I need to destroy a relationship.

[ChrisMac]

Because it's not healthy and a better one is possible. But I'm pretty sure I can't pull it off. I don't know. I'm going to try, but my chances don't look good. Get ready for a LONG story.

So in 2004 I met the girl of my dreams. Funny as hell, beautiful, brilliant, charming, and we clicked harder than anyone I've ever met. We got together a month later and spent the next two years together, and they were the best years of both our lives. I still laugh thinking about some of the stories.

But in September 2006, she had to leave the country. See, she was German and her student visa was up, and while she'd applied to PhD programs and jobs in the states, she was rejected from them all, and only accepted into a fantastic school in Zurich, Switzerland. And because her dream was to become a scientist, I told her she had to go, she couldn't miss her chance. So we promised to stay together and somehow make it work, and we talked on the phone every day and Skyped at least 1-2 times a week.

Fast-forward two years and we're both entirely miserable. We're both having serious panic and anxiety issues. We see each other for one week every 4-6 months. I'm in massive debt from the trips I do take to see her. She has few friends there because she rarely goes out. And I don't see any end in sight to our situation. I can't get a job there because I don't speak German and don't have a degree necessary for a company to support my visa. She suggests I could go to an MBA program in Europe to be closer but I have $40,000 of debt and can't afford to take a year of not working plus pay tuition.

So in July 2008, we've both been taking antidepressants for more than half a year, which have the effect of suppressing all my emotions and not making me think with my heart, rather pure logic. And logic says the situation makes no sense, we should break up. Maybe she'll find someone who can help her loneliness and make her happy and be there with her. So I fly over there and sadly say we should end it for now until we can find a way we can be together. And she's devastated, and tells me that if I do this, there's no reconciliation possible later, because she'll never trust me again. But I say it's for the best, we have to do it. I quit the drugs the same week.

We still talk every day, and the end of October comes and the drugs have started to wear off, and all the emotion and need for her comes flooding back, and I don't care, I *have* to make it work, and because I'm finally paying down the debt due to work successes, I feel I can get there with the MBA program the next year. She feels the same and says I should come visit for Christmas. I say no, if I'm to get there the following year, I need to save all the money possible, and spending Xmas apart will be the last sacrifice. After that she says she needs some time with no contact, and we agree to not talk for Xmas and New Year's. I take the standardized tests for school and to my surprise rock them.

2009 rolls in and she's different. Colder. March she starts dating a coworker she's been in the same lab with for three years who'd been asking her out repeatedly. I can't say I didn't ask for it, but it kills me on the inside.

I fly over there in May to see how she really is, and she surprises me at the airport, holding me, saying "I have to get out of here. This place is killing me." She reverts back to repressing her feelings again, though makes me stay in her guest bed that night. Nothing happens between us. From what I can tell her new boyfriend is much older (she's 29 and he's 40), quiet, superbright, maybe not as passionate as we were but passive and not likely to break up with her, especially as his last g/f dumped him.

Next day she takes me to the train station and on the platform breaks down and starts bawling, saying she's so sad. In tears as well, I say I love her and everything's going to work out for the best, promise. She says she loves me too. Calls and emails me repeatedly on the train, saying she's sad. I write her back saying listen, we both are still miserable, but need to focus on making our own lives the best they can be. So let's do just that for a year, but if by the start of 2010 I get into school there and we're both not completely happy, we get back together and I spend the rest of my life making her happy as she was in the States before she left. She writes back: "DEAL!!! :-) I like that plan a lot. Talk to you soon!!!"

2009 passes, we talk only a few times on the phone -- mostly when she calls me in some kind of trouble or drunk -- and I get my application in for a graduate school in France. I get accepted to interview. These go well. I get waitlisted. December 2009 I get rejected. Have to start all over again with applications for September 2010. We talk briefly on the phone once or twice about about nothing in particular, though she drops a couple comments about how I've only been ****ing around with school applications.

In the Jan-April 2010 I redouble my application efforts and apply to six schools: the same one in France again, two in Spain, three in the UK. To my delight, I get asked to interview to one outside London and one in Barcelona, Spain.

In May 2010 I go to interview in London, and on the flight back I stop overnight in Zurich again to see her, to tell her I've almost made it. I'd called her to say I was coming a week before and we talked for almost an hour, but night before I arrive she says her b/f's pissed and we can't meet for long. Day I get there she says she's too busy to come downtown, I better just come to her school's bar, we can meet for a few mins.

I take the trams up there, and get to the bar, and after more than a year, there she is again. Beautiful, now very thin tho, almost too much so, and scars on her arms from where she's been cutting herself. She never did that when we were together. We get a few beers, light conversation at first but it quickly turns sour. She starts in telling me how great he is. So smart. Speaks six languages. Such a nice apartment. They don't live together but that's okay, it makes every night like a date. She then starts repainting the times we were together as awful. I was always an asshole. "You'll *never* find anything this special again." "You need to just move on, okay?" Said she had no memory of crying on the train platform, or of the email where she said "DEAL!!" when I proposed we get back together forever at the end of the year. I'd reread that email 100 times.

At one point she looks at me and says "If we got back together, how could I know you wouldn't just break up with me again in two years?". Shocked, I stammer out the truth: I can't prove it but I'm a different man, stronger, and if we can be together on even the same continent there's no way I'd ever want out again. But she dismisses it with a wave of her hand.

A few of her friends show up and ask to sit with us. I ask if we could have a few more minutes. But the conversation stays dark, she remains angry, and finally she walks me out and puts me on the bus, we say goodbye and the bus pulls away as she walks back inside. A little buzzed off the beer I decide I can't let it end like that, and get off the bus and run back to the school bar in the rain and go inside. I walk in and she's sitting with her friends, staring at me. "What are you doing here?!" I tell her I need to talk to her again, no idea what to say. Her friends tell me that anything I have to say I can say to them. She relents and comes to talk to me, but I have nothing more to add, and finally leave again. I get back to the hotel and she IM's me on Facebook saying that she's sorry, but just so bitter and hates everyone in the world right now. I wish her the best and log off.

That night I get blind drunk in Zurich and miss my flight home the next morning. I don't recontact her. Following day I get home to the States. Next weekend she calls me, 2am her time, drunk, talking about nothing for an hour. Next weekend she calls again, but hangs up when I answer.

August comes on quickly and I sell half my stuff, store the rest, sell my car, take care of the visa, find a place to live, and move to Barcelona and start school. I'm now halfway through the semester. She just finished her program, and based on what she said when we last talked, she and her b/f are going to travel around Europe for the next four months, then figure out where to move next.

Personally I think it's hopeless. She's not happy with her man, I'm sure he's very nice but doesn't understand her, yet they'll stay together forever because he knows he won't do better and she knows he won't ever leave her. I know I've grown and changed and become the man she and I both wanted me to be. If we were to get back together now, I know we could have an amazing life together. And I'm certain she's repressing all her feelings for me, covering them up with a fiction her friends helped her to create to get over our past, and that repression is eating away at her from the inside.

I want to make her realize what could be, and how much I still adore the s#%& out of her and how amazing our lives could be again. But I don't see any way to pull it off, to break through that shell she's built up.

So that's the end of my 12,000-word rant. Does anyone have any advice? Am I the a#%hole in all of this? Is there any possible glimmer of hope? My life will be fine, and I'm moving on, but with such sadness and massive regret at the opportunity lost. If only she could just put away her anger...

[Poetic_Partner]

So, her bf is: "quiet, superbright, maybe not as passionate as we were but passive and not likely to break up with her". How does that translate as "not healthy"?

To be honest, most of the bf drama seems to come from you. Additionally, she had many issues BEFORE she met her current boyfriend.

"...Personally I think it's hopeless. She's not happy with her man..."
I agree. So does she. That's why she's tried to break it off with you. That's why she found a quiet guy for her new boyfriend.

Sorry to be so abrupt about it, but from what you wrote I tend to think the new guy is a better match for her.

-PP

[ChrisMac]

Not sure "abrupt" is the right word, but also not sure you and I are each following what the other is saying. She's miserable with her new guy. She wasn't ever miserable when we were together. She never cut herself when I was with her. She never called her ex boyfriends repeatedly when I was with her. Well, that I know of. It's not healthy now because while he's safe, she's not in love with him. I'm confident in this for many reasons. And right now, here in Europe, I am both safe and what she was wanting. Only thing keeping us both from having it is her anger, and repression of feelings. That's all.

[Agape]

Personally I think it's hopeless. She's not happy with her man, I'm sure he's very nice but doesn't understand her, yet they'll stay together forever because he knows he won't do better and she knows he won't ever leave her. I know I've grown and changed and become the man she and I both wanted me to be. If we were to get back together now, I know we could have an amazing life together. And I'm certain she's repressing all her feelings for me, covering them up with a fiction her friends helped her to create to get over our past, and that repression is eating away at her from the inside.

Well you could tell her this and how you care that she's not in a 'good' situation and make her decide . . . she is a grown woman and she can make her own decisions.

If she doesn't want to be with him, that's fine. . . if she doesn't want to be with you, that's fine.

[angel2002]

Ok.. this is crazy, just so insane everything u have done to be near this woman and now she is with some guy older than her because she is miserable? u had to do all the effort in this ok? she followed her dream, to be a scientist, and put u as a back up plan and now u ve found a way to be there she is saying blah blah blah.
move one guy!!! wake up, u deserve better. u did too much and got rid of a huge debt u made because of her, its time for her to do some effort in this. seems u gave up a lot of things to follow a dream thats actually her dream.
i dont know, this is just what i think
good luck!

[cohen_girl]

The fact that she only calls you when she's drunk or in trouble should tell you that she's probably not got your best interests at heart. Plus, you came all the way to see her at personal expense and she brushes you off and doesn't want to spend any alone time with you? If she's not greatful for all you've done, then she's not worth the trouble.

[reeba]

ditto I agree with everything angel said. She made one lame attempt to go to school/work here and you made years of attempts to follow her. And what do you get - strung along while she is effing some other dude.

[ChrisMac]

Ah, I wouldn't be that hard on her. She tried her best to stay in the US even though I knew it was hopeless, worked her ass off for a year to get a job or into a school to support a US visa, and while I knew it was likely not going to work based on what I'd seen in the past, I should have done more to make her feel like I was helping. Same with me trying to get over there. A school wasn't an option for me for the first few years due to my debt, and as I didn't speak German I knew I couldn't get a job in Zurich. I applied to a bunch of places in London that do what I do, but because they'd have to support a visa for me and I didn't then have any specialized education, none of them replied.

But she didn't want to hear me be rational and say it was pointless to keep trying. She wanted to hear that I wasn't giving up, that I cared enough to keep trying, even if in vain. While she loved talking about it, I'd usually change topics because I didn't want to get either of our hopes up by discussion an option I knew wouldn't really be possible. What I didn't realize in my immaturity was that whether or not the option was possible wasn't really what was important to her, she just wanted to hear me talking about coming there, excited about it, making plans with her. That's what made her feel like we were close. I realize that now, but then it drove me nuts back then because I knew those options weren't realistic, and therefore saw no point in discussing them. Classic guy/girl handling of a problem, I guess, but in this situation I shot a big hole in my foot.

The shift happened when -- due to a random assignment I was handed -- I realized I could pull off some pretty innovative things at work. That caused a chain reaction of events, because suddenly my debt started dropping due to bonuses, and it gave me confidence enough to try out the standardized GMAT tests to see if I had a chance at any good European schools, and suddenly -- whoa -- this could actually, really work. So I went for it but by then, even though I now had confidence, it was too late. She'd had the confidence before when I didn't, and finally just ran out of patience. Which I can't blame her for.