To start this out.. I just wanted to say bear with me. My thoughts tend to jump from point to point. There's much in my head/heart and I'm not known for any writing prowess.
The Short Version:
My G/F of 4 years recently left me, and I'm devastated.
The Detailed Version:
My best friend for the past decade, the love of my life for the last four years, told me nearly two weeks ago that I had slowly killed her love over the past year.
I'm 26, she's 24. We are both college grads with crappy jobs (Really Crappy). During the first three years of our relationship, we were both really happy. We both settled down from partying and were starting a new life in a nice apartment. She wanted marraige for a long time. I wasn't ready for that until recently. To my knowledge, neither of us has ever cheated on each other. It truly was, perfection in my eyes.
In the fourth year, we decided to move in togther. Money was semi-tight so I took up a hobby that I've come to despise today. I played World of Warcraft. We both did. It was THE hobby, as it only cost us $30 per month. One of the problems was our play style differed. She played casually, and I was into hard-core raiding. I wanted to be the best.. and in my negligence, I didn't realise that I spent a better part of that year completely immersed to the point that I didn't even spend much time with the one I loved. I don't blame the game, I blame myself. We also worked different hours. She typically worked first shift, I worked Second. So that didn't help any.
I made a little more money than her.. but thats just luck of the draw as her grades and (probably) general intelligence were/are higher than my own. As it stood, I had no problem paying for every bill that arrived including her car payment.
Money was always an issue. She wanted to go to Grad School badly. I could never afford to send her at the moment, so I asked her to wait until we could afford it. This is probably a fine time to mention she has a child, an 8 year old.
Roughly two months ago, I realised that I was spending far too much time immersed in my hobby, so I eased back on it to a great extent. I started trying to taker her out and spend time with her. Much to my dismay, I was greeted with the cold shoulder. For two months, I tried daily to make our lives like they used to be. Then two weeks ago, I come home and ask her if we can talk, I wanted to fix that rift that I had put between us. She informs me it's too late and she's leaving.
Now I'm new to this kind of thing, I've been in love once in my life, and it's to this person. I never knew that she was so unhappy over the past year that she would choose to leave. This is perhaps due to my own sense of being oblivious.
She says she wants a new life, and that I slowly killed her love for me. I would give my own life for hers. She gives me a list of things I did to slowly kill her love. So I take this to memory and I've become a new person. I'll always make mistakes, but I'll do my best not to make the same ones ever again.
There's probably enough in my heart to write a dissertation, but I'm probably boring any potential readers enough. All I know is that the person I love more than anything else in the world, doesn't love me anymore, and I don't know what to do. I've read and been told to move on, and to not give up. She's still in our apartment and I'm staying with family because it hurts too much to be there. She's leaving the state to go live with her mother but I told her she's got free reign of the apartment for however long she needs it.
I'm not sure what type of response I'm looking for here. I suppose any response is good response. Thanks to any and all who took the time to read this. I never even knew this place existed. Thanks everyone.
-Ath
(and I did my best to avoid a Wall-of-Text)