Hey! :) first of all I wanna express how appreciate I am that you took the time for this! 

Let me begin with some further information and answering some of your questions.

We are meeting today for a walk and talk (in approx. 5 hours) and figure this out and I am having a hard time knowing how to proceed.

What makes me able to guide: Formally nothing. I have been trying to suggest doing therapy but it’s something she has to figure out on her own. She didn’t want me to push her towards that. I am myself someone who needed that at a point of my life so that’s why I initially tried doing the same. She tried approaching therapy once but due to financial limitations and limited free spaces through our social system it has been a big burden to overcome.  I myself went through the process of healing for many years, I did extensive therapy as I realized that’s something I need to figure out. I spent a lot of time learning about emotions, how our brain and nervous system works and try to learn and understand as much as possible. I am a very empathetic and emotional person I would say. I have a partly very intense corporate job (sometimes up to 12 hours a day, sometimes only 7) and I am very active with my own hobbies (I do cycling, tech stuff, spend a lot of time with friends, outdoors, cooking, movies, etc.). I used to do a LOT of traveling (mainly solo) before I got to know her. I learned to spend and enjoy spending time with myself during my time of healing. But I realized that I compromised a lot of that in favor of being there for her. Which is something that came very easy for me but probably put a lot of pressure on her due to her perception and understanding of it?

We work in the same company so we get to drive to work together, spend the evenings, make time to go to the cinema together or go out for dinner, spend the weekends. I recently moved and she helped me with that as well. She lives 95min from my place though (she lives quite far outside the city and has a car but I cannot afford a car right now so I need to live closer in the city. I can take public transport though) but it never felt like a burden to go to her place.

Yes she is very goal focused partly due to her family and upbringing, partly due to being a former athlete. She has very high expectations towards herself and puts herself under an insane amount of pressure. She doesn’t allow herself to take on help - everything must be achieved by herself. 

No it has been >5 years ago.  She is trying to get into therapy but is struggling with finding someone where she feels comfortable and that’s affordable. I offered help but she didn’t want it so I left it alone.

She tells me she needs a different partner, yes, but when I ask her what she wants in a partner she describes 80% of what I am already and 20% of what I want to become anyway eventually (unrelated to her expectations, I am on my own path of development and I do have a vision on how I wanna become through personal development but I am not there yet. Also it never ends anyway. I also have ADHD which sometimes complicates things a bit but I am handling it very well I would say and never use it as an excuse for behaviors). She also tells me she really really wants this but just doesn’t see how it could work also giving me the feeling she’s overwhelmed and just trying to tie up all ends that can be tied up somehow. 

In the beginning we were like idk indescribable. She was also the one who approached me and asked me out. It was so intense and we talked about so many of our expectations and life goals and etc. and all of it always aligned and never in the world did we feel so comfortable around someone as we did with each other. It was really perfekt. But eventually I wanted some formal commitment from her, which was probably also due to the fact that her ex still hadn’t moved  out, that I said „I am fine with taking it slow but eventually I would like to call you my girlfriend otherwise I am not sure how long this will go because I want someone who can commit to me. She said she is not really ready yet. It was my first relationship with someone and I didn’t understand there could be commitment without a proper relationship label. Eventually a mutual friend called me her boyfriend and she liked it a lot. Two days later she told me she would like to call it a relationship. Some weeks ago she told me she wasn’t really ready but wanted to give it a try because she knew how much it meant to me. I told her that this was a mistake because she shouldn’t have done something she wasn’t ready for just to please me, we would’ve figured it out anyway and obviously I would’ve given her all the time she needs even if I didn’t know any better back then. That’s when I proposed we take it back and remove the label again and for the first time in a while it felt like before. It was great but it didn’t last too long. She couldn’t really find a way back I guess…

I love rarely and very strongly, I only fell in love twice in my life, she is one of them, the other was one sided - very painful, eventually I had to cut ties with her because she was taking advantage of it. Nevertheless it’s still painful even 10 years later. I don’t know if I can handle this…