I can never let people go

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m not sure what kind response I hope or expect to get to this post and I actually posted something similar a while back. I think I’m looking for some closure.

Amusingly enough, that last post a couple years was back was about how I couldn’t forget about my college SO of four years. Now I’m posting about how I can’t forget about my most recent ex, who broke up with me around May of last year.
We’d been together for a bit over two years and during the relationship I had not been the most attentive boyfriend. She had been head over heels in love with me and I took that for granted. I am fairly certain I will never find someone as dedicated and caring as she had been to me. I could always count on her. Always. I loved her too, but a part of me always had half a foot out the door, thinking that maybe I could do better, or that I that perhaps that I wanted to date around more before I settled down. I have no doubt she could sense this attitude and probably started to grow weary, giving so much and receiving so little in return. In hindsight, she started to drift away at the final months of the relationship, but being self-absorbed person that I am, I didn’t realize this until she was determined to break up and it was too late.

Soon after the break up my desire to date around and meet more women disappeared and even the idea of meeting someone or starting a new relationship seemed exhausting. I still don’t have any particular desire to start a new relationship.

After not having spoken to her for months, I messaged her because it would’ve been our anniversary. So we chit-chat a bit, stilted but good-natured, and she tells me she’s seeing someone now. I could feel my heart drop. That sudden feeling of something heavy sinking down your chest. I guess in a combination of arrogance and naivety, a part of me believed I could get back with her some day if I really wanted to. I realized that I never let her go. Which I guess I should do now.

How I get attached to people is a little bit worrying. Perhaps it falls within spectrum of normal and I’m being melodramatic, but I feel like I lack the emotional strength and maturity to deal with goodbyes.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to marry the next serious SO I meet because I don’t think I have it in me to lose another person I love. I know that everybody walks around and continues on with their lives with these scars but maybe I’m just that much weaker than everyone. I don’t know.

Thanks for reading.

2

I fell in love with a girl back in 2008. We went to school together. I was really really crazy for this girl. I never even go to see her that often, it was all infatuation, she graduated and went to Europe to get a Phd* and I kept obsessing about her, even though she was in Europe. A couple years later she moved back so I went and looked her up. She had a boyfriend at this time. So I obsessed about her for another year. Finally, I just made up my mind to move on, to quit thinking about her and move on. I literally had to stop myself several times a day, readjust my thinking and move on. Eventually with persistence it worked. I feel really stupid telling you this story given that I never even got to know this girl that well but I obsessed over her even more than actual girlfriends that I’d had.

  • She never actually went to Europe but I didn’t know that at the time.
3

This is a sad thing to read. Please don’t do this. Instead of doing this, you need to learn why you grow so attached and what it is that you are getting attached to, exactly. It doesn’t even sound like you were attached to the girl(s) or the relationships themselves but the idea of them, the comfort of knowing they are there and you are wanted.

4

I hate to break this to you, but divorce is legal in most places these days.

Try the strategy that I’ve been using for a few years: Purposefully maintaining emotional distance even to people who want to get close to you.

Well, maybe that’s not a *great *strategy either, when I think about it.

5

Sounds like two sides of your brain need to have a meeting.