Confusing reasons for a trial separation. Would like some input.

Hey everyone, I need a place to vent and to maybe get some advice. This is going to be a very long read with a lot of fine print details, I just to know if I am doing the right thing handling this situation the way that I am. I hope that anyone who reads this will take the time to go through it all because there is a lot to all of this. There will be a TLDR posted at the bottom.

My girlfriend (24F) and I (31M) or ex or whatever we are, I don’t really know at this point, are currently going through a ***second*** trial separation at her request under the premise of speaking again in a few months around the holidays to see if things can be worked out.

This is all such a big slap in the face for me I feel so gutted and to an extent betrayed, we’ve never had a bad relationship, in the years we’ve been together we’ve only seemingly grown closer with one another, we are/were each others best friends as well as lovers and this is stuff she has always sincerely repeated to me as well, I know this sounds lame but it really did seem like a fairy tale relationship, of course we had arguments here and there, little tiff’s and a couple of decent blowups over the past 5 years but we’ve never been overly ugly to each other or said or done anything that couldn’t be taken back even at our worst, it didn’t happen often, but when we did argue it was usually just us bickering over normal inconsequential couple things like traffic or some kind of misunderstanding and we pretty much always made up in the same day, hell within the hour 90% of the time.

***(A brief history of us and the first separation)***

When we first met she lived about a half hour away from me and we would make regular trips to visit each other multiple times a week as we dated. Given that she’s just under 7 years younger than I, she was about start college while I was already in the workforce, she wound up getting accepted to a prolific university that was about 10 hours away from where we lived. At the time this happened we had been dating for roughly a year and we had big sit down about it in which we discussed possible options of separating or staying together.

We decided to make a go of it long distance, we were in love and we both knew it, so the deal was I would visit her as regularly as possible and she would come home every chance she got to see me and we would talk and facetime essentially daily, well, we honestly stalled right out of the gate and we wound up separating (again at her request) for about two weeks just as she was starting her first semester of college, reasoning being so she could experience true freedom away from home for the first time in her life, during which she asked for minimal communication between us, I respected her wishes and stepped back to basically zero contact even though it killed me, but almost daily she would text me a sad song or send me a text about how she was thinking about me and eventually about a week and a half in she sends me a message about how she made a colossal mistake separating from me and needed to work it out with me as soon as she could get home, in any case I was apprehensive, as I was as heartbroken then as I am now but I told her I was open to the idea.

Long story short we worked things out and the time in-between then and now has been pretty amazing. I regularly visited her at University, we started planning a future together, we even got engaged, we took a few out of state trips together for recreation and made some beautiful memories together, our families grew to love us and the dynamic we brought to each others life, for awhile there, life was really looking sweet for us.

***(The beginning of the second separation)***

Fast forward a few years through all the good stuff. The first sign of trouble that I can recollect was in late 2021. She had expressed to me that she was beginning to wonder what it would be like to be single, her initial reasoning for this was a television show she was watching that was loosely based around the life a free spirited single woman, she seemed to double back on this idea though, citing that it was a silly thought and she was happier than ever with what we shared. After a few talks about it, it eventually blew over and then it was months of radio silence on the subject ***”Months in which she was still stewing but not communicating with me about it”*** I later learned, we just continued on as normal.

In the coming months she helped me prepare for going back to school myself while also job hunting for something in her field of study. Well, mid Q1 2022 she lands a job…Six hours away from where we live, at this point I pretty much have everything set for summer classes and she’s going to have to move a ways off at the end of July, Seeing the conundrum here, I offered to drop summer classes in favor of moving in with her and starting up in the fall at the local community collage in the area she was moving to, but this was no good, she insisted that I stay in the summer program but also at times made me feel guilty ***”not sure if intentionally or not”*** because I ***”wasn’t going to be there with her”***, it made absolutely zero sense. Anyway, we had this back and fourth a few times, each time ending the same way, “I’ll just go with you, I’ll work a part time job and go school” – ***”No no, just stay in your summer classes and we’ll talk about moving in together at the end of the year, but I’m going to be so lonely without you there”.***

We’ll the time comes for her to move, we do it over a weekend, we rent a trailer from U-Haul and as every time before when she’d move back or to school for summer/school year we loaded up my truck and drove hours away to some new destination. Initially things went we’ll enough, her father tagged along on the moving trip and helped us get her settled into the new apartment and we stayed the rest of the weekend there. Upon leaving I promised to come visit ASAP and asked her how she felt about the direction things were going with her and I, to which she explained that she felt good, she felt like the future was bright and she could see wonderful things for us and even specifically mentioned taking a trip together in the foreseeable future.

Okay, great. I head home and a week later I miss her a lot so I make plans to go back and spend some time with her ***”2 weeks this time as I was in between summer and fall classes at this point”***. It started off kind of badly, we had a fairly heated conversation on about third day of me being there about how she thought a trial separation was good for us despite what she had told me only a week before. I didn’t cry, I didn’t beg or plead or yell, but I was hurt and irritated because of this whole hot and cold on again off again routine, we discussed it and decided not to separate and the next two weeks were great, it was almost like we were just living together.

***(The Second Separation)***

The time comes for me to leave, I pack up and ask her again about if she wants me to move in now, again I get ***”Let’s wait until the holidays”.*** Aright. So I come back home, after about a week of me being home literally like three days before I start my fall semester classes she call’s me and tells me pretty flatly that she want’s to have a trial separation. I pretty much accept that this just has to happen at this point, again I don’t argue, I don’t fight I don’t beg or plea, I simply just say if that’s what you want to do then we’ll do it, I however am not in favor of this. We work out some of the logistics of this separation such as a time to talk again and all of that and then hang up. The next day, the very next day, I’m pretty depressed and I’m not keeping my phone near me because I just kind of want to sulk, well I check it and I see about five missed text messages from her that were from about an hour before and happened over the span of about 15 minutes that a essentially go like this…

***- I miss you***

***- Your silence speaks volumes***

***- I guess getting married and all of that was just a lie we told ourselves***

***- This trial separation is for the best.***

So I message her back, explain why I didn’t respond promptly, she seems reasonably understanding and admits to letting her emotions get the better of her. A few days go by, with her and I having minimal contact. I get invited out by someone who is fairly toxic in my life ***”my girl is aware of him and does not like him”***. Anyway, he and I go out drinking, because fuck it right? And in the middle of us drinking, I get a phone call from her, just angry…It was honestly the nastiest she’s ever been to me, she is borderline yelling at me and telling me that this just isn’t working and we just need to break up! It’s over! Well, bad timing because I’m already a little drunk, but somehow I managed to hold about half my composure and told her through tears, that’s fine! If that’s what you want then just do it! But at least give me an explanation! At the very least you owe that to me!

Now, I was fairly tipsy so I don’t remember verbatim what she said, but it was something about me not moving there with her and I knew it was pointless to fight that battle as I had already been trying for months prior. Anyway, that ends in total disaster and I’m completely distraught not only because my once beautiful 5 year relationship seemingly just ended but ended in such a ugly terrible way, the bartender having witnessed this event take place starts giving me free shots, Mr. toxic tells me to turn my phone off and forget it all for now, stupidly I follow his advice. We wind up at another bar an hour or so later when I decide to turn my phone back on as soon as I turn my phone back on it’s ringing, I answer it and of course it’s her, but now the liquor has really set in on me, my heart is broken to a million pieces and I’m drunk so before she can really say much of anything other than “How dare you turn your phone off right now! I know you’re out with that asshole!” I start yelling at her about how she hasn’t considered my feelings at all during ANY this, I think I may have repeated that I don’t feel like she love’s me at all few times, in any case she got real quiet real fast as I’ve never spoken that furiously to her, I vented my emotions to her for about 10 to 15 minutes I would say.

By this point my parents had been called by Mr. Toxic they came and picked me up, my father and I rode home in my truck to which she heard a large portion of the conversation between he and I because I forgot to hang the phone up. He was surprisingly understanding of my position despite the intoxication. I asked him why she was doing this to me and said that she’s just being childish right now and don’t speak with her about anything until I sobered up the next day. I just told him that I was very mean and yelled at her because I just wanted her to feel what I had been feeling for weeks at that point.

Anyway, I get home and realize the call’s still going, so I her and I have a brief cooled off conversation before bed. She tells me that she loves me and REALLY want’s to work things out with me, but some things just don’t sit right with her right now after our drunken fight. The next few days come and go, we agree to meet in person that weekend to discuss what’s going to happen before she goes back to the new town she’s in.

So we meet that Saturday, she comes over to my place, we sit on the bed together in my bedroom and have a much more civil conversation with each other. We both apologize to each other for getting so out line only a few nights before, I let her speak first. She tells me that even though she was initially offended, some of what me and my father had said to her was true, she accepted accountability for not considering my feelings and acting childish and she thinks we should go ahead with a no contact separation and not speak about anything relationship related until the end of this year, though she extended her services to help me however she can with school in the mean time as it’s all new to me but still fresh on her mind.

I respond to this with my own apology for getting drunk and yelling at her the way I did, I accepted accountability for my end of the deal as well. And in a somewhat enthusiastic manner, told her yeah I think it would be good for both us to take some time. Even though it was said with enthusiasm it was mostly a façade, I wished we could have just worked this out together instead of separating, but I knew it was pointless to fight for anything to the contrary as even if I did convince her to stay, she obviously needs this time to figure out whatever it is she needs to figure out about her life and weather or not I’m going to be a part of it.

In closing of the short novel that I’ve written about my relationship, I’ll just say it’s been a rough few weeks since our separation. As it currently stands I never initiate any communication with her, I do my best to give her the space she needs, she has however texted me about three times since the separation, but nothing of any real consequence. She’s removed a couple of pictures of her and I from her Facebook but strangely has left a number of them up, I don’t really know what she’s thinking or feeling now. I however, my sleep is terrible, I cannot focus on school hardly at all, I feel lonely and rejected, my heart ache’s in ways I never knew possible.

Yet, somehow I drag my sorry ass out of bed everyday I workout first thing for an hour, I do what I can in school ***”which isn’t much”*** not sure if I’m going to make it this semester, but I’m sure as hell trying. I’ve gone out a couple of times since the separation, twice with guy friends just to talk and once to barhop with my sister. On the barhopping we did meet a group of people, there was a cute girl who was showing some interest in me, I danced briefly with her but felt wrong doing so, at the end of the night I wished her well and sent her on her way, I felt dirty for even letting someone I knew was attracted to me get close like that, so I really am just being alone now and not perusing anything with anyone else.

The one major highlight in my life at the moment is that I am working the guitar and I am becoming more proficient by the week with it. That’s exciting to me as I’ve always wanted to do that, but always put it off.

All of that being said, I just want to know what the hell is going on here? Why did this happen the way it did? We had so much going for us. I just want/wanted to work this out in person with each other. In any case, I won’t know anything until the end of the year I suppose.

Thanks for reading it all if you did.

***TLDR: Currently in a months long trial separation with girlfriend of 5 years. Do not understand why much of what is happening is happening. LOT’S of mixed messages and confusion. Am I doing the right thing by staying as low/no contact as possible and only letting her initiate conversation during this separation?***