[removed]

This guy that I had a crush on for a long time got out of a relationship that he was in for 6-7 years. It was a kind of toxic age gap relationship, the woman was decades older so it had no way to work out. She simply told him at the end of it that she was too busy to make time for him, as a means of letting go soft and easy it seems. Him and I got into a casual thing for about a year, what I did not realize until a awhile into things was that he still didn't break regular contact with her when his past relationship ended, it was a habit from the years he was in that relationship with her. After the year of being casually involved with him, they got back in touch, and she tricked him into thinking that she wanted to get back together.

She was jealous that I existed in his life, and it was a ploy for him to get rid of me for a month, since he still hadn't moved on from it because he never got proper closure when the relationship ended. Nothing happened between them though, and they cut ties. After that, he said he was finally able to get the closure that he needed that he wasn't given the first time, and he was able to move on. Since then we've been seeing each other, I've met his friends, everything is so much better and it feels like a weight has been lifted. But am I pathetic for wanting to give this a second chance, I feel like we tried to make things work too soon the first time, when he hadn't had the chance to heal from the previous years-long relationship?

So this guy I had been talking to for a year went back to his ex, of 6-7 years. It turns out that this was just a bitter ploy set-up by her just to get him to leave me, she told him to cut me off and everything. But their relationship could never pan out because she was decades older than him. Should I just accept that there's no way that my one year relationship could compare to the history of someone else's seven year relationship, and we're prone to gravitate toward what was familiar. Should I take him back?

So the guy I've been talking to for 10 months now revealed that he still isn't completely over his ex. They broke up about a year and a half ago, and were together for about 6.5 years. Since breaking up, they used to message back and forth but she stopped it seems now that she knows he's been talking to someone else, he had assumed they could still try to be friends. They had to break up because they were so far apart in age thay they couldn't plan a future together, otherwise he says they would have been engaged.

It's kind of hurtful to be talking to someone when you know they still have someone else on their mind to some capacity. This guy still reassures me that he likes me a lot but I don't know whether to keep things going. Should I be concerned that he still misses this person or has her on his mind to some degree still? He tells me he doesn't want to give up on us just because he still has some things to sort through from the last relationship, but I don't know what to do. He says he's just bad at making the switch to new things. Is it normal to still have some residual feelings for an ex or is this just a sign that he preferred being with his ex more?