Dicko - i guess that's exactly shit I don't want to hear but I won't be able to get over it any other way. I really do want to make it work but I know how hard it is to do repeats. It really complicates things.

Now here's the thing. most of you guys think it won't work out. But do you think there is really a chance at all? I really love this girl. I'm not angry with her so I don't have some 'easy way out'.

Do you really think if I fought for it, it would be futile? I'm going to either way, but how should I go about it? I know you guys aren't totally heartless bastards. What is the most ideal way for me to work towards getting her back, but at the same time not letting myself down if it doesn't work?

Hey dude.

My partner of seven years broke up with me last summer, like out of the blue. We spent the night staying up, playing worms, basically having our normal relationship, then at like 5am he comes out of the toilet and bam - "I'm breaking up with you".

People around here were intensely supportive and (dare I say?!?!) loving. They really helped me through a pretty hard time.

I digress - his immediate plan (which he'd planned for three days) was to have his parents pick him up like a couple of hours after he told me he was breaking up with me - bam, immediately gone from my life effectively. I had to beg him not to do this, and spend another day just talking to me about things.

We ended up talking for three days. At the end of the first, he was regretful about how he'd handled things. By the end of the second, he remembered everything about why he'd loved me and why we WERE together.

By the end of the third, he elected to stay for two more days, but was committed to saving our relationship. I suggested he take some time living apart from me (a month) while I got my head sorted too - the whole thing had really fucked me up as we'd have seven years of being in a fantastic relationship. So yeah, we spent a month apart.

When he came back - Bam, our relationship was as good as it ever was. We were reinvigorated and to this day we've not had any significant problems between us.

Now, there are a few background elements to this that are pretty important. Like a month after he got back, Paolo was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. For those who know about the condition, one of the major elements of it is an incredible disability in seeing shades of grey; everything is black and white. They either hate a person or love them for example - but this can flip on an instant, and they're incapable of remembering ever having loved/hated them prior to the flip. In the vast majority of BPD sufferer cases they're completely incapable of holding down a relationship or job, tending to quit both without reason every so often - the fact that Paolo hadn't broken up with me until a LONG time into our relationship is actually pretty flattering. Also BPD sufferers have huge problems sharing their ACTUAL rational feelings - they tend instead to hyperbolised emotive responses (although they feel incredibly real to the sufferer).

I digress - my point is that even though we worked it out, the reason he broke up with me DID INDEED feel like a falling out of love at the time, but it turned out not to be. It took some initial work and support, but we managed to work it out on this basis. This wasn't him being forced to be with me - no one can really achieve that without physical/mental intimidation etc, and that wasn't going on at all - it was him reflecting and deciding on what was best. Nowadays we communicate a fuckload more about pretty much everything - a lot of it down to my paranoia that he might be thinking TERRIBLE DARK THOUGHTS. Quite a few times he's shared thoughts that have made me upset and uncomfortable, but by talking about them with each other life is a lot better for both of us. Oh, also he gets some pretty extreme DBT therapy now, which is apparently the only thing that works for BPD suffers.

However, if I HAD just collapsed and allowed him to walk away with his parents a couple of hours after he told me, I sincerely doubt that we'd be together now. I'd have had no opportunity or chance to explore what the fuck was going on.

As much as people think that you don't "deserve" a chance to work it out if one person decides that's it, or they don't "owe" you anything, I'd completely disagree. This is very much true of the one-three month relationships I've had in my younger day, or even the intense three year relationship I was in when I was 13-16 - both were relationships based on immature and throwaway ideals effectively. However, when you've BUILT A LIFE TOGETHER, or devoted SO MUCH to being together, for one person to just say "I don't want to be with you, bye" without trying to work it out, is, in my opinion, morally bankrupt. There's a right way and a wrong way to end a relationship, and to do so without even trying a fix (even if it's ill-fated and will end in the breakup anyway) shows a callous disregard for your partner's emotions, and incredibly devalues their worth.

As much as people genuinely think that serious relationships are fine to just break down in one instance because one partner is unhappy about something, I'd totally disagree. Fair enough, I don't subscribe to the whole "marriage = FOR LIFE NO TAKEBACKS" thing of older generations, but I do believe that fighting for a long term relationship is an important thing, rather than just bailing immediately because something is wrong and taking no time at all to try to fix or even explore it. If you've devoted a significant portion of your life to being together, and (and this is the important point) you have both been happy for the vast majority of it, breaking it up because one party has had some doubts or feels that love has dwindled somewhat is a decision that shouldn't just be rushed into.

Doubts are normal in a relationship, as are going through periods in which your love dwindles. Have their been times when I've considered breaking up with Paolo? Yes - a few things have happened over the past (eight now pretty much) years that have made me so intensely angry that I've thought "I should be on my own" or "He doesn't deserve to be with me". That doesn't mean I immediately acted upon it though. But, then again, my feelings towards him have never changed, so I guess that's not applicable to the majority of cases maybe.

If a breakdown happens, you do owe it to your partner to TRY to salvage your partnership. Yes, yes, everyone is free to live your own lives, of course, but that doesn't mean you have to be instantly callous about everything. Disregarding a long term relationship isn't like defriending someone on facebook, or even quitting that shitty job you hate. If your lives are intertwined it's pretty much destroying the way in which two people are living their lives.

I'm not saying that everyone's situation is going to be the same as mine by the way - mental health shit, shared extreme-experiences that have created bonds, and intense love (as corny as that sounds) are all factors that only specifically applied to what I'm talking about - they may not exist in your case malad (BACK TO MALAD RATHER THAN SOAPBOX SORRY).

Malad, I tell my story not to get your hopes up, but in response to the fact that you wonder if you can ever salvage it. My answer is "Maybe, I don't know". I wasn't in a long-distance relationship, and we live together, so I had a few bonuses in that regard (after I'd convinced him against IMMEDIATELY WALKING OUT). You don't have that luxury as there's a distance and effectively you're already out of her life already. I'm really sorry about that man. I still genuinely think that, however hard it is in your case, you need to be really strong and work out how you're going to live your life as a single man for a while. There may indeed be a chance you can save what you had, as long as you think it's totally worth it, but the chance is unlikely due to the constraints on your relationship. Good luck either way man, it's a really shitty thing to be going through.

SIDENOTE: I in no way am attacking anyone in this thread with what I'm saying - the vast majority of you are people I respect, admire, and am happy to call my friends. I also don't mean to be arrogant when sharing the following thought of mine - every relationship is different and no one can really know what's going on with two other people. I feel more qualified to give some advice on this compared to people who haven't been in LTRs (or even relationships at all), BUT I still see my advice as being relative to my own specific situation, ergo pretty much having an equal amount of worth to people giving advice who haven't ever shared their lives with someone. I've shared my life with one specific person, so the experience overall is incredibly biased towards that singular situation.

(GOOD LUCK MALAD, THE SUN WILL STILL COME OUT TOMORROW FOR YOU !)

On a purely basic level, if inri was mince and inri was already banned then mince getting banned makes sense regardless of what he's done really.

Also I have to note - and this is no diss to earlchip at all who I know wasn't defending what mince was saying just that he has a right to say it (not that that is something I agree with as I think there're limits to free speech, but I get his position), fuck I'm rambling. Summed up: Mince was one of the people in this thread who was actually antagonistic towards the person suffering. I think he might have been the only person being actively antagonistic in this whole thread (I thought geodude was calling the OP a fucking idiot at one point, which made me all WTF geo?, until I realised it was actually addressed towards Mince rather than Malad! I did actually only realise that a while after though XD).

Like I kind of think I made it clear that I disagreed with what Vell was saying in her first couple of posts in this thread, but that doesn't mean you have to like ATTACK her and shit. You can have disagreements with friends - fuck, Vell and I argued about the use of the word "gays" before, and it didn't end up with me trying to punch her through my monitor before resorting to comments about her vagina. Even if her words were harsh initially (and as I've said, they were MEANT well and were clearly only spoken to support malad in making his choice), that doesn't mean she should be subjected to misogyny.

I really fucking hope that Vell doesn't leave over this shit. I also hope earl doesn't. I'd like to reference the fact that when I disliked earl (due to my return and being surprised at the change of community: i.e. instead of everyone sucking my cock all the time, people were questioning me OH NOES!!!), Vell went out of her way to defend earl. There's not been a problem with you guys prior to this, and there shouldn't be one hopefully. Even if earl is defending someone from being banned, he's doing that because he seems to hate anyone being banned ever, rather than agreeing with what they were saying about Vell.

Fuck, this is complicated. I totally agree with Dada concerning the banning, and feel his anger about defending his friend now is totally rightly placed. But I also think that everyone involved needs to cool off for a bit. Like at the end of the day, both earl and Dada (sorry about referring to you guys in THIRD PERSON, but I'm speaking to both of you/neither of you/whatever and I have to type QUICK otherwise I'll start rambling again oh no it started happening!!) share so many positions on so many things, and your hearts are both usually both in totally the right places.

Summed up: the perpetrator has been banned, Malad got some good advice from a variety of sources, and everyone is still pretty cool. Vell hopefully knows that she's thought very highly of by the majority of people here, but in spite of this a few people need to learn how to make a post that disagrees with someone BUT also doesn't directly attack them in an insulting way for their views. Note that I'm only referring to views which a person disagrees with, not the clearly abhorrent and prejudiced comments made by certain users.