Man, I really appreciate reading your posts. I just came back to reading your site after a while away. You express these situations so well. You express my thoughts and feelings, only more articulately. I’m inspired by your posts because I see a sensitive guy like me who now takes initiative, adding action and experience to the wonderful gift of self-reflection. The combination is powerful and will guide you well in life (as you know). Thanks for inspiring me to take initiative even though I’m an anxious sap.

Its like my mind wont fully let me experience love again.

I think in a certain sense our situations are very different. In the last paragraphs I talk about how emotionally it feels like I will never get over her. But this isn’t what I’m saying. That feeling I’m expressing is part of the acceptance process. I am taking in all of my feelings.

I will get over her. I already am getting over her. I have moments where it doesn’t fell like it. But I am. I am feeling better and better every day. I can almost guarantee you that in two months time I will feel completely different about this.

If you aren’t getting past this experience after this much time, you may want to ask yourself why aren’t. Or more importantly how you can get past it.

Maybe you have feelings of regret, thinking you should have done things differently or known better. Maybe anger because you feel betrayed or disempowered. Maybe her abandoning you is retriggering feelings from your past, the way your patents treated you.

You are obviously trying to figure out ways to get past your hurt. But there is probably a large part of you that doesn’t want to let go of it.

If and when you do decide that you want to let go of it, here are some things you can do to help the healing process.

Closure. I highly recommend staying away from a girl you’ve broken up with to at least let some time pass and for there to be some healing. But since you’ve already taken some time, you may want to actually meet up with this girl and talk about things. It can give you some good insight into yourself and why things went wrong. It can also take her off the pedestal and allow you to see her as a human beging.

Talk about it. You’ve talked about it here on this blog. But you probably want to talk about it with close friends if you already haven’t done that. You may even want to consider talking to a professional therapist about it. Talking about it helps you sort out your feelings. But even more than that, expressing your hurt is an important way to heal.

In large part, this blog helps me to express myself and allows me an outlet I would never have had. And also helping others is a great therapy. I have a friend who is trying to get over this girl he was obsessed with. Helping him through his issues has given me a lot of insight into my own.

And of course you should keep dating. It’s good that you are out there. But obviously something is wrong in that you don’t care about who you’re with. But anything will pale in comparison to a 7-year relationship. Keep getting out there and meeting new people. And allow that at the beginning stages there is no way you can feel as much as you did for your previous girlfriend and how you felt after you lost her.

Eric

You acknowledge how hard it is to believe that you will ever get out of this spiral; but you also know that it will make you a better, stronger person, and you will get out. Both are valid truths. It helps to read them stated so eloquently – it lets me know that I am not the only one going through it.

I just find it a bummer that you (ERIC DISCO) are in your mid 30’s and are still a bit haunted by what happened when you were a teen. I pray that i do not share your same fate.

In the movie One-Hour Photo, Robin William’s character says “The things that we fear the most have already happened to us.”

The girl who hurt me 12 years ago was the first real relationship I was in with a woman. And when it ended, I didn’t expect the level of pain I would feel, particularly because of how into me she was.

But that is the potential loss that comes with any deep relationship. Mine was only two years long. I can only imagine how it must have felt ending after seven years.

I will always be haunted by that relationship because it was my first. It’s imprinted in my mind.

But I am willing to accept the pain, because without that, there is no way to move on and experience love. Without accepting the pain, I would be too frightened to get into a new relationship.

I share these painful experiences with you guys here, as well as the joys of what I do. Because that’s what this is about. We all have ups and down, beautiful experiences and painful experiences. And even the painful experiences are beautiful in their own way.

Eric

I just find it a bummer that you (ERIC DISCO) are in your mid 30’s and are still a bit haunted by what happened when you were a teen. I pray that i do not share your same fate.

Later