And just a little note on men:

from my experience, the majority of men in our modern age are not mature enough to have a committed relationship before they are around 30, sometimes even older. What I mean by committed relationship is one that leads to marriage, children and so on, not just last a few years until they get tired of it and want to try something else. This is simply my personal opinion but this is what I have observed – there are obviously exceptions to that rule but I believe most men are not ready when they’re in their 20’s, especially early 20’s.

I also think it is important for both men and women to have some experiences before committing to one person and settling down, otherwise they might get doubts at some point and think that they might have missed out on something, be it sex adventures or relationships with other people.

I believe your ex is still deep in the adventure-experiemental stage of his life and that even if he did settle down with someone over the next few years, there is a good chance that he will cheat on her as he did with you. So don’t think that maybe in a year or two he’ll grow out of it…

Dear daeneth,

I understand why you feel this way.
But believe me, his behavior has nothing to do with you and the person you are. He simply has this need and urge to sleep around, as I said because he’s young or because this is his nature. You could be a top model with 3 college degrees and the greatest person on earth, he still will be tempted to sleep with someone else. There is no explanation to give or demand. He got bored not because you are boring, but because he is simply not capable of maintaining a relationship with one person at the moment. It’s true, he didn’t care and you were nothing to him and that feels awful. But that doesn’t mean anything about you and your worth. It only means that you were looking for love where there wasn’t any love to be had.

What is your relationship with your parents like? Are you close? You mentioned your mom wasn’t supportive? I am asking because we sometimes repeat patterns we had with our parents in our relationships and if as a child you felt somehow starved for love, maybe this is something you are repeating now by attaching yourself to someone who doesn’t give you love and attention.

Parents are sometimes so emotionally involved with their children that they forget how to be supportive. They cannot watch things from a distance and be supportive whatever happens, they feel the need to criticize or warn rather than listen and support because they are so worried about what might happen and are frustrated that the child is old enough to make his or her own decisions, but is making “the wrong ones”.
So of course that can’t make you feel any better that your mom seems to think she knew better than you what would happen. Because you already feel played, and foolish for trusting him, and now you feel doubly foolish because she’s making you feel like you should have known. But this happened because you too are still very young and you are entitled to making your own mistakes and learning from them. Even if you made a mistake and got hurt, this still is YOUR life. Your mom can’t live it for you. So be proud of yourself and of your mistakes, it only happened because you’re a good, trusting person and you probably would never act the way he did, so you didn’t expect someone to act this way towards you. Learn from this, grieve for a while and then move on.

I don’t know if I know a lot about life, I struggle with my own issues as well… but I am much older than you so I’ve had some experience with dating and so on, and have heard a lot of friends’ stories over the years to form some opinions.

You didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t think you need to become more like him, be a hurtful, insensitive person yourself, to avoid these situations.

What you do need to do is keep your boundaries. Understand and determine with yourself what behavior is acceptable towards you and what isn’t, and simply walk away from people who do not act in a respectful way.
You can still be who you are and keep all the good stuff about you for someone who will appreciate it. But you must learn to walk away from hurtful, disrespectful people. Not try to explain to them or demand explanations, simply walk away. Believe me, this is the best strategy. If someone doesn’t respect you, doesn’t see you, you cannot change that about them. It is sad but true and so much suffering can be prevented if you stick to that principle. Just ignore them the way they ignore you, and see how you will attract the right kind of people instead.