I am in a similar situation and this is what works for me to stop letting my past experiences (or lack thereof) keep me down and prevent me from having a good relationship in the future. So your track record is having love once in 26 years.  Instead of seeing love as something that happens to other people all the time, but to you only once every 26 years (that sounds pretty hopeless) I try to look at it as a skill that is learned. Three months ago you had zero skill and you cannot be blamed for that. You had no experience. Now no matter how much or little you have learned through this experience you have INFINITELY more skill. Any skill is better than none and this will serve you in the future if you let it.

I wouldnt mind if my partner said they loved their  best friend but in a different way. But EQUALLY and in a different way would seem a bit much especially if they are dancing all over each other. I wouldnt want a hetero female partner to be dancing all over a hetero guy friend so I dont see why you should have to accept that behaviour.

If you have any feeling left to salvage have you considered trying to talk about it again, but this time to make him understand that that you are not asking him to choose between you and his best friend? That you are only asking that he doesnt behave inappropriately with his best friend? ie. only dance that way with you?

P.S. Inky, I think the OP is a male though they dont explicitly say so.

I dont believe in souls and especially not soul connections but to me what you wrote was very rational and reasonable and had nothing to do with that. In fact I would love to find a woman with exactly this attitude. I would even make an exception and date someone that young if they were that wise (I am 30).

I especially like the part that love is a choice. In my last relationship I loved her as much as ever right to the end, no matter how she treated me because I had made the commitment to love her forever. I didnt see it as some fleeting mythical creature. I made the decision long ago to love her and therefore stopping was never an option.

Then all of a sudden she didnt love me anymore. It was a long time in the works but she never communicated so to me it happened in an instant. I was furious and still am nearly 8 months later because I dont understand how someone can just let such a great love die like that. The way I see things she made a decision to stop loving me and that is what I havent forgiven her for yet.

I don`t know how your husband would react but it if it were me and I knew about this I would expect you to choose. I would prefer you to choose me but I would rather you choose the other man than to continue going on like this.

From the topic title I was expecting to read that he is being abusive to you and/or not leaving you alone. From the content it reads to me like you want to keep contact with him, but he is being dismissive and disrespectful and that the real difficulty is your lack of closure.

I am so sorry that it ended this way for you and I can’t imagine how awful it must feel, but I am afraid that you are not going to get the closure you seek from him. It sounds like you are sceptical of his reason for breaking up with you and rightly so, for it really sounds like he is being dishonest about the real reason.

It is also possible that he is being dishonest with himself and actually believes the story he is telling you because he is unable or unwilling to examine his feelings. Either way, sadly it seems like he has made up his mind and you wont get any satisfaction from confronting him or any further contact with him.

I know it must be hard to let go without proper closure but unfortunately it seems he is not willing to indulge you so I would recommend no further contact with him. I’m sure it’s of small consolation right now but I truly believe you are better off in the long run without without such a person in your life, whether as a lover or a friend.

Hi everyone.

My situation is so similar to the original poster’s that I almost feel that every reply is directed at me too. There are so many parallels even down to the ages of the parties involved: I am 30 years old and some months ago I was left by my 25 year old fiancee. I wanted to be married and have a family by now and now my goal is to have that by age 35 just like you Josh.

I am going on 3 months of absolutely no contact (and I don’t use any social media) so I have no idea whether my ex is dating a pill popping dishwasher but I know how she sleeps around when she is single which drives me crazy with rage and jealousy.

I’m a couple of months further down the road so I was going to chime in with some advice and what’s helped me so far, but what I was going to say seems to contradict what Anita is saying, so instead of adding the confusion of conflicting viewpoints I would like to better understand what Anita means and maybe I will find that we are not in such disagreement after all.

My issue is that the advice of dating when still attached to an ex seems counter-intuitive to me because that is the opposite of the commonly suggested wisdom of taking your time to heal, detach and work on independent self driven happiness before attempting to date again.

Now Anita, I’m aware that maybe this is not what you are suggesting at all, as you are clearly saying that it is a good time to “interview” and you never mentioned that he should actually date at all.  Perhaps it is simply my issue that I have a hard time separating “interviewing” from “dating” in my mind so this is where I could use some clarification (I hope I am not hijacking this thread too much, but my thinking is that is the OP or anyone else reading this are like me then maybe they could use some clarification too)

Did you mean that he should interview completely separate from dating? As in dispassionately (and thus unbiasedly) collect information about potential partners now to help decide which one to date when the time comes?  Or to collect the information with the intention of going right ahead with a “hire” when one is found?

I have gone through a similar thing recently with a part time long distance relationship (my partner was gone for up to a month at a time and sometimes only spend a few days at home). I wont tell my whole life story, but my point is I can understand how you feel a lot.

From my my perspective it seems that you two were a very poor match in terms of neediness. That is not your fault nor his, and it does not make you an inferior person at all. In fact, such a mismatch can serve to intensify the mismatch, making you feel needier than you might otherwise be and making him more distant than he might otherwise be. I’ll bet you probably feel very self critical for being so needy but it isn’t your fault. You couldn’t help it considering how distant he was and how much room for insecurity he left in the relationship.

LDRs are always tough and I imagine it must have been very tough to transition into one after 3 months of dating, especially if you feel like you never got what you need for those 3 months.

I will tell you this: you are better off in the long run with this relationship ending. I know it will be hard to believe, and you don’t have to believe me right now. I know how alienating it can be when people try to tell you what to believe when you are hurting. All I ask is that you consider it and soon you will believe it in your MIND. It won’t help. Eventually you will believe it your HEART and that is what will drive the healing.

But for now I beg that you cut yourself some slack and allow yourself to grieve as long and as much as you need to. Even when it’s for the best in the end, breakups can be devastating and I’m very sorry that your family doesn’t seem to understand. That is their problem, not yours. There is no shortcut around the pain. However, you have enough on your plate and you do not need to add to it by feeling guilty about how you feel. No matter what your family says and no matter what anyone on the internet thinks, it is NEVER stupid to feel sad over a breakup.