Hello, Brian--

Make it a shiraz:)

I'm so mourning on your behalf. For someone to walk away after 2 years, with such a vague explanation...it just feels...cheap.

One of my self-imposed hard-and-fast break-up rules (assuming I've spent a lot of time and effort vetting the person before commencing a relationship together) is that I only get to break up after I've discussed the thoughts and feelings that are making me feel like breaking up, multiple times, giving each other time and chances to figure it out before breaking up (assuming no violence/abuse). So when someone breaks up, leaving the other person clueless as to why, well, that's just not cool in my book.

Sounds like you're taking a lot of guesses as to why she left, and I think it's cool you're willing to check yourself to see what you needed to learn. If she did indeed think "This is insurmountable" about your mousetrap tendences, what she was really saying was "I'm the one who can't mount it". Someone else might have zero problem with how you were handling things.

And to give you some credit...the things you call 'irritations'--money, erratic eating habits, astrocartography (yeah, I had to look that one up, and yeah the scientist in me shuddered in considering having to deal with someone I love being into that sort of thing)--those sound like big things that needed to be resolved. You weren't harping on minutia like she sometimes forgot to squeegee the shower walls when she was done.

And...good on you for expressing what was bothering you in your relationship. I've only recently been focusing on getting better at that. I'm still sort of calibrating it. I'm going from hardly ever expressing that something was bothering me to learning when and how to do it, so I sometimes muck it up. I'm getting better at expressing my 'irritations' assertively instead of aggressively. And I'm especially learning that after expressing 'hey, this is kind of getting to me' to follow it up with questions. I don't necessarily focus on asking 'why' because sometimes that just engenders defensiveness. The main line of questioning is soliciting their ideas of how to resolve it and/or offering my own ideas and asking what they think about the idea.

But yeah...this is a lot. I'm so hoping to see you write some pieces to help you sift through everything you're thinking and feeling...I'll be reading.

--Lee