I’m putting this post out in the hope of receiving advice/insight. I’m 21 years old now. When I was 16, I met a girl at a party, we got talking and I took her out on a date. Everything seemed to be going well. I had just started college, she was in the year above me and she went there too. We’d see each other frequently in college, would text all the time and really get on, but for some reason I couldn’t seem to get her to go on a second date with me. She never said no specifically, but she’d come up with different reasons why she couldn’t or say she was really busy. I began to get really confused and would think “She seems really in to me, she knows I’m in to her, we get on really well and text each other a lot and always have a good time when we see each other in college, why won’t she go out with me again?”. I’d asked her a couple of times to go out again and she’d come up with some reason why she couldn’t or she’d cancel on me and so I didn’t really feel like mentioning it again but I didn’t want to stop talking to her so things continued as normal. I couldn’t seem to find a reason why she wouldn’t go out with me again and so it got to the point where I started questioning things about myself. I’d start to think things like “if I had a muscular body, or if I drove a nice car, or if my family was wealthy, would she want to go on a second date with me?”. In all honesty at this point I should’ve walked away, I read a quote online recently which said “trust the alignment or misalignment of your connection, if you’re sacrificing more than you’re receiving, this connection isn’t for you. Some people will never be ready when you’re ready, but you’re not obliged to wait for them” and that really resonated with me. I think from the moment I met her, I was dead set on being in a relationship with her and I would stop at nothing to make that happen even though it was affecting me negatively, something I have since realised is a dangerous thing to do. I started to become really anxious, my mind would be on overdrive all the time thinking about it, I was quite low and the only thing that seemed to matter was getting her. We finally went out for a second date (4 months since the first) and then a month later we got into a relationship. The reason she didn’t want to go on a second date with me was because of trust issues from previous relationships which I gradually learnt more about. She would get scared if things got serious which I don’t blame her for at all. I was never annoyed that she didn’t want to open up and tell me about it, I understand these things take time, but she wasn’t honest with me and left me guessing, and would do just enough to keep me around. I think she should have either walked away from it because she wasn’t ready, or said to me “You’re doing all the right things, I just have some trust issues from previous relationships and this may take a bit of time” and I would’ve been completely fine with it, and my mind would have been more at rest and not going crazy all the time thinking why doesn’t she want to see me etc. Since meeting her, I sacrificed a lot of my self worth and reached a point where my happiness somewhat depended on her and it prevented me from growing in ways. She is really stunning, and I think I thought gaining that would make me feel approval and validation, which in a way it did, but I have since realised you should only look for that within yourself. I remember before we got together we were texting about it, and I said something like “I feel like we should because I won’t be anxious anymore about whether you want to see me”, which is absolutely NOT a good reason to want to be with someone. I remember this one time I was doing college work and I went to check my phone and she’d texted me like 45 minutes before asking if I was at home, and then I asked why and she said because she was driving past my house and wanted to see if I wanted to go for a drive thru mcdonalds or something. I really beat myself up because I wasn’t on my phone when she first texted me.

We got together in March 2016 and we were together for 3 and a half years, we broke up in June 2019. We had some great times together and a lot of love for each other but it was quite a toxic relationship filled with a lot of arguments about trivial things mostly. When I speak to people about it now they often ask how we were together so long if we argued so much, we always argued quite a lot, so it never felt any different. I also think I relied on her a lot emotionally, so despite how bad things were at times, it never felt like an option to walk away from it. The good times were amazing, and so I kind of clung on to the hope that things would change and we’d argue less. It was always her that started the arguments, as in it was always a problem she had with me that would start the argument off, I’m a really easy laid back kind of guy so I never really had a problem with anything, but she used to have a go at me for so many things and would get mad if I didn’t stay up to sort things out, which would lead to countless nights of arguing over the phone or texting until the early hours of the morning. This one time, one of my girl friends had posted a picture of us at a festival with all our friends, and in the picture she was on my shoulders. I just got out of my driving test which I’d failed, to loads of messages about how mad she was with these pictures. I called her and said “look, I can’t do this right now I’m really upset I’ve just failed my driving test” (it took me countless hours of work on low wages to pay for my lessons and test, so failing crushed me). I put the phone down and within seconds she had texted me again saying “I’m sorry to hear about your driving test but…” and continued to go on about how annoyed she was at these pictures. It still does baffle me so much why we used to argue as much as we did, I wanted nothing more than to be able to just get on with her. I’m not sure why she used to find so many problems with me and our relationship, it was strange because she would always have good things to say about me and tell me how loved I am but consistently raise issues too. I think a lot of it comes down to the respect she had for me, and the respect I had for myself. I’ve been speaking to my sister about things, and she is a big believer that people will treat you how you allow them to, which opened my eyes somewhat. In putting out too much initially I sacrificed a lot of respect I had for myself, and it allowed her to realise that as it would take something really big for me to walk away, she could say whatever she pleased and raise whatever issues she had. I told her once that some of the things she finds an issue with are so trivial that she needs to learn to have a thicker skin. She responded that she didn’t want to be in a relationship where she didn’t feel she could talk about or raise an issue. I agree that being able to do that is a healthy condition required for any relationship, but there was just so many things she would have a problem with it became really unhealthy. Last March we were talking and I said that I was unsure about whether she was the right person for me and I was a bit unhappy in our relationship (both because of how frequently we would argue), and that was the beginning of the end really. I wanted some time to think about things, and we both had important exams coming up at university so it wasn’t really a good time to talk about things. During exams in May we were having a heated argument over the phone and she said something out of line and I just completely lost it and said that I was done and I’d had enough and put the phone down. We spoke later that night and agreed not to talk again until after exams. We met up when our exams were finished and she broke up with me because she couldn’t deal with the uncertainty of knowing whether I wanted to be with her or not. We spoke for a couple of hours that day but I can’t remember anything now. Ultimately, she didn’t want to break up with me and I could have done more to prevent it but I knew how badly the relationship was affecting my mental health. I don’t think I’d naturally come to terms with things in the weeks after the breakup, but I started smoking weed every day. I wasn’t intentionally doing it to escape, but I think I knew deep down I was suppressing my feelings. As a result, I didn’t really deal with things or come to terms with it. I mentioned speaking to her and talking about things on a few different occasions when we broke up but it never came to fruition because I didn’t think I’d have anything to say. I spent until December smoking weed every day, I had a full time job, and that suppressed any sort of emotion coming through. I’d be at work all day every day focusing on that, and then as soon as I got home would spark a joint with my housemates and spend the evenings high and then go to bed and fall asleep instantly, wake up and repeat. On weekends I’d be going out getting drunk and smoking weed. I think I knew deep down I was avoiding confronting my feelings. At Christmas/January time I stopped smoking weed and all the pent up emotion started to come through. I missed her like crazy and felt completely heartbroken. Naturally in relationships people will always forget the bad and only remember the good, a fantasy of some sort, but It’s made it harder to deal with because I’ve had a big gap between breaking up with her and coming to deal with it, I can’t remember how I felt when we broke up and I can’t hold on to the feeling of wanting to break up because I simply don’t remember it. I’ve had quite a rough few months and have been diagnosed with depression and have started taking medication and having CBT and in the past couple of weeks things have gotten a lot better. I am struggling still to let go of my previous relationship. She has now moved on and is seeing someone else. So a lot of the time I tell myself “it is what it is, she has moved on now so you can’t do anything else about it” but I fucking hate saying that to myself. Its like at uni I might spend a week fairly unproductive and then at the end of the week say to myself “you are where you are now you can’t do anything about it” as some bullshit justification for not having done things as I should have done. I don’t want to spend my life saying that to myself in every situation I get in where I should have done things differently. Its not necessarily that I would have gotten back with her, but have dealt with things properly, not smoked weed all the time, spoken to her so we could both deal with things a little better. No matter what I feel I think I would always have regrets and things that I would have done differently, the mistakes I have made however are just so obvious and profound and that hurts. I still miss her a lot, and in some ways long for a way that we could get back together again. Though I think that is more just the natural emotion and reaction to pain and loss than actual rational thinking. It’s so shit that she was once this massively important person in my life, and its either all of it or nothing, it feels like we can’t even be friends just because of how things once were. It’s a shame because she is such an amazing person and was so kind and caring and compassionate in so many ways, and I feel like the bad qualities that she did have and the way she had problems with me all the time, were not truly her, but qualities she had adopted from having poor relationships in the past and being mistreated herself. I don’t know. Sometimes I search for this scientifically perfect explanation as to why things were how they were, and how they turned out as they are. Maybe in some cases I have to just think as little about it as possible, and just know that we weren’t good together, argued a lot and prevented each other from growing and that is that. I struggle a lot with self validation of my feelings and being confident in them, and I know that often our minds can construct a story which causes us the least amount of pain. I think I deserved an apology from her for giving me such a hard time, and having not got that makes it even harder to trust my own feelings and opinions. At the minute I am consumed by this and it affects my daily life quite a lot and my motivation to do things. I’m afraid that I will constantly feel this way and the feelings I currently have will always be in my shadow, as a burden to me forever. I watch Russell Brand on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5RbtnRRXkI&lc=Ugxwry_o5uJLHYKQu9V4AaABAg.9198nVV5ndQ98ovGKEWwvs), and one of the things he says is that if you are hankering over an ex it is because you are now confronted with the reality of the person you are, and if you are struggling to let go of someone it is because you have allowed them to become an emblem of something you should be taking responsibility for yourself. This really resonates with me, although I can’t quite figure out what it is. The annoying thing is that rationally I feel okay about it, we argued a lot and I don’t want a relationship where someone has a lot of problems with me and I don’t feel good enough, I do remember just how bad some arguments were and how shit I felt, but emotionally I still feel so detached and in pain. I think about her all the time and how she is & what she is doing, how she dealt with the breakup and what she thinks of me now and the relationship we had. All types of crazy and ultimately pointless thoughts. I’ve learnt a lot of valuable lessons throughout this and learnt a lot about myself, but I’d like to get to a point where this pain and emotion doesn’t completely consume me and restrict my life. If anyone could share any insight or offer me some advice and guidance, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.