Unable to move on ... any advice would be so welcome

My boyfriend and I were together for 3 years. A year ago, having left the forces, he moved in with me. He was trying to find a job nearby but there just wasn’t anything, and around this time I found out that he had applied for a job in the Middle East. I had set up a LinkedIn profile for him and was on there one day making a few changes to his profile and noticed that someone had emailed him, asking whether he had moved out to the Middle East yet. When I got home I asked him about this and he said that he hadn’t wanted to tell me until he had some definite news, which I found pretty strange as it felt like the kind of big decision you make with someone. Anyway, he got the job and for the next few months while we were waiting for a start date he carried on looking for something in the UK. But time was ticking on and it became clearer and clearer that he wasn’t going to find anything over here and it caused a huge amount of stress between us and a lot of arguments; and I admit, I was very emotional because I didn’t want him to move away. We had spent the year before in a long distance relationship as he’d been posted abroad and the year before that, he had been in Afghan for 6 months. It was so amazing living together and I couldn’t bear for that to change. And he said he couldn’t either, but that he didn’t really have much choice as he needed to work, which I understood.

Anyway, he did ask me to move abroad with him and said that he would support me financially. Which showed me just how much he loved me and how serious he was about us. However, for a number of reasons, I decided to find a job and move out there with him once I had done so, in order that I could remain financially independent and also so that I could get a proper visa etc and therefore live there legally. And during this time he kept saying that if I couldn’t find a job, he would keep looking for one back here in the UK and would come back as soon as he could so that we could be together. He told me that we would spend all our holidays together and that he wanted a future with me; that he never wanted to lose me; that he had never felt this way about anyone before; that he loved me with his whole heart. And I felt exactly the same way about him and told him so, many times. Even his closest mates told me that they had never seen him so happy and in love with anyone before; that they had met a lot of previous girlfriends and how he seemed a changed man .. for the better!

So in June last year, his start date came through and he left. For the first few weeks he was as loving and sweet as he always had been, telling me how much he missed me and how he couldn’t wait to see me. But then things started to change. He suddenly told me on text that he had decided to stay out there indefinitely and was not open to a discussion about it and that he wouldn’t be looking for work back in the UK and wasn’t willing to give a time when he might come back; meaning that our long distance set up had no end in sight. I had a miscarriage during this time which was both a huge shock and very distressing and he didn’t even call me to see how I was doing as he was out with his new mates on the beer again. I also noticed that he was becoming more and more distant and asked him a number of times what was going on, but he just kept denying it and telling me that nothing had changed and I was imagining it. But he had stopped telling me he missed me or talking about when we would see each other etc. I was on his LinkedIn profile one day, updating it with his new job and noticed that a girl had started emailing him; someone who he had apparantely known a few years before and who had got in touch with him on facebook a couple of years before. And I noticed that he was sending her regular long emails back. He had loads of female friends and I never had a problem with any of them, but I had a weird and bad feeling about her and asked him about it. He assured me that she was just a mate and I had nothing to worry about and he didn’t find her at all attractive, but it just seemed so out of character for him to be making such an effort to write these long emails back to her. And I told him that I felt she had an agenda, even though she knew he had a girlfriend and she was also seeing someone. He then changed his password so that I wasn’t able to log onto his LinkedIn profile any longer.

We started arguing more and more about his ever growing distance and about his communication with the girl. And then one night when we were speaking, he told me that he no longer wanted me to go and visit him for his birthday in a few weeks time and that he no longer wanted us to spend holidays together! And for the next month, he told me that he wasn’t sure about us any longer and became colder and more distant. Eventually it reached a point where I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I told him that I felt we should take a couple of weeks out, where we didn’t contact each other in order to try work out what we both wanted; but only if we both really wanted to try find a way back to how things used to be. He didn’t reply to my email suggesting this, so I assumed he wanted to find a way back too. At the end of the 2 weeks, he dumped me via text, giving me no reasons … just that he didn’t want us any longer. And that was that.

That was 3 months ago and the only time I have heard from him during that time is when he asked me to pack all his stuff up and put it in his car so that his brother could pick it up. And that was the only time I contacted him … just to confirm I had done so. Not once have I text him or called him or emailed him …

And then on new years eve, I was told that he and the girl he had been emailing are now an item!! God knows how, as she lives in the UK .. but he had sent her some heart shaped balloons for her birthday and keeps mentioning her in facebook updates .. which seems so out of character as he wasn’t like that with me at all … our relationship wasn’t a public facebook event!! So I finally emailed him a week ago, asking for some closure, for the answers to some unanswered questions as I don’t understand how he could go from asking me to move abroad with him, to dumping me on text with no conversation or no meeting up. I have also heard he is back in the of UK for a couple of weeks but he hasn’t responded to my email and has not been in touch to suggest seeing each other in order that we can just have a conversation that should have been had 3 months ago.

I don’t understand any of this and I have never felt so heartbroken or flat in my life. I don’t understand what happened to all that love we had or to the man I totally trusted with my heart. And I don’t understand why he refuses to have any communication with me or why he is treating me as if I have done something really bad to him. He seems to have moved on as if I never existed; gone from our wonderful, loving relationship of 3 years straight into the arms of another woman who clearly set her sights on him. I feel lost without him. Like I’ve lost my best friend and the man I loved with all my heart … I still do.

Please can anyone help shed any light on why he might have changed so much in such a short amount of time. How he was able to make all those promises and then break every single one. And what I should do in order to move on with my life, when all I want is to be back with him. I feel lost and broken without him and 3 months on, i cant seem to move on.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this very long story.