I am depressed because I lost my girlfriend and I quit my job

The job is just a red herring. Her decision almost certainly was not about the job, it was about the relationship as a whole. She kept in her dissatisfaction for 6 months while pretending to be supportive and that's what killed the relationship. Had she been more open with you about how she felt about things, maybe it would have worked out...maybe she's still have broken up with you, but she wasn't fair to you by being honest and it killed it. The job situation was just a convenient scapegoat. Don't put so much pressure on yourself. Things don't work out until they do. You have to be open to failure before you can possibly succeed.

I think you have to own the fact that you chose your career over your relationship. Without having to consider someone else's preferences, you have the freedom to more fully persue your career and move where you need to be. Something to work on from here on out is communication with your partners - I'm really surprised by this: ...had a feeling that my girlfriend would have preferred to have me accept the offer in the city that we had been living... Did you not ask her directly ? Why couldn't she clearly express her desires to you? Was she clear about where she wanted to live, but you dismissed her? You really down played the fact that you made a unilateral decision to move out of your shared home to a different city. Did you suggest that your girlfriend move to the city with you? Did you two have a long term plan that you would eventually be living in the same city? LDRs are tough in the best situations, and are not really feasible long term for most people if there is not an end date. On pushing her a bit more... I think people here are actually being really harsh on your ex-girlfriend - in general pushinging for answers in a break up is not going to make you feel any better or even give you closure. It seems like you and your girlfriend were not meant to be good long term partners. That's okay, and you can take the good things you got out of your relationship, and the learning experiences, and own them and become a fuller, more rounded person. Plus, you have an awesome experience of following your career in a new country, which realistically would not have been possible if you were still in a relationship. Things will feel crappy for a while, that's normal, but remember to be kind to yourself.

She sounds like a self-centered and somewhat vain person. You probably dodged a bullet here.

Honestly, it sounds like you have an incredible opportunity for a clean break, the likes of which most of us never see. Most people who break up are constantly reminded of their ex-partner at home, around town, by mutual friends, etc. It sounds like you have a great career opportunity too. Make the most of it!

I think people are being too harsh on your girlfriend. I mean, you'd been together for 18 months, you were living together, there's every chance she thought it was a committed relationship leading to marriage. She supported you (emotionally at least) during your unemployment and indecision about where you want your career to go, amidst the uncertainty of where it old lead you and then happy days, you actually land two job offers. One of which means you can stay in the same town and maintain a stable relationship. Keeping in mind that you didn't even know what you wanted out of a job, at the very least, one would assume you'd choose the one which allows you to stay with your partner. But no. You took the other job, one you already had doubts about, knowing full well it would put additional strain on your relationship. You then start to freak out, so not only does your girlfriend not have her live in partner, she has a depressed wreck she has to continually prop up and reassure that his actions in abandoning her and choosing his career over her are ok (so you don't feel bad about it) that's a lot to put on her, so she suggests therapy for you. The therapist confirms what the girlfriend can see with her own eyes, yes, you had other options and still chose a job you didn't even know if you wanted, over her. While she tries to comfort and help you through it. Cue breakup. Seriously, I don't blame her either. Sure, you may have made an effort to drive between cities and see her but the thing is, you never needed to put the relationship under that pressure in the first place. You may not have known what you wanted career wise but you also didn't make the relationship a priority, or simply just thought that she'd put up with endless hand wringing and prevaricating while she was just supposed to stand by and make you feel ok about choosing a job over her. You really took her for granted. Yes, she could have moved with you (had you considered being with her enough of a priority to y'know, ask) but why when you had a job offer in your town? I say let it go, your actions say you clearly value your indecisive job path over her. Which is fine, it sounds like she's got the message loud and clear anyway. A new country and a new job is the best possible opportunity to put it all behind you and figure out who you are and what you want, because it's pretty clear that you just don't know at this point, and until you figure that out, its probably better to be single anyway.

As James Brown once sang, "You got to live for yourself and nobody else." The older I get, the more I see how much that holds true. You've chosen to keep your house in order with respect to your livelihood and life goals. That will be very attractive to potential partners of quality. I can't tell you whether or not those partners will arrive on the scene, but I can tell you that from where I sit, you really did the right thing on all fronts. One suggestion: Drove like crazy between the two cities to allow me to spend as much time with her as I could during the week. This is probably a large part of what induced the emotional extremes. No partner is worth this type of wear and tear on your hide. In future, avoid: I'm speaking from experience here. LDR should be half and half in terms of time and money whereever possible.

On pushing her a bit more, she told me that she found it hard to convince herself that just a job could make someone so unhappy and there was something severely wrong with me. She is somewhat immature and obviously doesn't have a lot of experience with how much the day-to-day environment of a specific job can affect your well-being. However. This whole scenario is one of the issues couples have to grapple with when it comes to cohabitation: you have to talk about your future and where you're going to live and what professional and academic decisions you're going to make, and you have to do it together. You two don't sound like you made those decisions together and talked them out and planned out your futures collaboratively. And perhaps that is the reason why you decided to live together rather than get married, but you still confronted the same logistical issues. You're the one with the less-flexible career in a narrow field that depends on the ability to move. Why didn't she explore the possibility of moving with you? Honestly, this sounds like there is a whole sea of incompatibilities lingering under the surface with her.

I don't really disagree with the other estimations of this whole episode. But I have two observations just to throw out there: 1. It's hard for you to make decisions. Even when you make them, you're second-guessing yourself; you're still second-guessing moving to a new country, even though you're in the midst of doing it. When you do something, jump in with both feet. Live that commitment. It's stressful to keep torturing yourself with "was this the right decision? What might have been? Did I ruin everything? Should I stay or go?" ad infinitum. The way you describe your back-and-forthing about things reminds me of me, and that reminds me that I do this because I have anxiety. Discuss anxiety with your therapist. Discuss decisionmaking and choice-making. Discuss knowing yourself and being honest with yourself. These are all essential skills, and you can learn them and become better at them. 2. Lost my love, my support system: One person, even a partner, cannot be a support "system." They can give you support sometimes, but there are times they need their own support or otherwise aren't available. If they are always in the role of supporter, especially for a lengthy time, it's easy for them to become emotionally exhausted from that. You need a bigger network of people to help support you. They can be friends, coworkers, family. There's always trouble when one person depends on just one or a few important others - people have many more things they need to do than be 100% supportive of others all the time. By ensuring that you have a robust and healthy friend network, which includes both people to spend time with for fun and distraction and people you can reveal yourself and your deeper concerns to, you will shore up your own ability to handle the difficult moments that happen when you're trying to establish your life and career. Concentrate on building some solid friendships in your new assignment, and keeping in touch and talking to sympathetic people who you know now.

And she couldn't move because...? It sounds like she expected you to make a lot of really significant sacrifices for her, but was not willing to make any for you. Honestly, I don't think your priorities are mixed up at all. From what you've told us about this person, I think choosing your career over your relationship with her was absolutely the right call.