Hello, this is my first time posting… ever. I just need to feel part of something, I guess. Two years ago I got married to a very good friend of mine. We had been dating for a while and decided to take the step in order to be able to move together to the same country legally. After she moved in, things started going downhill and I felt my sense of reality and sanity continuously undermined. She told me my friends where offended at my jokes (which wasn’t true according to them), she told me I was a psychological and emotional abuser (which I expect I’m not), she told me I had a drinking problem (I probably drink more than I should, but I started to work on it) and so on with every little aspect of my life. During our time together I worked for her to be as happy as I could, I would cook for her, I would clean our place, I would try to tiptoe around the apartment to avoid waking her up, I kept coming up with plans we could do together, and so on. After a while, and after several fights, she decided to go to couples therapy (I had suggested it before and she had gotten mad at the idea). The therapy started working and we started getting closer and better and more affectionate with one another. I felt she started to put her barriers down and conversations became possible once again. By this time, almost one year living together had passed. My soul filled with hope and I started falling back in love with her. I guess she felt the same, because she was planning a trip to India and invited me to make a stop over for five days in Istanbul, after which she would continue by herself to India. Those five days must have been the most romantic thing I have ever experienced. They were beautiful. We shared and laughed and walked and it was overall a life changing moment for me. When the time there was over, we said goodbye in a very loving and caring way in the airport, I came back home and she went on to her trip. At first, we were sending “I miss you” and “I love you” messages, but with time she started growing distant, first via the content of the messages themselves (which started going down to “hi” and such) and then through contact itself. Eventually, I asked (via text, because she had stopped calling) if something was happening, that I felt lonely and left behind, to which she simply replied that she was sorry I was feeling that way and that she was having “an experience”. When I told her I needed her to call me, she replied that that was something she could not provide for me. The day after that, she called me for five minutes and said she had to leave. The morning after that, I texted her to enjoy her trip, that she shouldn’t text me or call me anymore, and that we would talk when she came back home. When eventually she came back, I went to the airport to pick her up with flowers, as was our tradition. She came home and slept for a really long time. The next morning, when I wanted to tell her how I felt, she told me it was over for her, that at least she needed some time for herself to think if she had the emotional space for the relationship. I asked her how she wanted to take this “space” and we started talking about still being exclusive but physically separated from one another. At the same time, we were staying in the same flat and she kept coming to me, taking my hand, caressing my face, but never kissing me. This was destroying me from the inside, I was so confused. I told her I had to leave for a few days because this was hurting me, so I packed a bag and went to some friends for a couple of days, not before telling her when I would be back. The day I was back, I was up for negotiating, but she told me it was done, that she saw no more future for us. My world had been shaken down. We didn’t talk for several days, and in one attempt of desperation, I was looking through her scribblings and notes and I found that she had met someone in India. It told that she felt excited as she never did with me, and that she felt disgusted by me. I went into full crisis mode, calling my friends and my therapist. After a while, I talked to her and she tried to gaslight me into that I was imagining things. After hours of this, she confessed she had made out with someone (I don’t know if something else did happen). Even then I tried to negotiate a way out, I tried to convince her to talk to the couples therapist, that everyone made mistakes, and so. One day I told her I knew she had been cheated on, and I requested her to remember how she felt, and to imagine how I may be feeling. She went out for lunch and when she came back, she apologized and said that nothing deserved what she did to me. I asked her if she wanted my forgiveness. She said yes, and I replied “you have it, no conditions, no questions. It’s yours.” After which she broke down crying. During the therapist session, she blamed me for a lot of things (and came back with the drinking problem, something which by now was completely under control), she never took the responsibility for what she had done (being unfaithful to our explicit relationship agreements) and said she wouldn’t like to give me false hopes. After a couple of days, she told me she couldn’t take it anymore and that the relationship was done. She packed her things. I had one last crisis in which I started taking some sedatives, and she left. My heart is broken at this point writing this. I miss her immensely, warts and all. I really thought I could make this work with love and caring and compassion. In the end, I wound up alone and with a soul torn to pieces. I feel lost and don’t know what to do. I guess I didn’t come here for answers, just to get some sense of company.