1. She said it was because I'd "never get out from under my parents." I live at home, my dad is almost 90 and he almost died the year before, and we weren't at all close when I was growing up, fucking sue me for wanting to stay close to home for a couple more years.

2. "Jealousy and inability to forgive her for leaving me for her ex on Christmas Eve a year before." - The ONE and ONLY fight we ever had. For background, we had been friends for awhile and were going out a month or two when her ex invited her over to decorate a Christmas tree with his family on the Eve thereof because was feeling lonely (guy was suicidal over their breakup months before) and she assured me he was just her platonic "friend" and nothing to worry about. I was going to be out of town visiting family and not wanting to be jealous or that "controlling" guy I said, "Okay, go and help your friend!" I'd just landed at the start of a two week vacation with my family and got the FB message from her still at the dude's house saying they were back together. A year later we got back together and actually had a really fantastic relationship. Everything seemed to be going great!

Until about 9 months in. We were headed out to a date and she said she was playing a game on a freshman student she was mentoring. She was pretending there was a possible romantic spark between her and a male friend, like there was a romantic tension between them and she wanted "to see how far the freshman girl would go to try to get them together." Again, cool-headed I said: "Okay, but isn't he interested in this other girl? Won't she turn off of him if she thinks this game is for real and there's something between you two?" She said "Oh no, she's going out with someone else now so he tried asking out another girl and she turned him down so he's really, REALLY depressed right now, we were talking on the phone about it all weekend. I'm taking him out for a drink on Saturday night at this bar to talk to him about it!" Now THAT I took her on over. Never would I take a female classmate, let alone one who's romantically depressed, out for a drink when I'm in a relationship, that's just flat out disrespectful to the person I'm with. Hell, my parents are absolutely in love with each other, have been for 30+ years but both said if they found out one was in a bar one-on-one drinking with someone of the opposite sex at night, that'd be it. Not a word would be said, they'd be gone. Period. "You don't do shit like that when you're with someone you love." Maybe it's old fashioned but maybe that's why today there's a 2/3 divorce rate in my state. Two days later we made up and honestly, I had thought we worked things out. Apologies were given, issues discussed, the compromise established we were both able to hang out with whomever we liked but if it made the other person uncomfortable they could politely make their feelings felt ask that they not go but there would be no controlling aspect over it. From that point on though, the relationship went down and I couldn't figure out why.

1. Drinking, weight, and general negativity - These are my own theories on what contributed to the end. The above two were given a month after the breakup. The day of though, the only reason I got was "I'm just not happy." and I spent a long time trying to figure out why. I was drinking every night. Not getting drunk, that's for Thursday, Friday and Saturday after all, just having a couple after getting home from studying and always ordering a beer when I was eating out. It really was a bad habit and I gained a LOT of weight from when we first met (went from 120 lbs to 180 lbs in the course of a couple years) and it showed in other ways like depression, laziness, not trying as hard in school, having negative attitude about things in general and punctuality, sleeping in REALLY late whenever I could get away with it and sometimes when I couldn't, cancelling dates with her even. Just generally fucking up. So when the breakup happened my first reaction was to get a few six-packs and planned to go home and black out. That's what you're supposed to do when you lose the person you love most, right? Instead I just set them by the door, sat in my armchair and ended up quitting cold turkey for 3 months straight. Occasionally I'll have a couple these days but when it's an appropriate, social situation and even then lately I've really just lost interest in it altogether. Got my first gym membership, lost 30 lbs within the first two months and kept it down ever since. Shirts started to fit again, I needed a new belt, I went down in jean-size. She was overweight to begin with and had started going to the gym and dieting halfway through the relationship but I was too lazy to accept when she'd try to encourage me repeatedly to go with her and I'd lie saying I was doing some sort of cardio on my own. Now I go to the gym at least 4 times a week. I've abandoned fast food as best I could and eat as healthy as I can. I even became a part time assistant fencing coach and martial arts instructor at the martial arts school I studied at back in high school. My attitude towards my work and career and life in general are better and I can't believe how negative I used to be over the littlest things. All this within one year. I had a heart attack looking at the before and after photos from last February and last week! Goddamn if only I'd done this sooner, I wish she could've been there to be a part of it. I have a charm on my keychain, I bought it at the end of the year apart although I meant to buy it for her when we were still going out but never got around to it, it's a miniature something from a romantic TV show we'd watch every week and I always have my keys sitting next to me when I'm working hard on something like studying or working out or whatever needs to be done. I didn't get it to pine over or anything emo like that, I got it to remind me, to hold me to the mark. Whenever I start to pick up the old habits again it's right there to remind me what's at stake when you start to lose track of yourself and that's enough to knock be back into shape.