Lost the love of my life. Any advice?

venting/ranting

First off I'm not looking for advice on how to get her back or anything like that. What's done is done. Of course there are going to be those black pilled comments but it is what it is.

I (26m) feel like I just lost the love of my life. I want to say it came out of nowhere but it really didn't. For context we've know each other for quite some time now, about 4-5 years but only really started seeing each other about a year and a half ago. She is one of the most spunky, free spirited and fun woman I have ever got the pleasure to know. She came at a time where I felt lost and not really too sure about what I should do in life. She single-handedly saved me in many ways. We had great chemistry and complimented each other in many ways.

This all changed though when there was a health scare. After experiencing this, she's never really been quite the same. She would always be in a constant state of panic and anxiety. This was a very difficult moment during our time together and would affect the rest of our relationship going forward. She eventually found a therapist/psychiatrist and got on some medication that somewhat helped. From my POV this severely affect her personality as a whole, if I had to make a comparison if she was 100% before she's now at 30-40%.

All of this went along with the normal every day problems that college Gen Z faces, difficulties being able to make any type of social connection, not knowing what to do with our lives, feeling the sense of dread and hopelessness, extreme lack of self confidence and self love, etc etc the list goes on.

To not make this too long, I'll summarize the rest of the story. She feels like she is a complete broken mess. She can't go through the day without stressing/anxious about something without relying on medication to help her get through. She feels like it is extremely unfair to me that I have to deal with her issues and is not my responsibility to fix her problem (I have my own thoughts about this but not relevant). She prioritized our relationship so much that she feels like she is neglecting everything else she needs to work on. All of that led to us breaking it off in a very heartfelt conversation with plenty of tears flowing. The kicker is this decision ultimately came from my own advise to her.

"How you can love someone, when you can't love yourself" - the magic words I said to her

How can I possibly argue with that? Who am I to be a hypocrite to my own advice? The moment she said these words I knew I lost her.

Now I am feeling lost, sadness, anger at myself and all the adjacent emotions. I thought she was the one, I had my whole life planned out and now that's all gone. How do I recover and move on from this? My greatest fear and what I dread the most is not being able to sleep, it is some of the most wicked mental torment a person can go through. I am in the middle of that process right now.

Any advice?

Posted Jun 23, 2026, 12:38 AM UTC

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