More detailed information about what happened between us can be found via this very long post below I did after we broke up:
We were a couple for 5 months before she deployed in February and things were amazing between us. We were inseparable and had so much fun. When she deployed to Afghanistan she was worried I would forget about her and leave her. I told her I would not because I loved her so much and a year being away is short term and our life together is long term and I was thinking long term.
Everything remained good for the first few months. We would FaceTime every day (when she woke up and before she went to sleep) and it was great to see her. There were times she would actually tear up and tell me how much she missed me and it would crush me to see her like that as I wanted to take care of her and hold her. I reassured her I am going nowhere and I am waiting for her. She actually sent me a card within the first few weeks that she got there saying, "I filled gaps in her life which she thought no man could ever fill and my love for her has made her want to start living her life of happiness and fulfillment with me". Then things slowly started to unravel.
She did not want to talk with me when she woke up so she could have "me" time and listen to music which I fully understood and supported. However, then I was supposed to move into her place in May. She was all excited about it as it was her idea to begin with before she deployed in February (I do own my place but I was going to rent it out), yet all of a sudden at the end of April she changed her mind and said she got anxiety and has issues when it comes to real commitment but still loves me so much. We talked about this and how this may affect us going forward and she said that she does not plan things (ummm...she is a logistical planner in Afghanistan) and lives her life to the max day to day because she never knows when she may die. This clearly is not true as she asked me to move into her place, we planned trips to take during her R&Rs, and we had talked about having a family together. She also stated that she considered letting me go because she did not want to waste my time in case things did not work out between us.
Then she came back in May for R&R. She actually came back 3-4 days early and surprised me at my door at 7:30am on a Saturday. It was amazing!!! She seemed happy to see me and I was definitely happy to see her. Unfortunately, as her R&R went on she started to become distant and told me to stop being too nice to her. I explained how I am always nice and I only get 10 days with her so she should be treated like a queen. That bothered her and said she wanted me to be "normal". She would sleep a lot which I understood and wanted her to as she was working a lot of hours or she then would be on her phone texting and sending messages all of the time at all hours and when I asked who she was chatting with she told me not to worry about it. We did not have sex as much as I thought we would and when I did try to initiate it she was very nonchalant about it. When I wanted to cuddle and hold her she took a "whatever" approach. I know many may say well she was cheating, but I do not think that at all because she had been lied to and cheated on with other guys, she knows how honest of a person I am and I would NEVER do that as I think cheating is disgusting, and she would not cause me that type of pain that other guys did to her. Even though she is a civilian over there she has heard and seen things that are horrible which made her very sad and upset. Conversations we had during the R&R were also not the same at all as they were before she left. Now they seemed forced a bit and did not have much substance plus she wanted to have alone time and not be near or around me. When her R&R was over she thanked me for providing her a wonderful time and told me she loved me.
Over the next month the FaceTime conversations got shorter and shorter. I know she was exhausted and wanted to go to bed. I told her if she was super tired then as much as I wanted to see and talk with her that she could just send me an email saying goodnight and get some sleep. I was trying to be as supportive as a boyfriend as possible because I cannot imagine what she sees and hears over there. Then the unthinkable happened....a baby in her family died suddenly and tragically in July and she called me to tell me about it. We then got on FaceTime and she lost it. She said, "why is this happening? This is so unfair!!!" She could not control her emotions anymore and everything started to bubble up. She made an emergency trip back to the States and this was where I saw the relationship was ending. I was there for her and did anything and everything I could to help out her and her family. She and her Mom told me how amazing I was. However, as the funeral was approaching her emotions took over and she became more distant from me and anything I did seemed to bother her. Side note that her Grandmother who she greatly loved passed away shortly before her deployment which delayed her deployment for 2 weeks. Now conversations seemed to be non-existent and she appeared to enjoy hanging out with other friends instead of me. She would stay up until 3am watching TV and would be doing stuff on her phone and if I asked her why she is up so late she would snap and say just watching TV is that OK!! If I mentioned in the morning how she came to bed so late she would snap again like I was keeping tabs on her. Note that she NEVER went to bed that late or would snap at me like that before she deployed. In fact we always went to bed about the same time and she hated it if when she woke up I was not next to her.
Then the night before the funeral she had been hanging out with her best friend (who is a great guy and I became friends with) and then her brother and after they left I came over and we started talking. She had an entire bottle of wine by herself and was pretty drunk and started to really go off about stuff in general. She told me how numb she was, how I cannot understand what she sees and hears over in Afghanistan as it is Secret and Top-Secret classified information, how her family will always come first and I will come second, how she is miserable and unhappy and does not want to be happy or want help from me or anyone. I asked her if she contacts me from Afghanistan because she wants to or because she feels she has to. She said she does it because it is part of her routine. She cried hysterically and no matter what I said or did she just got angrier.
Then surprisingly enough she decided after the funeral to extend her stay for an extra day so as she said, "we could spend some time together because we did not get to". I told her I would love that. After we extended the stay I was looking at my calendar and noticed and said under my breath but was apparently loud enough that I had a class on the day she was leaving. Without hesitation or care she said she would just have a friend take her to the airport. This is when I got mad at her and told her to stop being like this. I never said I was going to go to the class because taking her to the airport and seeing her off was more important and it was something I just noticed. She seemed to not care if I was the last one to see her off or not and said she wanted me to go to the class because she felt it was important to me. She would have never been OK with that before she deployed. We then ended up getting lunch coincidentally at the place where we had our first date which was an impromptu one (no conversation was really had during this recent lunch), saw a movie and then said goodbye to some of her family. After we got back to her place some other people, family and friends, came over to say goodbye including one of her friends who is miserable and nobody likes including her best friend. As it was getting dark out this friend made a comment how she needed to go because her headlights did not work and she said kidding around, "unless I crash over here but I do not want to intrude." Now as much as I dislike her I know she was kidding about staying the night, but without pausing my girlfriend invited her to stay over. I was in shock and dismay. The friend did not stay. All we did after everyone left was clean her place because now she planned on renting it out. She had offered for her one miserable friend to live there but the friend who has all kinds issues declined. We did not relax together at all or spend any true quality time. Once I dropped her off at the airport she did not really say she loved me or anything with affection. It became like me dropping off a friend. When she got on the plane she texted me how she was taking off soon and she will let me know when she gets back. It was very cold and emotionless.
I finally had to break up with her at the end of July. I felt the relationship was clearly causing her unneeded stress and she wanted out but was scared to pull the trigger. It was so very painful as I did not want to and we both cried but she is broken, needs help and will not let me help her. She pushed me away and became very distant. She says she does not have PTSD, but admitted within the first month of being deployed that she took a seminar or something like that and felt she may have it a little. I asked her to be honest with me and tell me if there was someone else she is with or wants to be with. She said there has not been nor is there anyone. She then a few days later emailed me and told me that she thinks the problem was that we went fast and furious in the beginning, but when she got to Afghanistan her mission became the most important and hardest she has ever had, it became her focus, I did not and I just faded away. She said we must not have had a strong enough foundation. She actually started to try and find faults with me while she was back for the funeral so I think she in her head could try and justify why we should not be together. The things she told me were actually untrue (she said I did not take her to dinner for a month once we met for drinks the first night which was untrue as I took her to dinner 5 days after we met and brought her flowers). Overall, I do not buy it at all as we were an amazing couple, clicked and had a very strong bond before she left. She would ask me when she was here in the States months before she deployed why I am so good to her, would tear up with joy and would ask me what I am doing to her in a good way because she started to show emotion when she is normally a very "tough" person. We made future plans together and she told me I was her world. Even her best friend told her she is making a mistake not being with me now and she acknowledged she might be but does not care right now. I know the compound where she is located is very cramped and isolating and she even told me how others approached her asking if it ever gets better because they may have been there for a month and stated it feels like a year. Throw in the hours she is working, what she sees and hears, and the recent deaths in the family and well you have a perfect storm.
Of course there are other things in her life that I am leaving out but based on the research I have done it seems like she has major PTSD. She became a shell of herself and completely opposite of the girl I knew and loved. She became distant, non-responsive, non-communicative, wanted space away from me, did not want to be truly affectionate with me anymore verbally or physically, told me she was numb, miserable and unhappy and did not want help. I wish there was something I could do to help her as I still care about her so much. We do not talk anymore and I miss her. I never thought we would break-up. I would love to hear thoughts on this from others.
