Story of my relationship. She broke up, i'm broken. I need some help.

Hi everyone

I know this is going to be a long text, but to get a true and helpful opinion, I feel like I have to go into detail on what has been happening, and how I feel. I know that most of you will not even have the time or patience to read this all, but I thank ahead any of you who do, and your most sincere opinion will be very important to me.

My ex-girlfriend and I have dated for 1 year and 4 months, until she decided to break up with me last 17th January. She’s 27 and I’m 31. We’re both from Portugal, Europe.

We do have some differences and I think it’s important to explain them:

My family has always been very connected to culture. My father is a superb painter and writes and researches a lot about sports, despite he was an elementary school teacher for his entire life (so was my mother). My brother, who is 18 years older than me is a writer and a sports teacher. Our family has had our ups and downs, but we stick together and love each other a lot, despite we don’t say it with words quite often or demonstrate. In that matter we’re somehow cold.
Myself, I’m a Plastic and Intermedia artist, PhD student on Artistic Education, good-looking guy who exercises and takes care of his body. I have a stable job as a Product Developer. I’m not going to lie, despite it might look pretentious: I’m smart and an intellectual if I could name it that way. I like good music and I read a lot of deep and dense guys, mostly dead ones but always very philosophical stuff (because of my PhD)!
Fortunately my family has a stable life in financial terms, and all of us are very independent in that matter. We’re not rich, but we can afford everything we need and pursue our dreams and support some hobbies like photography, travelling, etc.

My ex-girlfriend is a little bit different.
She’s very good looking too, despite she should take care of her teeth which are a little bit disoriented. She has big beautiful eyes and when we started dating had a very attractive body. She has gained a lot of weight from that time till now since she likes to eat doesn’t exercise and is taking anti-depressives, but I’ll get to that. She went from 48kg to 65kg (current weight).
The first characteristic about her personality I should point out is that she has a sort of Peter Pan Syndrome (not in a bad way). She’s attracted to stuff like the Harry Potter books and films, and has a little bit of trouble growing up from that. It’s a little bit of an enchanted world she lives in, probably to run away from reality, which she doesn’t like to face. I wouldn’t say she’s immature, but sometimes she looks a little bit like she’s still 18 in the way she faces life, work and relations.
She has a degree, but not in a very important area, which has never allowed her to work or build a career on that area. She’s been working as a telemarketer for the last 4 years. She reads a lot, like I mentioned, Harry Potter stuff, 50 shades of gray stuff (and other books of authors in the same subject). She likes movies that are entertaining, instead of the ones that make you think. I understand and respect that, and I also enjoy them from time to time.
She has a younger brother and sister (brother is 24, sister is 26) who have never taken a degree and have quite unstable jobs.
Her mother divorced her father when they were very young due to alcohol problems and physical abuse. My ex and her brothers have no contact with their father since then. Her mother never got back with another man, despite I know she has a boyfriend that she keeps away from her sons.
They have enough money for everything in their life, but they live in a modest home without any sort of luxury. They don’t travel or spend holidays away.

Like I said before, you can understand that me and my ex have some differences, but those differences have been very pleasant to me, because she has a peculiar way of making me smile after I had almost gave up smiling. She brings simplicity to my mind, which is very active dense and complicated. She brings a lot of warmth when I’m with her, since her family is very warm and connected to each other too.
We balance each other, and that has been very good while everything was ok.
I can say that I’m more of an introvert kind of guy, and she’s more extrovert.

But my ex-girlfriend faces a very difficult problem. She has faced depression 3 times (the third one currently undergoing).
The first time was around the time she was 18. I have no idea on what triggered that back then. I know she went to study at university and eventually got better. Then she got depressed again around age 24 after a relationship with a guy from other European country where she even went to live with him for about one year. I know it was a tough relation: he was quite jealous all the time and would cheat on her a lot. She never found a job there and eventually had to come back to Portugal to help take care of her grandfather and the guy decided to break up with her. I know she’s had a hard time getting over that guy since after they broke up he got a new girlfriend and moved back to Portugal, and I’m not sure but I think that was also a part of what triggered her second depression.
The third one had happened while we were together.
It was around June 2016 that she started having some signs of anxiety, waking up in the middle of the night with vomiting reflexes, but without actually vomiting. Eventually she was diagnosed with depression, despite she tried to hide it and denied feeling depressed. She started taking anti-depressives prescribed by her general doctor, but I’ll get to that a little bit ahead since the depression was one of the excuses she used for breaking up with me.

I’d like to go through some events that have happened until we broke up, which I think are important.

First of all let me tell how we met and how things evolved:
I was in an almost 5 year relationship that was dying before I started dating this girl. I tried to break up with that other girl but she had manipulated me by making me believe she would kill herself if I left and other stuff. Eventually she was the one who cheated on me and left me for another guy who was a common friend. It was devastating for my ego. I was down.
My most recent ex-girlfriend had become a friend of ours back then and she was always very supportive to me and always criticised the other ex attitude. Eventually we started to get closer and closer until we realised we were building feelings for each other and eventually started dating.

For about 9 months everything went perfect. I had total belief and confidence in her. She showed lot of love, eventually asked me if I would marry her one day. I said yes, and I developed a huge passion for her during this time.
I felt good with her, and felt that I loved her fiercely. We had good times together, shared a lot of smiles and our sex life was marvellous.
Since the beginning she started sleeping in my home every single night, and she slept here until we broke up, despite she never officially moved to live with me. Not even clothes she brought. Only a tooth brush and some sex toys.

Then suddenly there was a change.
My ex, like I said before is attractive and has an extroverted personality. She doesn’t seduce a lot, but is seduced by many men, including some that are friends to her from other cities she’s lived or worked in.
She is somehow ingenuous and never “reads” some moves that other men make towards her as seduction, and has some issues and trouble putting an end to those conversations. She talks a lot, and is very easy-going with everyone. Even with ex-boyfriends with whom she managed to keep a friendship.
Back in May 2016, an ex-boyfriend from a friend of hers started to hit on her. The guy is good looking, works as a fashion model. She showed me some of their conversation and I must say jealously got over me. I started to loose some of the confidence since at first she didn’t want to believe he was hitting on her (later she did). By then as things with that guy were escalating there was one day I had a talk with her about it and requested if she would let me check the full conversation with that guy. She reacted bad. She said she had severe issues with me not trusting her, because of her former ex and that she would not tolerate having a boyfriend who doesn’t fully trust her.
I noticed that she changed her phone code since then. (I knew the previous one).

Then around July her third depression kicked in.
She started taking anti-depressives and immediately something occurred in our sex life: She lost her libido. Sex became less and less frequent, until eventually when we had sex she could achieve the orgasm. We tried everything, sex toys, gels, but it just wouldn’t work. She blamed the meds she was taking and her depressive state.
The anxiety was still present and I tried to help her as best as I could. But I always felt that whatever I did, would not work. She would just say that it had to come from her, not me. Only she could help herself.
Then, around October/November her general doctor said she was not getting better and put her on sick leave holidays. She wanted to keep working, and did not agree it was the best for her. She was back at work one week later.
We have a psychiatrist in our family so I reached out for him, and asked if he would take some time to be with her and make a diagnosis. I know it’s not good to have family involved in these situations, but I only wanted the best for her. She became his patient and he diagnosed depression, and insisted she should keep doing anti-depressives. Later I’ve found that he believes she also might have a bipolar dysfunction in terms of humour, but when she broke up with me in January stopped seeing him, so he could never confirm 100% that diagnosis.

Around November something strange also started happening.
I started noticing that she would spend a lot of time online on facebook, watsapp and viber, even when she was at work.
When we were together she would hide a lot her phone and even avoid picking it up around me. I started noticing that and became curious. Then I started noticing that she would be online right before she was would me, not to go online again during that time, and going back online as soon as she wasn’t with me.
I had became suspicious since the episode I described from May, and with all these signs it was no different. There were even times in which she would get texts to her phone and run to it before I could even handle her the phone.
It became quite obvious that another guy, or guys were around, and she was enjoying it.

Then in December 2016, there was a day in which things got a bit rough. It was Friday, and I always go have dinner at my parents home those days. We always would meet after that to go out a bit and have a coffee with friends. That day when I was on the way to her mothers place I called her and she said she was going out with her best friend (a girl), but I felt her voice wasn’t quite telling the truth. I didn’t explode, but showed her that I felt she wasn’t telling the truth and told her we should sit and have a talk about that later when she would come meet me at my place, and the behaviours she was having with her phone (the ones I described).
Latter that night she came to my place and we sit and talked through it. She basically refuted and said that I was overreacting. She said she was acting normal, and that being online was a way of fighting some anxiety and boredom at work. She manipulated me a bit by saying she would never allow another boyfriend to become jealous towards her, and that she was being quite tolerant to me because she loved me a lot otherwise she would have broken up immediately in that moment.
That was the first time she also opened up and talked about her depression, since she never talked about how she felt. She said she had a huge hole inside her, and that she saw me as a floating device in a storm. She said she felt empty. That she had already considered breaking up with me, because she felt she was dragging me to a bad place with her depression, and that being with me was kind of selfish.
That night I ended up believing her, or at least trying to, or deceiving myself into it. I promised I would be more careful about my feelings and respect her more about feeling jealous.

But it didn’t change a lot.
She kept with the same behaviours on the phone, and started to become colder and colder towards me.
Until that on the morning of the 17th January when she was leaving my place she kissed me without any feeling in it. I told her that morning that she was acting strange and cold, at first she said it was all in my head, but eventually admitted that we were having different intensities in the way we loved each other, and that we should have a talk that night.
We met at my place that night and she said she had though a lot about it and that the best was for us to break up. She said she felt empty and that could feel love towards no one. Said she didn’t want to merely take some time apart from me because it would be keeping me in stand-by mode.

Up until now I have described the relation we’ve had, and the thing that led to the break up.
Now I would like to describe some of the errors I became aware of later after the break up. I started reading and watching a lot of videos about breakups and getting the ex back.
I have been too present and I gave her all the power in the relationship. I stopped being a leader and killed the attraction.
I showed her my weaknesses.
Gave her lots of presents, mostly books that she loves reading. Invested all my time in her, became too present, too available.

Then… The post break up time until now:

After we broke up I went silent for two days. She sent me good morning texts and good evening texts. Until she called me and I answered the phone. She kept saying she loved me and despite we broke up she wanted to keep the friendship because she “respects” me. She insisted she wanted me to keep having dinner regularly at her moms place.
When we were together for the first time after the break up she hugged me strongly and said she loved me.
We would see each other regularly, and eventually there was a day in which we kissed. But she kept insisting that she couldn’t e back with me, at least not until she was feeling good and out of the depression.
Time went by, and there was an event, which I consider to be very important:
After about two weeks we had broken up, my ex was away from the area where we live on a meeting of the company where she works for 2 days. Her mother called me and invited me to go have dinner at their place since she wasn’t there and her family really enjoys spending time with me. I went to a local supermarket and bought some wine and a desert, which was strawberries and cream. As I’m heading to pay, her best friend (girl) that I mentioned previously comes across me and I stop for a small chat. She looks at my hands and goes like “wine, strawberries and cream?”. I told her I had been invited to dinner and that it was a mere courtesy, but I didn’t say where I was having dinner, since I didn’t have to. The next day I get a text from my ex saying she was going to remove from facebook that we were in a relationship and she wanted to know how I felt about it. I told her that if we weren’t together it was a decision that she had to take on her own, but that I thought it was stupid to talk about it texting. We went to a coffee later that day when she came back from the company meeting, and the first thing she tells me about is how drunk she had got at the company meeting dinner the night before, and that she had been dancing with other guys and so on. Then she went to talk about removing the relationship status, but nothing too special. Just said that she cared about how I felt about it and that it was important to know it. What I felt, was that she was desperately trying to hurt me with all that stupid bullshit talk. First thing I told her was that getting drunk when taking anti-depressives is completely stupid. Then I told her I had a great dinner the night before, with a good wine and a great woman (her face goes red), her mother (her face goes pale white). She hadn’t even been home, and didn’t know from her family that I had been there.
It’s quite clear that her best friend told her about seeing me buying wine, strawberries and cream.

As time went by, we met a couple of times, and kissed. Said we loved each other, but she kept me on the stand-by mode. She didn’t feel good being in a relation, not until she felt good with herself, and the usual “shit” talk.
As this kept happening, I started noticing that she started to follow tons of guys on instagram, and adding new guys on facebook everyday. She keeps constantly online on watsapp and a close friend of mine who works with her told me that even her co-workers have noticed it and started to talk about it.

Then, a couple of days before Valentines day we met at my place. I had a talk with her and told her that this situation could not go on. It’s stupid that if we love each other we should not be apart. She told me “you are the perfect man in the wrong moment”. She kept saying that she didn’t know if in the future, when she feels better… Always the same talk. And the same talk of keeping the friendship…
I told her that I could not keep the friendship after having been her boyfriend and having so strong feelings about her. Not now, not in the moment we were living. She said she would be very sad if she lost my friendship in case we didn’t end up together.
She told me that she is reducing the anti-depressants and that she would not keep seeing the psychiatrist, but that she would seek for a psychologist in the future, as she was blaming the medication for the emptiness she feels, and lack of capacity to love. (even though she says she loves me).
I let her know that I would step away from her, because being with her and keeping this shit talk made me feel sad and anxious.
I also told her that for the sake of her well being and depression she could always expect my support and call me every time she needed something.
Later as we were talking she gets closer to me, starts touching me and we end up again saying, “I love you” to each other and kissing.
I told that on Valentines I was going to cook for two people, and that I would appreciate if she joined me at my place for dinner, without any compromise, just a good talk and good food. I told her she didn’t have to tell me if she was coming or not. Just show up if she felt like.
On Valentines day she didn’t show up. At 10:30PM she texts me saying that she didn’t forget my invitation, but that her schedule at work was changed for that week and that she was working until 10PM the hole week. This was not an excuse, she was indeed working, It was confirmed to me by a friend of mine who works with her.

That day, February 14th there was a change. I was browsing online and discovered about the NO CONTACT RULE, and some advices on relationships.
I started to dig more and more, and have been watching lots of videos and reading a lot about “how to get your ex back”.
I’ll get to what I have been learning about that in the end (I’m almost finished! Sorry for the huge testimonial).
The truth is that all the times we were together or talked after the break up, it was always me reaching out to her and trying to know how she was feeling.

I decided to go into a no contact period with her.
I stopped liking her stuff on facebook and instagram, stopped looking at her profiles, and unfollowed her. I never reached back to her again. She keeps liking everything I post online. (I don’t post sentimental stuff except some articles I write for a local newspaper, in which I go into some more philosophical ideas and concepts, that somehow describe how I feel about life, society, people, sometimes love.)
I have a friend (woman) who is a photographer that had been asking me to model for her for a long time, but I never felt quite comfortable with that. Since I needed to boost my ego a little bit I accepted the challenge and we went for a nice session from which we got some very nice pictures of me. I have only posted two of them (in different days), but they had great success among women, getting lots of likes and comments. The two times I posted those pictures, a couple hours later my ex posted pictures of herself too, one in which she focused on her eyes, and another one from the company meeting I mentioned before. She got some likes too, not as much as I did with mine, but lots of guys were there, including some new guys and friends she didn’t have before.
I know that the main idea of no contact is to heal myself, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I stopped looking for her, contacting, I checked her profiles only a couple of times a week. But I know I’ve failed.

One week ago, she called me out of nowhere. I didn’t answer since I didn’t want to break NO CONTACT, but eventually gave in and called her back because it could be about her depression. She said she needed the box of her phone and the charger of an electric toothbrush she had left at my place and wanted to go out for a coffee. I had been reading a lot and it seemed to me that she was missing me and wanted to find a way to see me so I pushed back. Told her I’m with a lot of stuff in hands and that I already had plans for that evening, so I suggested handing that stuff to her mother, since she works right in front of where I live.
I waited a few days and so I did.
Last Wednesday I gathered those two things plus a pairs of slippers she had left here and a board game.
There were also some sex toys we had together, some that she bought and a pair of handcuffs she already owned, but I didn’t send those.
As I was arriving at work that day I get a text from her saying something like “Hey sweet you forgot to send a blanket I had there and the handcuffs too. Kiss”. I didn’t answer because that made me confused and anxious.
These last few days I’ve been thinking a lot about what I should do and talked to a couple friends. Some said I should call her and hook up with her to give her the handcuffs (since the blanket was not at my place since summer

Yesterday I called her to go get some coffee and give her back the handcuffs. We talked about how she’s been doing a bit on the phone, but soon went down to set up something. She said she would call, but that only happened today. I was at the gym, so didn’t even answer, but I had a text of hers suggesting that I would go by her place and drop the handcuffs and the other stuff.
So I did.
As I arrived she came out and we had a small talk on the street. She said she was going to get her hair painted red in the afternoon and cut it a little bit.
I didn’t resist and asked her if requesting me to deliver that stuff meant that she had taken a decision about us, and she said yes. That she was leaving the medication, feeling better and that she had come to the conclusion that she was better on her own, alone.
I hugged her and told her she could always count on me as a friend and that I liked her a lot. After that I said I was going away, and we stared a bit at each other pretty close… I kissed her lips and took off. She didn’t try to stop me from doing it, like if she was expecting me to do it.

And so that’s my story.
I know its long and probably you didn’t even read it. But I need some help.
My head is full of doubts.
I have a common friend with her who says she’s not depressed anymore. She’s been looking happy and not in a depressive mood anymore. She talks about going out at night, has been buying new clothes.

I want to get back with this girl, and I need help.

I mentioned above that I’m now aware of the mistakes I have made. And I made a lot.
Before she broke up, I gave her all the power. I let her take control, and exposed my fears of being cheated on and losing her. I gave her all the love and dedication, gifts, and I understand that I made her loose the attraction for me.
After the break up I did all wrong. I was there always present, told her I loved her, and basically let her know that she could keep me as a PLAN B, that I would be there for her.

I’m really feeling down and could use your best advice right now. How should I act? What should I do?
Should I start no contact again from zero?
She still has all of our pictures together online on facebook and instagram. I have deleted a couple of them, and hidden others, but also have some online. Should I delete them?
I also talk a lot with her mother, she realy wants us to get back together, and has always promised me she will never let her know we talk. I also talk about how i feel to a couple friends of hers, who became friends of mine too.
Should i quit doing this?
Your best advice will be much appreciated.