KGirl - post-move

[KGirl]

Now that vacation is over and I'm back to reality, my mental gears are turning again about all this and wondering how this all happened. H said right before I left that he explained it to me and wasn't going to repeat himself, but his explanations were things he had never shared before BD and are things that we could have easily talked about and fixed had I known (more sex, more appreciation, to name a few)... but I didn't know, and honestly, I didn't see any warning signs that he was THAT unhappy or cries for help before that. There's a pattern here of H running away, then coming back, and I'm starting to think I should have seen those as warning signs, rather than positive signs ("He came back again, so he must really love me and this will all work out!"). I'm not sure what the patterns mean - fear of commitment? Need for freedom and adventure? Indecisiveness? Here's what I mean when I say pattern (this is going to be a bit long as I try to work it all out and recount it):

Fall of freshman year of college (2004): H dumps me because he's attracted to some girls in his Spanish class and wants to see if it will go anywhere. He emails them asking to hang out, they both decline and say he had the "wrong idea." A week later he comes back, says that was dumb of him, we get back together.

Fast forward to fall of senior year of college: We're now leaving together in a 1 bedroom apartment, just us (the year before we had another roommate and separate rooms). Around November he tells me randomly before we're about to fall asleep that he doesn't want to be with me anymore, that he doesn't want to just be with one person and that he needs to see what else is out there. He started a part-time job in September and became fast friends with a guy he worked with - a guy who went out every Thursday/Friday/Saturday night, was single, and fit the definition of "player" pretty well. From that point forward we had an off-again/on-again sort of thing.. we'd be "broken up" but then go out to the bars together, go out eat, whatever...it was hard to really be broken up because we lived together. In January I started looking into other apartments and he wrote me a long e-mail saying that maybe I shouldn't do it, we could figure this out, etc. I didn't do it, but then nothing changed. Graduation in May came, we were still broken up, and he moved back home (an hour away) with his parents because it was closer to the job he had found. I was still on campus because I went straight to grad school in the fall, lived on my own.

The following fall (almost a year after this break-up): we start talking more long-distance, visit each other every weeks... then decide we are "back together" sometime in October/November. H gets a new job (the one he'll have for the next 4 years) in this city and he moves back in December. In January/February we talk about me moving into his apartment in May and me subletting my apt. to my sister for the summer. In March I start talking about when to move, and he says "I'm not actually sure I want you to move in yet," which sends things into a tailspin again. I end up staying in my apartment for the summer. We talk again at the beginning of the summer about me moving in at the end of my lease in August, and I tell him I'm not comfortable committing to moving in again with him unless I know we're getting engaged, because I've been burned too many times by him going back on what he says. He says that's no problem, he fully intends for us to get married, etc.

August: I move in! Things seem fine. But come November/December I start asking about what's next, when are we getting engaged, etc. He says he isn't sure yet. I say "what do you mean, you're not sure? You promised me this would be the next step and you were ready when I moved in." I started questioning his commitment to me...

February (now we're in 2010): He proposes! I'm happy, and I assume he's happy. We get married summer 2011. Buy a house in the fall of 2012. Everything seems to be fine now and settled....until December 2013 when he drops the bomb on me. But this time, there's a lot more at stake than just "breaking up," and he had already made a commitment for life, or so I thought. Another factor at play: in April 2013 he got a new job - he had started to really hate the one he'd been in for the past 4 or so years. In this new job he had a lot more free time to talk with coworkers, eat lunch out, less stress in general at work, etc. He became good friends with a 60 year old single guy who is incredibly disrespectful to women and very crude. I can't help but think it's more of the same from back in college when he met his "player" friend at work. Oh, and then there's that little thing of falling for a married woman at his work this past fall who is "more compatible" with him than me.

So what does it all I mean... I don't know exactly, but it doesn't seem good. There's this ongoing cycle of breaking up because he needs to see the world or whatever, then getting back together when it's not what he thought it would be, then breaking up again when he's tired of this. What I do know is I'd have to see SOMETHING big, and I'm not sure what, to believe he'd really be committed this time if we got back together - otherwise I'll be living the next umpteen years wondering when he's going to leave again. All those times before I was heavily pursuing him, so at least this time I'm doing a big 180 by stepping way back, so that he'll have to come find me if he wants back in. If anyone has any insights that are clearer from outside the situation, please let me know!