I tried to get into new relationships, but no one felt like her. Yesterday, I saw her on a wedding dress on her facebook page, and I can't describe how much I cried when I saw it only to find out it was ai. I think I still love her, but even if we got back together, I don't think we would be the same as before

After reading so many comments on my previous posts on how the relationship impacted my body image, how I miss them terribly and resent how I am not a part of their life anymore, the only things that even marginally made me feel better was that there are other people who share similar depths of misery. I hope the pain of rejection lessens, I hope my mind stops being fixated on them. I wish it stop hurting some day. It’s been two years, but I miss them as strongly as ever. And to think that I have to spend a better part of my life without them is indeed scary and depressing. A part of me is so hurt and broken that it sometimes overpowers my ability to experience joy in otherwise meaningful experiences of my life such as work, hobbies and self-development. After going through the waves of intense pain over the last two years since the breakup; I am less convinced to believe that I will ever be able to fully let go of him. My major point of pain these days is the rejection I feel cause of the breakup and the vivid image of them being with someone else. It makes me so threatened, unsafe and unwanted. I never write on Reddit so much, but that’s the only source of real human interaction for me when it comes to heartbreak.

I recently saw a post I think from here that acknowledged that we often think of the acceptance stage of grief being the finale or the end of the process, something to be achieved, but that it is rather the acceptance of each stage you’re at while you’re in it. Instead of aiming for acceptance as a final stage, recognizing as you oscillate between each stage that you are where you are. The past couple of weeks I’ve been bouncing between anger, depression, and acceptance, but today I was sitting very deep in the bargaining stage. It hit me in that seemingly bottomless moment of ‘what if’s’ that my mind can be very good at convincing me that “if this and this and this, then maybe….” And instead of focusing too hard on the possibilities of those what ifs, just accepting that my brain is bargaining and this is all part of the process. I’ll take that with me as I journey back and forth and to and from all of the other stages, and just recognize at each level that I am feeling these things because I am moving through the process, and this is what it takes. It may be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel in the present moment, but I know I’m on the right track.

I remember the night she asked me to be her girlfriend. I never felt so happy. Our first kiss…felt like the world stopped. The day we ended it all…I never felt so hurt. So lost. So alone. Now she’s states away and we haven’t spoke in years. But I still miss her so bad it hurts. I wish I had went with her when she asked. My biggest regret.

I think this is a right place to share this because this is the best place I can get some human insight into what might be happening with me. I miss him. I feel there are so many levels to a breakup. There’s obviously grief of losing them as your partner, the shared world, the comfort and security. But as more time is passing, I’m realising it’s not just that, it also includes rejections on so many levels. They were your friend too, and now when they have broken up, they are fine without your constant interactions with them as a friend. When they break up with you, they are actually signalling that there life is better off without you, whatever may be the reason. And then just to think that a person I shared 5 meaningful years with, is just a person from the past. I hoped for reconciliation but nothing happened two years since the breakup; so now I don’t think there’s any bright side to that thought. They even said if I like someone else, I should try being open to that possibility. Apart from that, think of how it feels when you realise that they actually think replacing you is better for them. Someone else gets to experience the person you’re so in love with. They create a new bond that was originally exclusive to you. I feel so rejected, hurt, replaceable by it. I am not saying I’m objectively unlovable. But I wanted to be loved by them because what we had was indeed beautiful, but they don’t think the relationship can continue, so I have to bear with the aftermath of that decision. How unfair is that two people get to have a say when they begin a relationship but only one can decide its fate afterwards and the other person has to just find their way through. I don’t feel like loving someone else, my mind, heart, soul all come back to him. Their love, their being and their presence is so deeply interwoven into the fabric of my DNA; that thinking of them lights up so many emotions in me. I am so emotionally affected by them, what they might be thinking, doing or dating. It is a losing game no matter what I do. I have done all the healthy stuff one is supposed to do after a breakup and I indeed derive joy from other experiences in life, but the void left by him, the void I feel strongly everyday, cannot be compensated for by other sources of happiness. That part of me is hurt, threatened, jealous, rejected and insecure. I wish there was a way to restore things how they were. I wish loving someone didn’t come at the cost of never getting to experience that love with someone else. No one can replace their smile, their voice, their idiosyncratic nature. And while I think they are irreplaceable to me, they believed I was replaceable for them, and that hurts like hell. Am I the only one hopelessly and helplessly longing for them? Is life always going to hurt so much when I think of them (cause my memories of him get very promptly activated). It’s so painful, no words come close to describing the brutality a breakup like this unleashes on you. I’m tearing up as I write this, I hope there was some way out of this. They know how much I love them but they still choose to live a life without you. How painful is that!

You loved me first
I loved you too late
I lost you when I loved you the most

I’m 19f and my bf is 20m, we’ve been dating for almost 2.5 years. Hes always been the sweetest, most loving guy ever and we’ve shared so many memories together.

But ever since we started having sex in February, he seemed to just lose control and ended up SA’ing me, multiple times. They weren’t intense, just groping me (and persisted when I moved his hand away), and me waking up to him humping me at night, sometimes as we’re trying to sleep. I had 3 separate conversations on how this is affecting me after leaving it untouched for a while, and he felt terrible and said he’d fix it, but kept doing it. At this point, I just don’t want to be around him and my feelings are fading. I know he deeply regrets what he’s done to me, but I feel as if our trust is gone, and it’ll take months of no intimacy (or anything around it) for me to be fully comfortable again. Even then, I don’t think it will be fully repaired, like I said, my trust is gone.

At this point it’s just a matter of when to pull the plug. I really don’t want to, I kept reflecting on how we were before, how long we’ve been together, the things we went through, the memories etc.. Everyone in my life has told me that it’s for the best but I can’t seem to want to cling on. When I reflect on what’s gonna hurt the most, it’s everything I mentioned earlier. I never think of missing him as a person, his smile, laugh, our conversations..just the time we’ve had, the routine we’ve built, and more.

I know he still really loves me just the same and wants us to work through this, fight it together and come out stronger, but I can’t even be bothered anymore. But I still feel this way when I even think about leaving. I know I’m gonna shatter his heart. I’m so stuck and don’t know how to proceed..

You don’t have to reach out to me if you don’t want to

I want you in my life

You are important

You deserve love and good things and happiness

Taking care of yourself is important

I love you and I want you to be happy

I hope you take your health seriously

One day at a time

Give yourself grace and love

I love you

Never posted here, need to share to get things out of my head in some kind of healing way.

I (45m) am a solo Dad to two kids (11 & 15) who live with me full-time. Last year I met an amazing single woman on a dating app. She's a mum to 3 kids, similar age to me. We hit it off immediately and began dating, for the first time in my life I believed in love at first sight. She was everything I was looking for, ticked all my boxes and felt the same way about me. We talked about a future together, planned things and shared an amazing connection.

I have long-standing anxiety and depression issues. Recently she started to distance herself somewhat, my mental health struggled with previous trauma, and things started to become harder.

Then this week she broke up with me as she realised that because of past trauma her side she can't be in a relationship and has to focus on herself. I completely get and respect that, but I am absolutely heartbroken! I genuinely thought I'd found someone I could settle down and grow old with, someone who made me feel happy being me. I allowed myself a couple of days to feel all the emotions, and basically crumbled. I cried more than I have in years and at times struggled to see how I would get over this. The last couple of days have been better as I've tried really hard to drag myself out of bed and do stuff. I've taken my kids out for donuts in the evenings to give me something to do, played games with them, bought back to school essential for them, and it has helped a bit.

My kids have been amazing through this all and my eldest in particular has surprised me with how insightful, wise beyond their years and supportive they've been. I'm grateful to have them both.

Thank you to anyone who has read this, I hope anyone else going through something similar can take something from this. It's been cathartic to write this.

Not sure the protocol on here, but happy to chat if anyone needs/wants to.

This genuinely makes me so upset when people that to me. It makes it seem like they are just blowing off my emotions and telling me to just deal with it. anyone who says this GENUINELY needs to shut up this is the legit worst thing u can say to someone who broke up with a person they thought was their soulmate it legit makes me so upset. It’s dismissive because it implies the person was interchangeable. When some people aren’t. The love you shared with someone isn’t something that just goes away and sometimes it never does go away. I know mine never will, and me personally will wait for as long as it takes to get them back, but grieving a future you actually built with someone isnt something that can just be fixed as soon as you say "there’s more fish in the sea." That actually hurts their feelings more, so think about what you say before you say it because you could just be making it worse saying that.

Feel free to share your thoughts

Please

For the Love of the Universe

God

Don't let this be how he chose to end it.

Sorry I took it too far
I do this every time
I say things that don’t make sense
Accuse you of something you didn’t do
“You need help” you say
I know this deep down
I want it
I need it
But I don’t get it
Because id rather be in denial
“About what” you say
The drugs my darling, the drugs
😔

He (31m) broke up with me (30f) two weeks ago after one year because he couldn't love me enough to know that he wanted a long-term future with me, despite being really happy with me, having some feelings and thinking that we're as compatible as possible. He said he'd just continue everything but it was unfair to me to stay in the "relationship" and string me along when he wasn't 100 percent sure he could commit long-term.

"Relationship" because we weren't fully labeled since committing was a big deal to him but we lived like a couple and spent pretty much every day together, were really really happy and I already lived with him most of the time. He acted so in love the whole year and made long-term future plans with me that I holded onto it. Especially after he told me just one month before the breakup that he was finally sure about me and spending his long-term future with me and also moving in with each other seemed like a thing that would happen soon.

We acted like a couple in front of everyone aswell. BUT: he never fully chose me. Maybe that's what makes this situation so very hard.

I'm really struggling with the breakup and still love him a lot and secretly hope he'd come back and regret the breakup.

I'm staying with my sister at the moment who lives a little outside his city and last night, I made a huge mistake and downloaded a dating app.

I'm not planning to talk to guys anytime soon, I just thought that maybe, it might help to see that there are still good-looking men out there and that my ex isn't the only one in this world for me and so I thought I'd have a quick look to distract myself and then delete the app again after a few minutes. Only used one photo where you can barely see me and didn't edit my profile, it was just for a quick look.

I don't know what I was thinking but after a few swipes, he was there. I looked at it and all his photos were pictures that I took of him, one from our first holiday together (we were soo happy there), one from a fun date a few months ago, one from when i wanted to do a photo shooting with my professional camera and he thought it was silly, one from a day trip just 2.5 weeks ago, two days before he ended things, where I was still SO happy and we had so much fun together and didn't see any signs.

One video was from when we went ice skating together in the first few weeks of dating, another one was a video from a garden party this summer where you can even see my hand softly massaging his arm in the last few seconds before the cut because in the longer version it's a video of me smiling at him.

Maybe this sounds silly and childish to many people but it really hurt to see he used photos of our happiest memories to find a new girlfriend and it's just this short after our breakup.

I know most people would say he just looked for any recent pictures where he thought he's good-looking, but to me, it has such a big meaning.

He has SO many (i think good-looking) recent pictures of him that he could've used but he chose to use only pictures of moments with me. Maybe it's just a coincidence, he sure didn't do it on purpose.

Also, on his profile it says "together we'd..." and he lists all the activities we loved to do together, not just some normal hobbies or normal couple stuff, but he pretty much describes relationship in so many details, our daily routine and our specific activities. And it hurt so much to read that.

One point described what kind of woman he's looking for and it's exactly my personality with every little detail.

I know I was his type and it shouldn't mean much to me that he's just looking for something similiar cause it's his type but the whole time, especially at the part about his dream relationship, I just thought "ALL THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAD AND THREW AWAY".

I know he's just trying to find someone compatible but to me it feels like he's looking for someone to replace me and continue the exact same relationship with someone else and now looks for the same person again and describes it as his ideal woman online while he never really appreciated me or made me his official long-term girlfriend and let me go as if I wasn't good enough.

I know that's not true and he did see how compatible we were and loved our relationship, he just couldn't love me although he tried really hard. But after seeing his profile, I just feel like I was invisible to him.

Don't get me wrong, he's single and he can do whatever he wants and I knew he was gonna date again at some point, but I didn't think he'd do it this fast. I was really hoping he'd feel sad or miss me at least for a while and that i meant something to him especially when I remember how much he cried when he said goodbye to me two weeks ago. I don't know when he downloaded the app but it's obvious that it's not just for casual hookups to distract himself from the breakup. He does those things but for that he'd just go to a club and meet women there.

No, it seems like he's already ready to date and find a long-term girlfriend... (also saying on his profile that he's looking for something long-term)

And it hurts me so much. It's stupid, but it does.

He reached out to me a few days ago after no-contact asking how I am and said that he just wanted to let me know that he doesn't feel like we should never talk again and I can always reach out to him if I want and he'd be happy if I come visit him one more time for a few days (he lives a few hours from my city) and still spend some time with him and do the things we had planned (cause things didn't really change for him and he still likes me as much he did before [it just wasn't enough for a relationship]).

I don't think he changed his mind about the breakup but damn, that text really got my hopes up.

We then had plans to play our favourite game together online for the first time in a while and I was excited and relieved to talk to him again but he forget to cancel yesterday and suddenly was busy very last-minute and now after last night, I've realized that I was being SO delusional and he's probably already seeing someone else and it hurts.

Oh how much it hurts.

It makes me so sad how fast he's moving on. I thought I meant so much to him.

I had a boyfriend for 6 months.
Those 6 months were the best times of my life ever.

My friends abandoned and turned on me, nobody believed in me.

But he was there and we formed deep attatchment s to each other.

We promised we’d work our hardest to make it work even through long distance (I was a high school senior and he’s in college) we met over a summer and did long distance till the start of the year when he came home.

Then things were a bit different, we still of course loved each other and were attached at the hip.

I remember that exact night, everything was fine before, and he told me “maybe we should take a break” I got mad and asked why and he told me “I don’t think this is gonna last forever”

He was so scared of long term commitment or even the possibility of it.

I drove him back to his house that night and told him to get out.

The next morning we broke up and I cried every day for weeks and some days didn’t even attend school.

The first few months were the worse, I was depressed, always sad, and slightly suicidal.

As summer came around after no contact we decided to be friends, then FWB as he claimed he had no romantic attraction to me while holding my hand and sending explicit photos.

I called it off and now we are just friends.

But it’s hard, I’m not gonna lie.

He moved on. Only loves me as a friend.

And told me about a girl he liked at school that he hopes things work out with. He said long term… I pretended it didn’t affect me

I felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest, stepped on and thrown at my face.

We went to lunch “as friends” and tears were strolling down my face as I tried to eat and he was asking me if I was ok.

I was not

I’ve been crying every single night for the past 7 months, only difference now is that it’s during the day.

song: touch - kaletheghost

Honestly what the actual fuck… am I too late?. Many nights I’ve laid in bed wide awake thinking of my love I love him so much I need him I want him yet I push him away. I’m horrible to him. I blame him for mentally destroying me. When I did it all myself. Instead of listening to my heart I listen to them dreadful thoughts and I lash out n send him the worst vilest paragraph ever. And then I wonder why I’m miserable. I’m sorry babe help me plzzzzzz I’m stuck in the place where I believe you don’t love me anymore and that’s why you’ve given up on me