Girlfriend’s blunt heave-ho means ex should move on

My longdistance girlfriend of five years has suddenly come to the realization that I’m too “emotionally dependent” on her. Because I add to, and cannot relieve her of, other emotional burdens (her mom, sister and school are all stress factors), she has decided to break things off.

She also thinks that after so many years of this relationship, I don’t understand her feelings enough ( like when I get upset when she doesn’t return calls). I thought emotional dependence is part of being in a relationship.

When we move to the same city ( planned, soon), aren’t these problems rectifiable? I know it sounds bleak, but after all these years and an awesome relationship, now she realizes this? Is something else at work here?

There’s always something else at work with a rejection like that. But first, I’d like a moment to process your remark about “emotional dependence.” ( Loud choking sobs.) ( Nose- blowing.) ( Shaky exhale.) Thank you. Every rejection has wiggle room (except “I don’t love you anymore,” which pretty much quashes debate).

Your ex, for example, offered a specific complaint — thereby leaving the door open for you to rebut the complaint, and replay every moment of the past five years in your head, and nurture little sprouts of hope, and argue to her in anguished midnight phone calls that you really can change even though you’re technically not any more of an emotional burden than any other boyfriend would be because boyfriends are ( muffled wail) supposed to be an emotional burden.

But here’s the unspoken “something else at work” beyond a rejection such as hers: You may want to fix the problem, but she doesn’t. For whatever reason, she decided there was too much bad to make the “awesome” worth saving, no matter how awesome it was.

My guess is, this decision wasn’t sudden so much as your introduction to it was. But that’s moot speculation.

Regardless of how quickly she came to it, it is simply her opinion, and an opinion is not “rectifiable” unless she wants it to be — not by logic, not by history, not by proximity, and not by attempted coercion, which never works, even when it works.

Let fate have this one, and let go.

— East Coast