My girlfriend's father ended up in ICU back in June and never recovered. He died less than a month later. I was planning to break up prior to this incident, but changed my mind after this all happened. I felt like I absolutely could not do that to her while she was dealing with all this. As you would expect, she's breaking down and falling apart all the time.
I really do care about her. She's the first and only person I ever really felt connected to, but the romantic element just isn't there for me. We met in January of this year, and hit it off in a way I never thought I could with another person. It felt like I was saved from a lifetime of suffocating loneliness. I liked talking to her, and it felt easy and enjoyable in a way nothing else with another human being ever has. However, I couldn't quite match the way she felt about me.
I tried to grow my feelings for her (especially after a conversation we had about exactly this issue), but we also have some incompatibilities as partners that made growing those feelings really difficult. I had been feeling stressed about the relationship since April, and have scarcely had a peaceful day since. Even breathing feels unpleasant, the anxiety and stress about the relationship and all the ways I was doing her wrong by not matching her level of feeling and commitment has been inescapable. The stress feels physical in a way no other stress has for me, and it's been going on at least since April.
By the time it got to mid-June, I realized I couldn't keep torturing myself anymore and - as painful as it would be to let go of the connection - I couldn't keep putting myself through the stress of trying to make it work. So, I planned that if our next visit (we're long distance) didn't feel good to me and I still experienced incompatibility and stress in the relationship, I would end things. And then extreme tragedy visited her and I felt I had to put those plans away.
Now we're almost in September, and I still feel absolutely tortured by the relationship and by the lie I'm living.
A big part of the problem is that I don't want her to fall apart even more, and the other big part of the problem is I'm so emotionally and socially dependent on her (again, I really value her and she feels like the first real human connection I've ever really had) that I get really deeply sad and depressed whenever I think about ending it.
The result is that the relationship is draggin
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