Imagine dating someone for three years. You think the relationship is heading towards marriage, but when you bring it up, your significant other suddenly ends the relationship.

Would you accept the breakup and move on, or would you try to fix the problems in the relationship so that you could stay together?

In today’s story, one woman is blindsided when her boyfriend breaks up with her, but he seemed pretty confident it was the right thing to do.

Let’s hear his side of the story.

AITAH for dumping my GF of three years when she asked for marriage and more committment?

So the impetus for my question comes from a multi-page hand written letter I [25M] got in the mail two weeks ago from my now ex-girlfriend [25F] Melanie who I ended a relationship with about a year ago.

In the letter, she accuses me of playing with her feelings, shattering her heart, being a complete jerk, and not being a man for not committing to her based on how our relationship ended.

I’m not going to lie, it really made me second guess myself, because I knew I had hurt her by leaving, but I thought I did the right thing.

Here’s how they met.

Three years ago I met Melanie.

She was a nursing student in her last year doing her clinicals and I worked as a licensed practical nurse.

We were chatting when the end of her clinicals and my shift ended and one thing led to another where I ended up walking her to her car and we ended up chatting for almost an hour.

At the end she called me cute and shyly gave me her number.

I rang her up that night and we continued from there.

She asked me out on a date and we ended up dating.

She was his first girlfriend.

I never had a girlfriend before Melanie and never thought too much of relationships after striking out a lot high-school, but I guess glowed up after graduating, grew a few inches, dressed better and started taking care of myself more.

Melanie was the first girl to really take interest in me in that way so I feel I just went along for the ride.

We dated casually for the first year.

The second year things got more serious and we ended up renting an apartment together and things were pretty chill.

Here’s why they broke up.

The third year is when things went sideways.

I found Melanie controlling, she didn’t want to travel with me (I love to travel) and she didn’t want me travelling alone or with friends, and I found her a not particularly tidy or homely person.

I was comfortable but not invested.

So when she brought up proposing, marriage and future plans I told her things wouldn’t work out between us because of the reasons above and left.

He didn’t want to try to work things out.

She said she could work on these things.

But I said it was a lot and I’d rather move on, we were nowhere near the same place.

I shared the letter with a few close friends and they all said this normal early 20’s relationship stuff and it’s normal to move on from someone you think you’re incompatible with.

So AITAH?

It sounds like he never really loved her, but she really cared about him. The relationship wouldn’t have worked, but her heart was broken. It’s sad, but it’s probably best for them to both move on.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The only thing he did wrong was wait so long to break up with her.

I think she’s the one who’s not letting it go, hence the recent letter.

This person calls guys “weird.”

Breaking up with her wasn’t the problem.

They weren’t compatible.

He did the right thing, but his timing may have been off.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.