@LuckiLee I ask myself this a lot. I also ask it out loud in therapy every once in a while too. I don't know the answer myself, but some guesses I've made as far as it relates to my experience:
-I think the emotional whiplash of it just f*cked with my brain, and has lodged the whole experience in there like a bullet. A normal, sudden breakup would hurt for a while, but for this it's like the woman who was genuinely in love with me one day felt nothing for me the next. Like a switch. Not only that, but her personality completely changed. Hell, even her vocabulary changed. It didn't feel like a breakup, it felt like my girlfriend died. But worse, she was still there, in body, not caring about me one bit. It's one thing to lose romantic feelings for someone, that happens all the time and, barring anything nasty going down, you often hear people saying "I'll always care for that person." She stopped caring, without any kind of impetus for it. To go from being so intensely loved one minute to discarded and spoken to as if you're worthless the next... it's the kind of thing where if a friend experienced it, I'd say just drop this person from your mind, they are f*cked up. I wish I knew how to do that for myself.
-As seems to be a common theme on here, when the relationship was in its honeymoon phase, she appeared to be my perfect woman. I even actively looked for something wrong with her, and couldn't come up with anything. Now, obviously no one's perfect, and it wasn't always going to be sunshine and rainbows. She wasn't some dream girl (obviously, now). But she did have all the qualities I looked for in a partner, especially how unbelievably loving and kind she was. It was her character, really. I respected the hell out of her before we got together, then as we started dating and got closer I just couldn't believe how many boxes she checked. And for me, it took me my whole life to that point find someone like that. That's a hard thing to let go, especially when there was no gradual degradation of the relationship. It went from 100 to 0 in an instant.
-Then I think it's watching someone you love so much struggle, even as they are treating you like garbage. My ex was in incredible pain. She was feeling suicidal and having panic attacks, which is likely what led to her becoming emotionally numb. While we were dating, I saw a genuinely happy person. She was reconnecting with herself and her dreams in a way that she hadn't in years, and even her best friend told me, "When I look at her now, this is the girl I remember growing up with." So for her to change, to become emotionally flat, to start going out and drinking every night, to basically use avoidance in all its forms to cope... I wish I could help her. I know I can't. I know she feels like she doesn't need help (even though before she went numb she specifically told me she needed help and was researching therapists). But there's just something about seeing the person you care about clearly struggling... I don't know, maybe I'm a bleeding heart, but it's hard for me to not care. In a lot of ways I wish I could stop caring as quickly as she did.
