Newbie - bf suddenly left after 9 years

[Italian]

Ha. Fancy that! I'm reading through the stages, and now I can interpret a little more clearly what I've seen going on with him in the past couple of months - you're right, in retrospective, it becomes quite clear.

Denial: when he was withdrawing, feeling unhappy but not quite sure why, going to the gym, hanging out with younger people. This pretty much started when his niece was born and everyone moved happily along to the new stage in life... but not him.

During this time, by the way, we happened to discuss end of life wishes, since my mother is now married to a severely ill man. I was quite chilled about the whole thing - in the past 15 years we've had 10 bereavements in the family, my mom, aun and grandma are all widows, and I worked on that for years when my dad died when I was 16. So for me it was quite simple and straightforward. But he has never had any bereavements in the family - lucky guy... or not so much? - and for him it was a tense moment. He refused to think about it, he didn't give me an answer, he got really nervous and dropped the conversation.

Anger: He's usually a very laid back, loving man, and yet I caught him snapping at me out of the blue for random things. Not friendly ribbing, outright anger outbursts or cruel things he said, for no apparent reason, that left me flabbergasted. Small things, don't get me wrong - about my hair, my appearance, unable to take even the slightest joke if it could be somehow interpreted as criticism.

So now he bolted... right into Replay stage. I have to say it helps to feel I understand what's going on!