Posting this here because I’m unsure of where else to post something like this.
Over two years ago at this point I mutually ended a nearly year long relationship with someone I was still in love with. We were graduating high school and while still going to colleges in the same city, realized we were in over our heads and were in an unhealthy situation so we split it off. It destroyed me. It took me a year to get my shit together (I went on a minor drug-binge for about 3 months after and spent probably $6k from eating out and making sure I always had enough bud) but I eventually met my current partner. Things aren’t perfect in our relationship but I genuinely love her and we work to further strengthen our relationship. I don’t know that I see the rest of my life with her, but we’ve been together over a year now and I don’t have any intention of ending things anytime soon. We also live together so making it work is more of a necessity lol.
But I can’t get my ex out of my head. I’ve spent nearly every day for the last two years trying to let go of her but I don’t know why she keeps popping into my thoughts. I don’t love her, I don’t want to be with her, I don’t want her in my life. And ahe isn’t, but I’m still dealing with this. I do have a therapist who I’ve talked at length with about this but I don’t know, something about her just is stuck in my head. Maybe I preferred sex with her? I doubt it but she did kinda define what I consider my “type”, so maybe it’s just she’s more unromantically attractive to me? But it feels so much deeper than that. If it were those shallows reasons I feel like it would’ve been easier to debug and diagnose. She was my best friend. One day she was in my life, the next day not. It feels like a very specifically sized puzzle piece is missing and now there’s a small hole in the puzzle.
I don’t know, it’s kinda maddening. I don’t have most social media, so it’s easier to avoid her online and not think about her. But occasionally I find myself borderline stalking her, except it’s just me gathering random information I already know from OSINT tools with no intention or idea on how to utilize it (I’m well aware of how to use OSINT data, I mean in this specific situation). Part of it just feels like someone really important to me was rapidly removed from my life and I yearn to reconnect with them, but I guess I fear what such an endeavor might reawaken in me. I don’t love her, at least I don’t think I do. If I do it would be monumentally fucked up and I would feel like I’m emotionally cheating on my partner, who is somewhat aware of this issue but thinks I have it figured out (I thought I did too; I’m not knowingly lying to my partner). I don’t know, I sent them a proper goodbye email a few months ago and thought that was that but it’s clearly not. And I’ve put so much time and effort into trying to wrap it up for myself but now it feels like I’m just lost and stuck. Part of me just wants to reach out and ask if we can get a cup of coffee, but the other part of me recognizes the red flags in that immediately.
I just want to be done with this. I want my brain to get it through itself thar it’s over. It’s been over. There’s no changing the past, and if I could, I don’t think I would’ve reached the point where I am in life with my current opportunities if we had stayed together. Part of why we broke up was because as I was learning how to sell pot (which I was never very good at), I became a massive stoner (which I am very good at). She wasn’t anti-weed but didn’t appreciate it. When eventually saw that us growing apart was hurting each other and decided to leave things behind. Being young and dumb, I didn’t handle the breakup well. I didn’t do anything bad or harmful to her or anyone else, but it was obvious to both of us that I wasn’t okay afterwards. When I feel like I needed her the most, she was gone from my life. In doing so she broke our promise of prioritizing our friendship over the relationship. I don’t really know. I understand a lot of the reasons why I’m hurt and some are justified some are not. I understand the role I played and the responsibility I had in hoe things ended. I was not a great partner in a lot of instances, and neither was she. But part of me wonders if we had met now what it would be like. But I wouldn’t have been who I am now without her and without being without her. I’m just so fucking unsure man.
I’m sorry if this is really rambly. I expect that the majority of answers will probably be to just get over it already, which I’m trying to do. I just don’t feel like it’s the right thing to ask to see her again, because that feels like an eventual mistake rather than closure. Idk, tell me I’m an idiot or an asshole to my current partner or something. I just want to be done with dealing with the legacy of a long-dead relationship.
TL;DR: Mutually ended a significant relationship when I wasn’t ready. Been kinda fucked since. Want to not be fucked so I can be a better partner. I suck for this.
Edit: Thank you to everyone who has commented thus far. A lot of the discussion has been really helpful and I’ve got some new leads on how to debug this issue. I’m trying to respond to everyone and I can’t express how appreciative I am.
You’ve gotten some really good advice in this thread, especially from the comment to which you are responding here: a bit blunt, but if you can accept it, excellent advice.
The only two things I would add is that
Self-medication, by any means, EXTENDS any grief process, whether it’s your lady, your job, your grandmother, or your dog that you lost. The grief (what I am calling what you are now experiencing, even if it doesn’t look like sadness anymore) is the natural process of breaking of those emotional bonds. As many and as deeply as you created them, grief is now the process of breaking them, separating you from the person/object you lost so you can live freely again. There is no rushing this, but you CAN slow it down, and self-medicating is one of those ways of dragging it out into infinity. The only way to get past grief is go through it, literally to feel those breaking emotions and in feeling them, to drain them of their power. That’s just how it works. Self-medication does not decrease those emotions, which for you are already intense because you had so much of your own identity as a person invested in who you were WITH her. Medicating simply postpones them and spreads them out over time. I’m not judging you for your choices, but you might well be moving through this much faster if you were not overall numbing your emotions daily with substance use.
When you give in to the darker desires to inform yourself of her current situations without her knowledge, consent, or participation, you are literally recreating/reinforcing the very same emotional bonds you’re trying so hard and so painfully to break. That’s why doing it feels good: it feels like righting a wrong, like regaining a lost balance, like taking some power back. But in reality it’s none of those things, and far worse for your inner situation than you might think. So stop. Every time you think about tracking her down, checking her social media, finding out what she’s up to, ask yourself how many more minutes, hours, weeks, or months you want to suffer what you’re already going through, because in doing this you are actively retying bonds your own grief is trying to free you from. Regardless of whether it’s right or wrong or creepy or not, stalking feeds the beast. Remember this when you go to do it again.
I would like to point out that while no form of stalking is acceptable and I will not be engaging with it further, the information I was finding wasn’t any new or revelatory; its the information I had forgotten over the years. But i agree, it’s harmful to my healing journey, invades her privacy, and is overall just a shitty thing to do.
As for the weed, it serves a very specific purpose in my life that changes from time to time and is consistently reevaluated. It’s not to numb me, and I do monitor my consumption for abnormal effects. I am a fully functional adult, with emotional awareness and regulation, while stoned.