Hi Meredith,

I wanted to write because I’m at an especially low and weird point in my life after a breakup.

I’m a 34-year-old guy, and I’d describe myself as someone who has a good, stable life. I take care of myself physically and mentally, I have a solid career, a great group of friends, and good hobbies (music). Also, I come from a very loving family who raised me to be kind, generous, and empathetic. That said, I grew up in a very small town where the values my family and I had were quite different from those of my peers and their families. As a result, I felt like an outsider – a feeling I still have today, even though it’s no longer true. Still, as a result of my past, I’ve always been anxious and shy when it comes to socialization, and I’ve had to work hard as an adult to overcome that.

It hasn’t exactly made things easy in the romance department, and despite having three serious relationships so far, finding and maintaining romantic relationships with women I feel connected and attracted to feels impossibly challenging and rare. I can lead a happy life while single, but after a somewhat recent breakup, I’m struggling to get my self-worth, confidence, and happiness back up to where it used to be. After going through an easier breakup at the beginning of the pandemic, I met this new woman online several months later, winter of 2020, and we connected right off the bat. To date, I’ve never felt more connected on all levels to a woman, so I felt like I hit the jackpot. We had some distance between us, and I was working remotely, so the relationship just took off. Not long after we started dating, I would visit for several days (sometimes over a week), living in her house with her. The first few months were bliss, and she was openly enthusiastic and as interested as me.

Then things felt like they began to change, and not in the “just the end of the honeymoon phase” kind of way. Slowly, she began to subtly criticize things about me, and make sarcastic remarks and “jokes” to me. What confused me is that intermittently she would express how much she loved me and how lucky she was to have found me. Additionally, she included me in close family events. Because of the intermittency of her affection and my insecurities, I began prioritizing her and the relationship for fear of losing her. But the more I prioritized her, the worse her behavior would get. Toward the end, it almost seemed like she was doing things to get me to break up with her. In the very end she told me she had feelings for a current friend. Surprisingly, she wanted to hold on to our relationship. Needless to say, that was it.

Anyway, it’s now been several months, and I still feel sad, angry, and confused on a daily basis. Even worse, my confidence and self-esteem are at an all-time low, so meeting new people feels impossible. It feels especially hard being in my mid-30s because at this point I have much less time and energy to go out and do things where I might meet new people. I know this is super long (sorry). What advice do you have for someone like me?

– Dazed and Confused in the Burbs