[Solved] I just need a shoulder to cry on

Hi there,

I'm sorry, it feels like I might be posting this too soon, that I haven't "suffered enough", and I feel very weak for doing so. Well, I suppose I am very weak at the moment. I'm a complete mess, actually and I don't have any proper friends (outside of work) to turn to, so I feel utterly scared and alone.

I'm 44, live in the UK, the South. My girlfriend of 3+ years broke up with me last night. "Perhaps we should have a little chat," she said, after she'd put my 11-month-old son to bed and I'd taken my daughter from a previous relationship home (she's 11, and wonderful).

We'd had another serious conversation in November - she'd been cold and distant for several weeks, so I finally had to know what was wrong - and she told me I'd not been as helpful as I should have been after my son's birth. Taking him off her hands, cooking, cleaning, none of what I'd done had been enough. Practical stuff. I agreed, but we discussed how difficult I'd found the first few months. Despite having been through it before, for some reason I felt very useless (the nature of my partner's - my EX-partner :boohoo: - job meant that she knew everything about babies already, and it turned out that even the little I did know from the first time round was wrong!). Not just useless but clumsy, as if I was going to break the baby. And she seemed to love every minute, so I was happy to take the back seat. I say happy but I also felt excluded, pushed away. I didn't realise the damage all this was doing until it was too late.

So after that November conversation, I turned myself around, helped out as much as I could, and it felt wonderful. After feeling like a fifth wheel for so long, suddenly I was able to be there for both of them. And for a while our relationship seemed to go back to normal. She was loving again, we were intimate. We seemed happy. But she soon withdrew emotionally again, and when I tried to talk to her, she told me she was still angry, because why couldn't I have been like this before? I felt like whatever I did, I couldn't win.

During last night's "little chat" she told me she wasn't in love with me any more. And there was nothing we could do to bring those feelings back (even though I still absolutely love her to bits). She was very firm about it, and obviously I fell apart and have been breaking down ever since. I look at my beautiful little boy and I well up. Although she reassures me that she'd never move far away, that I will always have a vital part in his life, it still hurts enormously to think I won't see him every day. I felt the same when my relationship with my daughter's mother broke down, although there was little love on either side in that case and my daughter was older (6?).

Obviously I'm devastated and don't know what to do or where to turn. We're trying to be adult about it all as neither of us have anywhere to go just at the moment, so we're sharing the house until we do. The thought of having to move out immediately scares the [censored] out of me - I don't want to be alone, I've got no one to turn to, nowhere to go. And at least while I'm here I can see my little boy as much as before - even if I'm delaying the inevitable.

Part of me actually wanted to die last night. It's the second time this has happened, I'll be a part-time daddy to two children. I'm not a strong person, I don't cope well on my own or out in the world (anxiety, depression, social awkwardness, you name it), and the thought that the mothers of both my children didn't think me good enough boyfriend material to stay with me. And last night's events feel so unfair. I didn't know until November that she was feeling bad enough to consider ending the relationship. We've never fought, she brought up a few problems that I thought I'd addressed... it just feels like I never stood a chance.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on. Good to get stuff off my chest, even though now I've finished typing I know I've got to face real life again and that terrifies me.

Please, if anyone can give me some advice on what to do I'd be so grateful.

Thank you for reading.