Hey David,

I found your topic while searching for the problem I’m having too — which is exactly the same as yours — I made an account on this website just to reply to you.

I have a happy relationship now, but feel it is not as intense as my ex-gf relationship — my ex also broke up a few times and got back together (but now I am with another gf I met after her; for 2 years!).

I wanted to tell you I figured out why we feel like this. The feeling we are describing is not actually love! It’s a combination of anxiety, not enough trust and a bit of love. This combination makes for that intense feeling. Actually that feeling means the relationship is unstable! Stable relationships should feel “plain” or even a bit “boring”, which is why we feel less intense with our new girlfriends; but that’s perfectly fine because that means you are mature now and that you can communicate well and you trust her a lot and can argue in an adult manner.

Congratulations, you’ve got a healthy relationship! Your previous one was bad, and she took advantage of you. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling that intense feeling for your ex; even as it seems to feel like love; it is not a healthy relationship, you wouldn’t want to be in that unstable relationship for your lifetime. Don’t doubt your love for your new gf and you’ll be fine!

I found this article is really helpful, as well as my own post I made here; have a look at my situation and the answers, you’ll see it’s pretty similar to yours.

I wish you the best and don’t let your girlfriend down! Don’t take your relationship for granted and you guys will soon be super happy together for a long time :-).

Let me know how it works out for you or if you have a question!

David you describe word to word what im feeling with my ex same situation exactly..please tell me you eventually got over your ex or does it never leave..?

David you describe word to word what im feeling with my ex same situation exactly..please tell me you eventually got over your ex or does it never leave..? Hopefully it does i dont want to feel hurt anymore.no

Hello David,

I read your post and it sounded exactly word for word what I’ve been going through with my ex. We dated off and on for three years and she too would always leave me for another guy. Even though the relationship was unhealthy, I have this intense urge to keep wanting her back. I think of my ex every single day, every night, that she’s out with another guy. We broke up 8 months ago, no contact, and it’s still driving me crazy. I think about all the new guys she’s sleeping with, that that should be me with her. It sucks because she can leave me and get over it the very next day and be with someone new and take me back when things don’t work out. She gives me lots of attention for the first two days or so and then she goes back to her heartless self. She is totally emotionally unavailable. Doesn’t pay any attention to me whatsoever, always on her phone, not living in the moment with me. One time, I lost a best friend and cried about it for a while, she would just look at me and leave the room. There was no concern for me whatsoever. I think she might be somewhat narcissistic. But I feel like there’s an intense chemistry between her and I, not only because of all the back and forth, but the intense arguments/fights that we’d have. She’s an amazing girl, but she’s got a lot of issues that I tried to help her out with without any improvement. Can’t help someone who denies having any flaws. I tried to show her that there’s love out there. I too didn’t have any emotional bond with my parents, so maybe we’re just chasing what we’re used to: not being loved. I feel like there’s no end to this… Has anything improved since your break up with her?

Dear David,

I also have a personal story that is a tiny bit similar to yours in terms of the remaining feelings. You’ll understand more after getting to the end of the story.

Four years ago, I came to an overseas university as a freshman, and it is a custom here for the foreign seniors to organize a simple orientation for us (also foreign) students. I met a senior who was very helpful, and after the orientation ended, we kept in contact. Weekend lunch outings, movie MP4 sharing (wifi was pretty limited in the university at the time), etc happened for like 3 weeks. He then asked me for a dinner out one day, afterwards we ended up walking in a secluded part of a park. We sat down, were playing around, then he kissed me all of a sudden, and I was stunned, completely motionless as it was my first kiss. At that time I could not understand the reason he was doing that (coming from a very conservative family, I was not allowed to have a boyfriend or be close to any guy, let alone kissing one!), so I was utterly confused. He looked at me with such cute, honest face full of remorse, saying,”I’m sorry..It’s just that you look so pretty I couldn’t help it”. I was completely melted by his words, and sat motionless for about 10 minutes trying to figure a word to say and how to react. He kept apologizing for quite a while, saying that he started developing feelings for me the moment he saw me and that he has never done this to any girl before. I said it was okay and that I need some time to think about how to deal with this, as I only thought of him as a very great senior and a good company. He said he will give me time to consider the possibility of a relationship, and that he also needed to think.

He had helped me with my homework, got along very well with my other dorm mates and even helped write my own essay for a scholarship I was applying to. And I actually was very blessed with the scholarship. As for myself, I often would cook for him when he was so tired from assignments and projects that he couldn’t be bothered to eat, or help him with his projects as well. Needless to say, we seemed like a perfect match. He was kind, caring to me, and we had very similar habits and taste. Many of our friends actually shipped us so hard that they got tired of waiting for us to get together.

Since then, we just continued hanging around each other, and things got a little intimate after a while. And because I did not have any experience with a guy, I had no expectation on how things would go. We started making out and I would feel a weirdly addicting, tingling stir inside my chest. He would treat me like a queen and say how beautiful I am, although we did not have sex (it is a taboo topic in the country we are living in). This kept happening everytime he came over to my dorm room every other weekend. After a few months, I ask him how could we move forward, but he told me that he was unsure as we have different faith. He came from a strict Christian family and I am not, so he told me to give him some time to think. He even told his parents about me, and they gave very discouraging response.

I kept asking him for more than a year but he would not give me an answer, putting whatever pride I had left, in line. Everytime I asked him in person, he would just avoid the question and we ended up in quarrels. I had to end the ‘relationship’ for the sake of my own sanity.

After that, I met an amazing guy with whom I am having relationship with currently. I felt a deep connection with him that I have never felt with anybody. However as I am currently in my final year of university, I got into a deep thought of my journey here. Suddenly I thought of my senior (the first guy) and I felt a strong feeling of guilt. Guilty that I had to lie, to convince myself that he is no good for me, and I had to leave the relationship because of that. Of course, he was in fault for making the relationship ‘toxic’ (that’s how he put it as he grew an excessive feeling of lust on me), which I also did in return, making the whole relationship focused on lust and nothing else. I was also in fault for not stopping myself, but at that time, nothing seemed wrong to me, as I had a very optimistic hope that we could eventually grow together. But he went and avoided me every once in a while until I eventually grew sick of it.

I am not sure about what I am feeling right now, but I kind of missed him. I miss him as a close friend without all of the ‘toxic’ stuff. This has nothing to do with my current boyfriend, as he is such a nice guy to me. But somehow I feel nostalgic and craving that kind of connection everytime I think about him, and it just makes me feel even more guilty as if I had emotionally cheated on my boyfriend. I am unsure of what to do, I even get dreams about him nowadays. Although I am pretty sure that i am not in love with him, I can’t put a name on how I am feeling right now.

I hope that you could share how you’ve dealt with the situation as it could probably help me as well.

Seems to be a common thing. I’m feeling it really badly at the monent, I really can’t see me ever getting over the intense feelings I have for my ex. I’m not sure I even want to. Been thinking loads about ‘why’ this intense feeling of pain is part of the human condition, and have considered everything from evolutionary biology to the cultural genesis of courtly/romantic love in the early medieval era.

But the fact remains that for most of human history, ‘bonding’ has been the default mode for life relationships, and the modern idea of multiple relationships/serial monogamy is an anomaly.

Maybe human being are just wired to bond with someone that we have sex with, and it’s our modern culture of treating people like disposable objects that is unhealthy.

Hello everyone,

I found this forum after searching “I love my girlfriend but still love my ex”. All your stories and responses are so insightful, and have given me much to think about. I am the ex. To make a very long and painful story short, I had been dating my ex in two different relationships the first one we lasted nine months and broke up for 4 months to 2 emotional and physical infidelity on his part. Four months later, we initiated a new relationship that was better, but I think I was traumatized by the infidelity from the previous one. He did seem to be very insecure, and need to have women close by, which made me feel like I was going to fall through a trapdoor. A year later, after losing a a pregnancy, I left them. Again. The thing is, I left them often. And I know that was my mistake. It was not done out of anger or power struggle or manipulation. It was because I just couldn’t stay and feel completely devastated. Our relationship was very passionate, with Incredible highs, and many lives. I also found this was the person with whom I could dream, enjoy life, and feel alive. Have you ever had a relationship with someone who can help you dream at the same wavelength? I did. So he went to therapy soon after our breakup 2 years ago. For the first year, we attempted four times to talk about our problems in person. And it was a disaster. Every time we met there was a lot of crying on both ends a lot of missing, and a lot of guilt about who left and how much he was offering, or why I left and how much I had suffered. We tried this non-stop communication that was 99% from his side talking about love and loss messages phone calls a lot of crying for a year it was impossible for me to move on, although I knew he was dating a lot. I felt very guilty because I was the one. In January, I asked him to not contact me anymore. For the first time he respected this to a degree. I knew that in February he started on your relationship with the woman he still with today, eight months later. He messaged me for my birthday send me a present which I returned, and again messaged me for his own birthday in July through this time he had kept in contact with my best friend talking to her and crying on her shoulder about me. And how hard his relationship was emotionally. Then in early October just three weeks ago, he asked me by email to start going to grief therapy with him to help us both resolve the loss of our child. I agreed, but I know his girlfriend is not happy about it. I know she is a very successful woman with three different ivy league degrees, money, position, in about eight years older than him. She is everything he wanted to have an apartment owner, and one of the reasons why we separated was because I felt constantly Under Fire for not being enough on paper. Although I have gone to college it just seemed like I didn’t have the glitzy requirements he needed. This woman is definitely a great choice for him as she introduces him to people that can further his career Two. He has said to me that I was a chaotic person but that he loves me and that she is calm and finally after our first therapy session, which was grueling, he said he loves me too. And ever since, he has been telling me after 8:30 P session that he loves me, and the things that he misses from us in his new relationship. I feel conflicted, because I still love him, but I am that EX. The one that he cannot shake off. The one that was crazy and chaotic and likely toxic to the world. The problem is in relationships, not everybody knows what happens when the door closes, and it takes a lot of courage to accept responsibility over our own mistakes. But, what do you do with someone who says that he loves his girlfriend, but he still loves and misses you tremendously? I go to therapy with him once a week three times already, and I’m afraid we may fall in love again, or that he is simply trying to become a better man for his new relationship. So, there is a lot of things we don’t know and for the one who started this thread I hope your girlfriend wasn’t manipulative, and I hope you can move on, but I think we all need to be very honest with our feelings because your new girlfriend may know your feelings now for both her and your ex. Sometimes relationships are just too hard, what love is demonstrated on the actions that we take to make them work.

My ex kept his entire department untouched 4 about 16 months. Every time I visited I didn’t know how other women could walk in there with so many pictures photos and mementos of us. This had been our home. I know now that in August, all of our pictures and mementos were put in a box that he took to his office and he stores it there. The new girlfriend feel safer, I know they fight every week after we have our therapeutic session. And I also know from him, unless he’s lying, that he sits in his office and goes through this box of mementos and two photos many times if not every day of the week. I know he cries closest to box and goes home every day. The ex may live in your mind and maybe that is the safest place to have her. But now that we are seeing each other every week I am afraid. So for all of you out there, unless your ex was truly emotionally unavailable or unaffected by you,she may have felt fear or pain to separate as well.  And then the last question would be how do you separate from that acts you can shake off your head? Should you?

Hey David,

Like everyone else, I am in the same situation as you (were) and I hope to hear of how you’re doing currently, after all this time.

I read today that it takes half the time you were with that person to get over them… First I thought that’s a long time, but now I just wish the feeling goes away one day.

My ex broke up with me (for the second time) 4 months ago and I’ve been through all the phases.. Denial, anger, bargain, depression, even acceptance.. But the way I loved that man, how natural he and our relationship felt.. I just cant get over it. Even though we’re not compatible.

The thing is that in these situations we usually form a persona of our bf/gf in our head (during or after the relationship) which is the ‘ideal’ version of them, the version you fell in love with, but that’s not the real person and you need to keep reminding yourself of that. In my head my ex is understanding and cares for me, even though in reality he sadly doesn’t even care about me on a friendly level.

Im currently dating this wonderful, perfect man and it sucks that I dont want to be his gf just because my stupid ex still has my heart :/