The person I speak of was my first true love- we reconnected after 17yrs apart when he reached out to me- he was honest and shared he was in month 5 of recovery from a 15 yr long battle with heroin. After a month of talking, texting, emailing etc, he paid for me to come visit him in Boston(I live in North Carolina). He planned a wonderful sober week in Cape Cod for us, told me he loved me, I told him the same etc. As he approached about month 8.5 in his first year of recovery he grew more and more distant as things started to get more stressful in his life(reconnecting with his children for the first time in 9 months, 2 of his friends from his sober house relapsing, helping get a co-worker into detox etc). He ended things via text saying he didn't really know what had changed but he didn't know what emotions he was really feeling and the relationship with me was adding stress to his life and recovery process and that he felt like he wasn't emotionally available at this point to return the type of love he felt I deserved and that his sponsor advised he simply his life and not continue in a "new" relationship during early recovery. I would never want to be the stress that would cost him his sobriety, I'm heartbroken though and feel like I will never see him again. He told me that he cared for me so very much but that he had to concentrate on his recovery right now. Some here on SR have suggested that he "let me go with love" because he did not want to bring me into the mess of early recovery and the clean up of the messes he made while he was using. I support his decision if he feels that he has to do this to remain sober- but I guess I'm trying to access if this is normal behavior during the first year of recovery? I never knew him as an addict or when he was using and understandably he shared very little about that peroid of his life. I just don't understand why he enacted reaching out to me and coming on so strongly only to retreat so quickly. I was supportive and sympathetic to his recovery, started to attend Nar-Anon so to ensure that I was taking care of me and not enabling, and I live in NC so I wasn't a daily obligation or stress in any way. I know very little about heroin addiction and the first year of recovery so I guess I'm just trying to better understand and make sense of it all.