h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know if anyone out there will read this or respond, but I need any kind of advice, any kind of sympathy I can get.

I was recently dumped by a man who had truly loved me. I'm not going to get over this very quickly. A lot of things were really going wrong in his life.

For starters, he has a job he absolutely despises. He's turned into an alcoholic from all of this. His roommate reported him for animal cruelty (completely unfounded and the SPCA actually filed a complaint against his roommate for harassment). He moved back in with his parents. He developed an anxiety disorder, he still has panic attacks. His best friend was fighting with him. We had a pregancy scare. He found out that he has testicular cancer - has to have one testicle removed.

All of this, and I was trying desperately to hang onto him because I loved him, and thought rather foolishly that it wouldn't matter what was going wrong in his life if I could just be there for him. Unfortunately, he decided that he was best left alone.

Now, usually when I go through a break-up, it's a clean break. We stop talking, I move on. Here it was difficult because he wanted to stay friends, and since he has cancer - I wanted updates on what was going on. We keep meeting up because for some reason, he never can give me all my stuff at the same time. We're meeting up today because I really need my sunglasses back - he'd lost them - but now he can't give me back some of my clothes because he's "washing them".

To top it all off, he told me that he still loves me.

Is there any way I can get over this break-up decently? I'm trying...it's just so hard because like I said: everything in his life is horrible and I can't just walk away from him like that.

Tricky, very tricky indeed.

You might find the best place to get a response from the community here is by posting here http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A148907

Best of luck.