A) Over 4 years. B) No C) Over the course of the relationship we both become very different people compared to when it started. I had become a shell of my previous self, was drinking heavily and was no longer very fun to be around. She had become more beautiful and more wonderful with each passing day and eventually the history of our love provided insufficient purchase so everything fell down. Ultimately I'm glad she made the decision to end it as she deserved much better than what I was giving her. There is obviously much more to it than this, but nothing I'm motivated to share.
a) One year, eight months. b) No; but in the intervening five years I've yet to recapture that feeling of effortless intimacy, familial acceptance and profound, almost indescribable admiration towards another human-being not related by blood. Not for want of opportunity; rather an essentially blameless, but still agonising lack of reciprocation from my quarter. c) Mismatched libido and eventual breakdown of communication arising from a resultant—but nonetheless inexcusable—passive-aggressive emotional disengagement on my part, further exacerbated by physical distance such that my subsequent (though belated) overtures of reconciliation couldn't be rendered with nearly the level of affect befitting what should have been an earnest, heartfelt and impassioned entreaty.
I have, on occasion, pondered what might ensue were our paths in life to converge anew and become again romantically entwined; but it took me fully three years to lay that orphaned devotion properly to rest and I'm not sure that the Pandora's box I buried there is one I can ever bear to re-open, however serendipitously.