Just Broke Up and Wants to Receive Opinions

Hello everyone. I hope you guys are okay and healthy.

I just want to share you the story of my recent breakup with someone who I thought would be a perfect husband for me.

We were friends who turned to lovers. We started knowing each other 6 months prior to the beginning of our relationship. We had been together for 1 3/4 years and planned to marry if we both were ready. We are generally at the same age (23), but our understanding towards emotions, love, and relationships are different. This was first serious relationship for both of us (he only had one dating experience before me, while I had three before him).

We had an anxious-avoidant relationship and I am an anxious person. We had our good time, along with some roller-coaster experiences. But we improved a lot and got to understand each other more, gradually.

He was raised by the protective parents and it makes him difficult to bond with others. Otherwise, he also used to take things literally and often get confused with what he wants, don't want, or generally his own emotions and feeling. For this almost 2 years, our love and care helped him to be more confident on himself. Now he can talk to new people easily. It won't be too nervous for him to initiate a call anymore. Even he recovered from the trauma of bullying (we both had been bullied in the past). Also, he isn't the type of person who definitely knows about goals and make a plan for the future. But slowly he's changing.

Things were different for me. I was raised by a dysfunctional family. My parents used to beat each others. As the oldest kid, I've been emotionally abandoned and verbally abused. I used to see them fighting in front of me, insulting each other while talking about bringing me with one of them out of the house. It definitely crushed my perception towards love and care. I didn't feel worthy, loved, nor confident about myself. I always try to not get too close with people - unless for certain persons. I have trust issues with people and it's difficult for me to maintain my emotions (I have mood swing). I'm also paranoid about building the family and being in love with someone. I even didn't want to marry and have kids. Since the beginning of our love, he helped me to gain my confidence step by step. He also used to tell me how great I am - even right after the breakup - and how able am I to be good mother for my future kids.

However, things become different since a few months ago. We finally discovered why he's falling out of love last night. He told me that he felt pressured to change. He thought that he was forced to give me certainty - like when we would marry, for example - and adapt to my mood swings and mental health problems (we both have mental health problems). While in fact, I was ready to change if there were things should be changed from me. I was ready to accept him and his flaws, while keep improving our own selves together. Even I was trying to accept his avoidant behavior whenever we had a fight. I even tried to understood when he just wanted to be alone for a while.

But he never be honest about his own feeling. He used to just deduce about everything without confirming. He never thought that he was totally equal in our relationship. In short, I found out that we had miscommunications. We have different styles of attachment.

He keep saying that it was too late to fix everything. I keep blaming him for not being honest. Or else, things might be different. Now we both have fallen out of love, but do care towards each other. We made an agreement to give him some time to be alone. After that, we'll try to continue discussing about relationship. Now we both don't have any intention about having relationship anymore in general - at least for now. When I tried to ask about possibility of being together again or walking in each other way, he refused to talk about it and just want to focus on career and education. I also feel the same way.

(He would be graduated soon from grande école and I'll start my graduate school in 2 weeks).

I've told him about my plan to remain single until I graduate from my master education. I also told him that if he wants to be together again in the future, I only want a serious plan about marriage. He agreed, and he totally understand about my needs. He also confessed about his inability to provide me certainty.

My friends, should I keep the door open for him? I'm the type of person who hates uncertainty. I know, even I don't have any intention about relationship or love for now. But I just want to know about your opinions. Because I really need emotional support for now. Would be really happy to discover your love experiences too.

Thanks a lot!