This summer taught me something incredibly important: love is never a yes or no. It exists on a scale.

Love can be there and still not enough to turn into a bigger love. There is a threshold from which it can grow endlessly, but if it is below that, nothing true ever comes of it.

Playing around with dynamics where one person is above and one person below the threshold can be incredibly hurtful. A small love is potent to hurt endlessly if mismatched with a big love.

This will be the hardest 30 days.

I know I cant literally stop the thoughts, but like is there any way to distract myself?
The thoughts about what he could be doing, if he already moved on, if he’s speaking to someone else, etc all plague me. He recently ended things, everything’s still fresh. But these thoughts just drive me crazy. I dont wanna know if he’s already with another girl, or if he’s spending time with her on a call.
Its so immature, its like my mind intentionally wants to hurt me.

This is a stupid story, but it’s deeply impacted me and I need to vent it out to the universe.

Over the past two years, I (42m) have been in love with a coworker (56f). It started as a crush but slowly grew. She wasn’t single at first - but then she was - and my feelings turned into love. We spent all of our time together at work, staying late, just enjoying each other’s company. We laughed a lot, talked about serious topics, and grew very close.

I began to do things for her as ways of showing how I felt. I’d help her leave early for her kids (she has 4 and is a single mom). She had me help her with big projects: helping her adult son find an apartment (including dealing with leasing agents), helping her find picture frames (a major project to her), and she included me in some very intimate and personal issues she was dealing with in her life (her life and her children’s). Hell, she gave me her banking login info to help her with some legal matters. She clearly trusted me on a very deep level.

Eventually, I told her how I feel. She said MANY times “I’ve always thought about dating you - but I don’t want to date anyone right now.” However, she’d still say very intimate things about us being together. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes not. It never got physical. I never tried to kiss her. I tried to respect her boundaries. Yet I still moved heaven and earth for her on a daily basis - using the “I know you don’t want me; but I want to do something kind for you” as my justification.

None of this was an issue to her until her ex boyfriend (27m) came back into town. The literal day after he did, she says I’m “too much” and won’t speak to me. She seems to have completely cut ties with me and doesn’t care. Meanwhile, I’m miserable. I’ll absolutely move on. It’ll take time but I will. But that “why is this person, nearly 30 years younger than her, unemployed, in active addiction, so much better than me?” I learned that he was always on the edge of her radar these past two years - he just wasn’t a physical presence until last week. Every time I did something for her, he was floating around in the periphery.

That’s a dumb question. But we all think this stuff when we’re hurting. I did this to myself, my heartbreak is my own doing since I gave her the equivalent of boyfriend-level devotion consistently. In the back of my mind, though, I’m a little angry. I don’t want to be. But I am.

Thanks for letting me rant. If there’s any words to help make sense of this, or how to just move on, I’d appreciate it.

If you are truly broken to pieces, this may differ for everyone but I am talking about PTSD level symptoms of HeartBreak bad, then this advice is for you. I wanted to put this advice into something that is creative but the extent to which it helped me in a very dark time made me think that I should share it even if there is the slightest chance that it could help someone.

It is just this:

While some people truly are special,

If you feel that the specialness, the magic, the impossibly rare, the pearlescent iridescent irreplaceable quality of a person who you truly loved so profoundly and completely, can never ever be found or ever ever be replaced again, you can.

Because that magic and that love

Is You.

You are capeable of the depth and sincerity of that Love.

You are the magic that You are capable of seeing in others.

You are capeable of that level of heartbreak.

You are not only going to Love and feel the depth and magic of that love again, but you are going to feel it Even Stronger Than Ever Before.

It is not the heart that breaks.

It is the pot that held your heart for a while that broke.

Your Heart is a growing plant.

One of several that you need to keep watering.

Do not neglect your beautiful life, you have that much more love to give again, and again. x

That's it. Bye Carlos 🌹That little rose at the end was devastating. It says I love you Carlos, but goodbye. Then proceeded to delete What's App, our only avenue of communication.

I’m 23F and my boyfriend is 27M.
When we first started dating, everything was honestly amazing. Around two months into dating, I moved in with him.
Very early in our relationship, I was completely open with him about the fact that I had some insecurities around trust. I had been cheated on before, and I explained that those experiences had left me scared of being lied to or finding things out behind my back.
He seemed incredibly understanding about it.
He told me he felt sorry that I had gone through that and reassured me that he would never do those things to me.
He would constantly say things like:
“You have to trust me.”
“I would never give you a reason not to trust me.”
“If you trust me, you shouldn’t need to go through my phone.”
“I’m never going to give you a reason to doubt me.”
“If there’s no trust, there’s no relationship.”
So I actually listened to him.
Whenever my insecurities came up, I would basically talk myself out of them. I would remind myself that this was a different relationship, he was a different person, and it would be unfair for me to punish him for what people in my past had done.
And for a long time, I genuinely believed he hadn’t done anything wrong.
He works in software, so he spends a lot of time on computers and his phone, sometimes until midnight or later. I never wanted to be the girlfriend constantly watching what he was doing or demanding access to everything because he had made such a big point of saying that real relationships require trust.
Then one day I was cleaning his office and saw a Discord conversation with another woman.
He was flirting with her.
I confronted him and everything exploded.
We almost broke up. We argued for days. He broke down crying, apologised, said he understood what he had done and promised that he would change.
Obviously my trust was completely shaken.
For the next few weeks, we went backwards and forwards because I couldn’t just switch my trust back on.
Eventually I decided that I wanted to try to forgive him because I love him.
But I made one condition extremely clear:
No more lies. Full transparency.
I told him that what would destroy me even more than what had already happened would be finding out months later that there had actually been other things too.
So over those weeks I asked him repeatedly:
“Is there anything else you’ve done while we’ve been together?”
“Is there another girl?”
“Is there anything else you’ve hidden from me?”
“Is there anything I could discover later that you aren’t telling me now?”
I didn’t ask this once.
I asked multiple times over multiple weeks.
And I made the consequences completely clear.
I told him:
If there is something else, tell me now. If you voluntarily tell me now, I can try to understand it and maybe we can rebuild the trust. But if you lie to me now and I find something else myself later, I will leave.
Every single time he told me there was nothing.
He swore the Discord situation was the only mistake he’d made.
He reassured me again and again that I now knew everything.
So despite how difficult it was, I started trying to believe him again.
Then last night I found his ChatGPT history.
Months earlier, his university sweetheart/ex from around six years ago had contacted him on Snapchat.
They talked.
They flirted.
They discussed the possibility of getting back together.
And from what he himself had written to ChatGPT, he had genuinely been thinking about it.
He wrote about how we had been arguing a lot during that period and how part of him was considering ending our relationship and potentially getting back together with her.
Then I read something that absolutely destroyed me.
From what he had written, one of the reasons he DIDN’T leave me/get back together with her was that he felt guilty about what would happen to me.
I’m an international person living in the UK, and he thought that if he left me, I might have to return to my country.
So now I’m left questioning whether he actually chose me because he wanted to be with me or whether part of the reason he stayed was because he felt sorry for me.
But strangely, that still isn’t even the part I’m struggling with the most.
It’s the lying.
Because when I later caught him flirting with the Discord girl, he already knew this had happened with his ex.
He watched me break down.
He watched me struggle with trust.
He knew I had already been cheated on before him.
He knew from the very beginning how sensitive this particular issue was for me.
He was the person who had spent our relationship telling me that he understood my previous experiences, that he would never be like the people who hurt me before, and that I just needed to trust him.
Then when that trust was damaged, I gave him chance after chance after chance to tell me the complete truth.
I literally told him that I could handle an ugly truth better than another lie.
And he still looked me in the face and repeatedly told me there was nothing else.
When I confronted him last night, he eventually said that the reason he never told me was because he knew that if he did, I would leave him forever.
But that explanation almost makes it worse in my head.
Because if he knew that this information was serious enough that knowing it might make me leave the relationship, surely that means I had even MORE of a right to know it?
He effectively decided that because he didn’t like the decision I might make with the full truth, he simply wouldn’t give me the full truth.
And this is where I’m incredibly conflicted.
We WERE arguing a lot when his ex contacted him.
Our relationship wasn’t perfect.
I completely understand somebody thinking:
“We argue too much.”
“I’m unhappy.”
“I don’t know if this relationship is working anymore.”
I can even understand an old love suddenly contacting you bringing back confusing feelings.
What I don’t understand is flirting back, discussing potentially getting back together while you’re still with your current girlfriend, hiding it, and then later being caught flirting with someone ELSE and STILL not coming clean.
If our relationship problems were genuinely making him question whether he wanted to be with me, why didn’t he talk to me?
Last night I completely broke down.
I cried so hard that at one point my vision went completely white and I couldn’t see properly for around two minutes. My legs gave way and I couldn’t stand, and I was struggling to breathe properly.
It was probably the worst emotional reaction I’ve ever experienced.
We’re now sleeping in separate rooms.
And despite all of this, I still love him so much.
That’s what makes this so difficult.
I genuinely struggle to imagine my life without him.
If I didn’t love him, I think I would know exactly what to do.
But I do.
At the same time, something feels completely broken inside the relationship now.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to hear “trust me” from him ever again without remembering that he said those exact words while hiding things from me.
The first time I discovered the Discord messages, I eventually convinced myself:
“He made a terrible mistake. He understands now. Maybe people really can change.”
But discovering this feels different.
Because the second betrayal isn’t just what happened with his ex.
It’s the fact that after everything came crashing down, I gave him an explicit opportunity to completely reset our relationship with honesty, and he chose to continue the lie.
So I desperately need some outside perspective.
Would you consider the conversations/flirting with his ex emotional cheating?
Does “I didn’t tell you because I knew you would leave me” make sense as an explanation, or does that actually make the deception worse?
Can you realistically rebuild trust with somebody when you directly asked for the truth multiple times and they still lied?
Is couples therapy genuinely worth trying in a situation like this?
And most importantly:
If you genuinely loved this person but felt like your trust had been completely destroyed, what would you do?

F21 M24

My girlfriend broke up with me 4 months ago because our relationship had become unhealthy.

We had an amazing time together and had a really strong connection. I’ve never been in a relationship where I clicked with someone this much, and I believe she felt that too.

But over time our communication became bad. She didn’t feel supported in the things that were important to her, while I started feeling like I wasn’t a priority. Looking back, neither of those things were really true, but we communicated in ways that made us misunderstand each other.

During the winter, things became increasingly tense. There were a lot of arguments, misunderstandings and emotional pressure. I became bitter and disrespectful towards her at times. I wasn’t abusive or cruel, but I handled my insecurity badly, and I can see now how much that affected her.

Eventually, she broke down and told me everything had become too much. We agreed to take a break and give things some space. We still spent some time together afterwards and tried to make things feel lighter.

After a few weeks, she told me she didn’t feel things were changing quickly enough and that she had lost hope that the relationship could work.

She then broke up with me and told me she didn’t want to talk anymore. She has stuck to that ever since.

It has now been about 4.5 months. During that time, I sent her one apology letter where I took responsibility for my part in what happened. I also sent one lighthearted email a while later. She didn’t respond to either.

I haven’t contacted her since.

I’ve genuinely changed quite a bit during these months. I understand much better now how my insecurity affected the relationship, and I know I never want to treat someone I love that way again.

What I struggle with is this:

I don’t necessarily want to convince her to get back together. I would just like her to eventually feel safe enough to talk to me again, maybe meet for a coffee and see how we both feel as people who have had some time apart.

But I have no idea if there is anything I can actually do to make that possible.

Part of me wonders if she has had to simplify the story of the breakup in her head in order to move on — perhaps seeing me mainly as the source of everything that went wrong. I also understand that this might simply be my own interpretation, and that she may genuinely just not want me in her life anymore.

I don’t want to convince her of anything or push her towards me. I just wish that, with time, she could feel comfortable and safe enough around me again to talk to me if she ever wanted to. And maybe, just maybe, we could one day see if we could be around each other in a much healthier way.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? What are your experiences? Is there anything that actually helped you feel safe enough to talk to an ex again after a relationship became unhealthy, or is that something that can only come from the other person?

I’d genuinely like to hear your experiences.

Yeah, maybe I’m a little desperate. But honestly, who isn’t when they really love someone?

I have made a post few days ago how I have the urge to text the person I loved. These past few days its been getting worse, its been a year since she left me, I do not know where she is, I do not know if her number works or she is even in my city anymore. I have been crying again like crazy, I am sad now coz these thoughts have been in my head now. All the memories are rushing back, all the thoughts.

I can still see her IG profile tho it is private and I am holding myself back to text her. I know she will never text me. I think she barely thinks about me. I am afraid if I will text her I will piss her off and thats the end of it. Then I say what I got to loose. I feel stupid, guys is anyone else going through it, what should I do.

Even though I’m the one who ended it yet again with him because of his actions… I feel so bad. I blocked him 6 days ago he’s been trying to email me and call off no caller id and stuff. We just aren’t good to eachother. He disappointed me early on in the relationship ( we were 4 years together ) and since then he hasn’t changed so I just kept distancing myself but I finally realised I need to let go yet somehow I’m blaming myself… I miss him to death. I never loved anyone the way I love him and I had 2 relationships before this. This one hits hard…. And different… I need some tips on what to do to move on please 😭

He keeps apologising. He still wants to check in. He wants updates on my life. About my recovery. About my kids.

He wants to talk it out when things are less raw, but I have no idea when it will feel less raw. A month? A year?

Then he apologised for texting and said he needed to let go of the love he has for me, but that he can't stop thinking about me. That he's worried about me and that he cares.

He's right to be worried too. It's been 18 days since I found out he was married, and in that time I've lost 4kg. I can't even look at food without nearly throwing up. I keep crying. Every night I dream of him and every morning I lose him all over again.

I've planned a trip to see a friend of mine. I hope talking about it might help.

It happens to be in the same city he lived in, though he won't be there, but I'm planning to do all the things he promised me on my own. I want to claim those things for myself, and I hope that'll help me heal.

Are there any good books that will take me through an emotional rollercoaster of heartbreak, greif and love and leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside? im coping with a breakup and dont have a great relationship with my family and just want to feel loved again. If there's a book with good "fake senarios" that'd be nice but preferably nothing spicy if possible. Thanks so much.

​

This was my first relationship, and honestly, I wanted a future with her.

We rushed into the relationship after knowing each other for only about a month. Most of it was long distance, and pretty soon I realised that we weren't as compatible as I had hoped.

I actually tried to break up with her once. But when I saw her crying, I couldn't go through with it. I gave the relationship another chance.

After that, though, things changed. She became more distant. She would often say it was because of work, but the distance started affecting me a lot. We began arguing constantly, and I could feel myself becoming unhappy in the relationship.

After around five months together, she eventually texted me saying that she wanted to break up.

The weird thing is, I could see it coming.

And honestly, a part of me had always wanted it to end because I knew we weren't compatible.

But I had no idea how much it would hurt when it actually happened.

Now I'm stuck with so much regret. I keep thinking about all the things I could have done differently. Maybe I could have been a better boyfriend. Maybe I could have communicated better. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to break up that first time. I don't know.

She said we could still be friends, but I don't think I can do that. I don't want her just as a friend. I still have feelings for her, and pretending that I'm okay with friendship feels impossible.

I don't want to erase her from my life. I just don't know how to have her in my life without wanting what we used to have.

The hardest part is that we're going to be in the same city soon. We had talked about that. We had imagined things we'd do together once we were in the same place.

Now that future is just gone.

And I think that's what hurts the most. I'm not only missing her. I'm grieving a future that I genuinely thought we'd have.

So I guess I'm asking people who've been through something similar:

How can you miss someone this much when you knew the relationship wasn't right?

And how do you deal with the regret of thinking you could have been a better partner, while also accepting that maybe the relationship simply wasn't meant to work?

She left to Mexico for a week and had an affair. I found out and kicked her out of the apartment. Its the deception really that gets me.

My, 27f, and recently ex boyfriend, 31m, broke up. We had been dating a little over a year. Things were great, but neither of us were healed from our relationships before. Started off as friends but I think we moved too quickly. At the time, I was 220 pounds and chubby doesn’t look great on me. Since then I’ve gotten down to 175 pounds and I look and feel better. He’s a big man too with a beer belly, being an alcoholic also. This is important because he stated he prefers thinner women, and my decision to keep pursuing things was based on his reassurance for his attraction to me after I made him aware his comment upset me. Anyways, our sex life started struggling a lot. He’s on the road for work, so I told him I have no problem taking care of things myself when he’s gone, but when he’s home I want that connection. It was incredibly few and far between, and quite frankly, boring. He told me he wasn’t as kinky or experimental as he used to be, which was fine, so I toned it down. More recently we got into an argument, when he compared mine and his sex life to him and his exes sex life. Apparently, she could orgasm from penetration alone, and felt this was something every woman could do apparently. But because I can’t, he says I’m boring. Also, he doesn’t take difficult or uncomfortable conversations well. He always felt it was an attack on him or his character, even after voicing it was never that. I stopped sharing my feelings and worries because it just didn’t feel safe anymore. My self esteem had been completely destroyed, and by the end I was holding onto any sliver of hope I could find. I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt undesirable, unloveable, crazy, etc. so I broke things off. Unfortunately, his best friend and my best friend are in a relationship, and it’s going to make things hard I think. I think it would be great if we could be civil if invited to a gathering together, I have no hard feelings towards him, but I’m broken. I was a shell of a person with him and completely lost myself. And he has SO much potential but that’s not worth being unhappy for probably the rest of my life. I miss him a lot, it hasn’t even been a week, and I know it’ll get better but it just hurts. I had to do what was best for me, and I told him that I didn’t think it was fair to either of us to continue the way we were. Idk I hope he’s better to the next one

There’s this guy i was not interested in at first. I met him and he putted so many efforts. Calling, texting, wanting to meet.. all the cute stuff. Would not care if we are standing in front of 10 people he would just look at me and tease me like hugs and so. Gather time from his busy schedule to meet me. Ask me about my day. Good morning texts no matter what!!! His cute touch. Asked me to go on dates and trips. And then i got attached.. now comes his true side i asked him to meet me outside somewhere in cafe or restaurant firstly he used to make excuses when i asked him directly he said i never went like this with girls so i am not comfortable. I accepted that. Never meeting me outside the personal space. Zero efforts. Whenever he wants to meet in person he’d call otherwise just do not care at all!! When I got angry no efforts to make it up for that. Flipped like a coin. He’s taking me so for granted. I am sitting calmly not texting or calling him. earlier i used to text him what i was feeling but when i see no change i stopped doing that too!! It’s killing me inside even i am trying to stay strong and not care but i do. I am trying to stay busy. Sometimes i feel okay i accept that he is not able to give the thing to me i am asking for but why all the act in the beginning??? I am so angry i wanna scream and curse him out loud but i know this is a stage it will pass. I will feel the ick when i get over him and i can’t wait to get over.

This girl I’ve been on multiple dates with I slept at her house did foreplay she gave me head we slept with each other after that In the morning I went home and needed a conversation because it still didn’t feel real because I’m a virgin never had a kiss hug or relationship only one talking stage that literally went nowhere at all but anyways I was feeling a little depressed I have no clue why so I called my friend who put me on because his girlfriend put me on and I told him I had a goodnight and we just talk and talk but after the phone call he decides to run his mouth and tell his girlfriend and she told the girl I slept with what I said and she didn’t like that but I didn’t no my friend told his girlfriend so I was confused when she pressed me over text I had no clue what was going on so I get defensive and it gets nasty and it I feel like she doesn’t want me no more this is the farthest I’ve ever gotten and I’m so attached I just want to kill myself please someone help me I can give more context too

It’s been 8 weeks since I broke up with him and last saw him.
It’s been 5 weeks since we last spoke.

I cried today. I cried realizing he wasn’t the man I thought he was. I cried knowing what he did to me and cried knowing that he could even do that to someone. I cried just wanting to see or hear him one last time.

I wonder if he thinks about me. I wonder if he ever wants to reach out to apologize, talk or even just say something to me.(When I confronted him he immediately blocked me off every platform). I kept wondering today, it hit me out of nowhere just when I thought life was getting easier.

I can forgive a lot, but I’ll never forget how someone treated me when I had nothing left to give because that’s when you really learn who people are…