together, supporting one another all the way and graduated in September 2019. She was lucky enough to get a graduate casual job in our city in January and I was working at a supermarket part-time still. Fast forward to April,  we had stopped playing sports together as I was injured and I was becoming a bit cynical about having not found employment yet. I ended up getting a job offer in April, but turned it down as it would force me to move 750km away from her, meanwhile she was still working at her job at a hospital. During COVID she quit her work as she was afraid of her parents catching it and being elderly. As I was working with the public, she also wanted to avoid seeing me for the same reason, which I respected. We didn't see each other for about 6 weeks, but were calling each other every day. I noticed towards the end of the 6 weeks that she had "changed" and was less interested in talking/more distant. When we did finally meet up, she hit me with the dreaded "we need to talk". There was much to be said, but basically she said the time during isolation allowed her to reflect on our relationship and the fact that ever since she told me she loved me, she has resented the fact that I did not reciprocate her feelings and she did not see the relationship going further. After having a week apart, we talked again and I let her know that I did truly love her and wanted it to work it out and we decided to stay together. The "condition" being that I needed to appreciate her need for words other than just actions and to make an effort to let her know what she means to me.

The first 1-2 months after this were great and things were back to normal. Then I was very fortunate to get a full-time casual position working in a hospital in the same city as well. Due to issues with staffing, as a graduate with less than 6 weeks experience (and having had this experience 12 months ago) I was put into a senior role in one of the busiest wards in the hospital. I was frequently receiving critical feedback from my superiors, was working from 6am to 7-8pm 5 days a week and having to study in my "downtime" to keep my head above the water. Shortly after, my partner had started working full time as well. It's worth noting at this point we were both still living at home with plans to move out shortly. I was becoming so mentally exhausted that I began to neglect my friends, my family and my health, but still tried to make time for her. Although, when I did go to her house, I would shortly crash and fall asleep. This went on for about 4 months and during this time we did not have sex at all. I flagged it with her early on and she said she didn't know why, she just didn't feel like having sex. The issue was just kind of swept under the rug, her rationale was that she didn't "feel it", but things continued on anyway.

Fast forward to last month and it was her 30th birthday, I took her out for dinner at a nice restaurant but I didn't end up staying the night as I had to go to a funeral early the next morning. A week later, we have a "talk" again. She states that she is concerned that our relationship is not progressing - she has an urgency to move out of home and needs to be with someone who wants a mature relationship since she was now 30. I explain to her that I really want to move out as well, but given our current work situation (no guaranteed employment in the new year) and the current state of the rental market it's not a logical decision right now. Coupled with my continued stress at work, I don't think I would be able to manage a moving out urgently. However, we agreed that it is what we needed to do to ensure that our relationship was progressing and we started to look at places. 

Now last week, she spent the weekend with friends which was fine by me, I was just a bit saddened that she didn't make an effort try to find some time to catch up with me as well. This had happened a few times in the last few months - where we would go 2 weeks without seeing each other but still talk every day and it would upset me, but I would let her know I was missing her and thinking about her. I brought this up with her and she assured me that things were fine, but when I mentioned that she seemed like she didn't really care much for me anymore, she initiated yet another "talk". She basically said that the fact that I don't have the same urgency to move out as she does, that I'm not willing to willingly put myself in a bad financial situation for love made her feel like she doesn't even want to move out with me anymore. That she needs someone who has a "solution orientated mindset", a mature relationship, that being 30 she didn't have the time to waste and saw me as more of a friend and she still resents me for not reciprocating her love early on. I said I wasn't going to try and convince her to stay with me and work through it for the 3rd time in 6 months and it ended. 

Thoughts
Thank you for reading the back story if you have gotten this far. I'm in a bit of a rut at the moment. Based on what she has told me the relationship seems doomed. But I'm just deeply saddened as we are so similar in our likes/interests, outlooks on life, come from great families (her parents are like my second parents), have helped eachother get through so much, there is so much we haven't yet done together and this has been a really s***ty year for our relationship given all the circumstantial outside influences i.e. COVID, starting full time work. I can't help but feel that if we nut it out, have open communication and work at it then things can work.

I understand that after we had the initial discussion post-covid, she really needed me to step up so to speak and make more effort to show her passion/love and that I truly wanted to be with her. Initially I was doing this and she/I were both happy again, but once I started working full-time, I really struggled to keep any aspect of my life other than work under control. We discussed this last month and agreed that we needed to make an effort to spend more alone time together, but it just never really happened. I continued to be very busy at work, but in retrospect I feel like I was fearful of the "ultimatum" that she had given me - we move out together within the next month or there is no point in continuing the relationship. I had accepted that this was a need for the relationship to continue, but in the back of my mind I also thought - what if next year I am given another ultimatum, but this time with having kids? I do want to have kids, but do not see myself having them anytime soon. As such, I felt like I may have distanced myself a bit too much and pushed her away. I also felt like I was making a lot of the effort to be together. It was me who was always driving 45 minutes to her house just to be with her, never the other way around. So I started to take a step back and hope she would make an effort to reach out to me to make plans or at least let me know she missed me when we hadn't seen each other for a while...

At the same time, I think the lack of intimacy was eating at me. I am constantly surrounded by other women at work and was wondering what the grass would look like on the other side. I would never in a million years  would have acted on it, but the thoughts were there and maybe I unconsciously was detaching myself from her and pushing her away and she picked up on this? Every time I would always remind myself how lucky I am to have found someone who is on the same wavelength as me and the thoughts would cease. I'm at the point where I do want to work it out with her as I could picture us having a future togethee, but understand I won't die if we don't work it out. I feel guilty about neglecting her/not showing her that I loved her enough...but I guess I'm inexperienced with relationships and didn't know I was doing this until it was too late. 

Thanks for reading if you did, I'll try to provide more context if needed.