BF Has Broken Up With Me To Face Problems Alone.

Hey all,

I'm not really sure what I'm looking for here. Advice/opinions/personal experience would all be very much appreciated. So my boyfriend of almost nine months (but I don't believe time reflects the depth or meaning of a relationship....I feel like we've been in love so much longer) broke up with me Friday night (technically Saturday if we are being pedantic!). We were texting very late (1.30am) and I brought something up about how I have to really apply myself for my exams from now on so wouldn't be able to see him as much (even though we probably only average once a week as it is for various reasons) and he says well a bit of a break wouldn't be a bad idea, my head's a mess. Needless to say I called him and a convo till4.30am ensued. He'd been kind of hinting at not being a good bf at the moment to me for a couple of weeks, not meeting up etc., and saying I shouldn't have to put up with it/it's not fair etc. Now recently he has been very reclusive at home (lives with his sis) alright, and I knew he hadn't been feeling himself at all. So I wasn't nagging him at all.

He is only beginning to mourn for his father who was killed in a tragic accident last summer. He had only begun seeing his father again after pretty much an absence from his life during his teens. (He is 21....22 in two weeks.... )We started going out three weeks afterwards, I had known him since a few months before. I checked and doublechecked whether he thought it was wise to get with me, he assured me he was mad about me. Various family issues surrounding the death/will which it is not my place to disclose, but things have been getting to him more and more in recent months though he is for the most part reluctant to "burden" me with raking over it again and again. I feel useless sometimes offering advice as I've no personal experience of familial loss, let alone such a freak one with so many unanswered questions around it.

Anyway he has ended it, nothing to do with me as a person, he says he can't have a gf right now, he can't give them what is required in a relationship. I'm a bit embarrassed to say I begged and cried and when I arrived at his house on Saturday morning to get my stuff it was pretty much 3 hours of me lying on his bed crying and him rubbing and kissing my hair and telling me how much he cares for me,how special I am to him but that he doesn't love anything or anyone right now, he needs to sort himself out. Wow.I made someone fall out of love with me. What an achievement. I told him I want to support him and be there for him but he says for now he just needs a best friend, not a gf. It hurts so much because he has always said how amazingly supportive I've been of him and his grief. He also says I'm the best girl he has been with,he's never loved another like me,that I have "an innate kindness" and thoughtfulness within me and thus he feels awful that I'm the girl that has to suffer this hurt. But he says he wanted to save me from further hurt as things got worse (for him). There is an inquest into the death this summer and I think that's very much daunting him.

He calls me "very much the right girl for me, at the wrong time"....and I can't stop crying over that. I'm with him the least time out of all his gfs, he tells me I'm incomparable to them (that he wouldn't have been with them kissing time at the moment under the circumstances). I'm so crushed but he initially referred to all this as "a bit of a break" now it's a break up? I brought this up today and he says for an indefinite period he needs to be alone.

I said I will wait as long as it takes for him to deal with things. He said he wouldn't expect me to wait for him, it's not fair etc and not to let someone better pass me by in the meantime....but he made several comments in texts and vocally along the lines of "never say never", "it very may well be that down the line we get together again". But that because nothing bad has happened between us, he's not gonna just cut me off, which I was pretty hysterical about (that he was saying we'd be friends but I'd never hear from him again) and that he'll still talk to me about everything and txt and have a phone call now and then. Because I've been there for him so much and we talk every day. I have family problems of my own which only he would be aware of, but at the moment he says where he is,he needs to be very selfish and just focus on himself and his problems....everyone else telling them theirs is something he just can't feign empathy or sympathy in.

So I guess I'm asking what do I do? I need this man. This is the man I love like no one I have ever loved. I know that he still has very strong feelings for me because he told me so and agreed that what we had was like with no one else, special. I was getting a bit paranoid and was saying how I won't be able to cope if I find out he's off gallavanting with some girl in a few weeks...he said this is not anything that would arise because the split is solely "for him" and that he has no desire to be with anyone in any form, and I said, when you do, will you come back to me? He said that he maybe would. I said well if what we have is so great and it's the circumstances in your life right now that aren't, then you know we have to have a go again when stuff gets better. And he cried so much on Saturday morning when I went to see him, and I wiped all his tears, and I know it sounds awful, but I was so touched by that. That he actually was cut up by this, because in the txts/on phone, he didn't sound it so much. As he said later "of course you know I still care for you so deeply and have strong feelings for you.did you think my tears this morning weren't real? " I'd never seen a man cry before. I can't stop thinking about his lovely face and how much we both cried and how much hurt there is over something that's not broken.