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How to cope with unrequited love

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  • November 13, 2018 at 8:45 am #236691
    citygirlbythewater
    Participant

    Ive tried to find advice on this and its always the same. How to move on.., why loving someone who doesnt love you is self destructive or why there is nothing to gain from it.

    I know all of this and Im sure anyone who feels the way I do does as well. However, if I am honest with myself that doesnt matter. I love this person unconditionally and he will never feel the same way. After we broke up we stopped talking and I tried dating but everyone just wasn’t him. We started talking and we are now best friends and basically the only people we spend time with. He doesn’t have feelings for me he has made it very clear. He talks about how I should meet someone and be positive when I say that I wanted kids but it isn’t going to happen. I told him that I would never stop loving him and wanted to still be in his life till he dated and moved on ( that was 2 yrs ago). I made him promise he would let me know if he went on even a single date so I could bail. Fast forward to now and Im pretty sure he has forgotten that convo. He was talking to friend on the phone about how he needed to get back out there right in front of me. So Ive been trying to prepare myself to basically say goodbye n move forward .

    I want to know how to not be heart broken and to move forward without moving on. I am not looking to replace him because he is irreplaceable and I want him to find someone who feels this way about even though it means I wont get to have him in my life. However,  all the advice out there is basically like get over it and move on and be with someone else. It frankly all makes me feel pathetic and tells me to ignore my own feelings. Maybe it is pathetic that I feel this way but its how I feel.

    November 13, 2018 at 9:01 am #236699
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear citygirlbythewater:

    Your goal, “to move forward without moving on”, you mean by it that you want to cut contact with him once he dates another woman (something you see happening soon) and feel okay about having no contact with him while accepting living single, not in any relationship with a man,for as long as he will be involved with another woman, maybe for the rest of your life.

    Did I understand correctly?

    If I did, or close enough (let me know), about how old are you and what are the main circumstances of your life: do you live with family, work; and will you give a brief history of your relationships with men before this current  man came into your life?

    anita

     

    November 13, 2018 at 9:36 am #236713
    citygirlbythewater
    Participant

    Precisely but less based on his actions once I cut contact because saying as long as he is with someone else means I am still believing that there is some chance when it is said and done he might end up with me and I don’t. I have accepted that.  I haven’t had a lot of serious relationships before him. I dated someone for a year and we lived together bc we were roommates but it wasn’t a good fit and we were never going to end up together.

    Im 32, when I met him I was 28 about to turn 29. We didn’t date for long but when I say we have been best friends I mean we are either on the phone or together and neither makes a decision without talking to the other person. My friends joke its a sexless marriage. When we ended things he dated someone else for a bit and I forced myself to go on dates but they just were not him.  Im not saying that there is 100% a chance that I would never date someone else but I don’t see it happening as loving someone this much in my opinion is rare. Im also bluntly honest to a fault so I cant lie to someone or omit information. I will always love this person and it isn’t fair to another person to build something where I will always wish they were someone else. I believe everyone deserves to be the one and only in a relationship. Its highly doubtful I could ever give that. I have an extremely strong memory especially emotional. So for other people loves fades but for me feelings always run high. I have had to work on myself extremely hard to get rid of the concept of blame and fault bc otherwise I will hold grudges.

    I dont get along with my mother. My father and I are close as well as my sister and I. They live in tx. I live on the East Coast. Ive spent holidays alone or with friends I rarely go back to TX and its been fine.

    I really wanted kids but I wanted them with him but that is beyond off the table. I don’t believe in freezing my eggs. If I had kids I wanted one biological one at least. I also would never have kids on my own. I want a nuclear family. I would never marry now that kids are not on the table. It would feel incomplete to me. I get it works for other people and am in full support of that but it isn’t what I want.

    Currently I am trying to build a business but my career has been lackluster and my business is not yet formed. I am pretty sure I can do this and once I have there will be that in my life. I also have a cat and want to foster.

    I want to find my way to acceptance of the impending loss. Im young so I will have to be living alone and with this situation for a long time. When Ive mentioned this to therapist they try and fix me they want me to “not lose hope” or force me to date and then I end up dropping therapy and never getting the advice I desperately want. Im sick of the lectures of how Im closed off. I have no desire to lie to myself. I just want to find a way to not be depressed long term by this and live my life without him and without trying to replace him

     

     

    November 13, 2018 at 11:10 am #236729
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear citygirlbythewater:

    To thine own self be true, it was written, Shakespeare. No need to be true to what other people think your life should be about. You have the freedom to choose what is  subject  to  your choosing: where  to live, who to visit, who to not visit, to have children or not, and so  on.

    Hope is not all that it  is meant to be, sometimes it keeps us hanging by a thread.  There is a benefit in losing hope. The hope to love another man like you love this one, the hope to marry another, to have a family with another man, it is  okay to let it all  go and live the life that is available to you  as a single woman who loved once and is done.

    Focus then on your life as is, and as  it will  become being true to yourself, always.

    anita

    November 13, 2018 at 12:18 pm #236741
    Inky
    Participant

    Hi citygirlbythewater,

    I’m not asking you to forget him, and I’m not asking you to join a dating site, but I will suggest two things:

    1. Don’t reach out to him. Let HIM initiate all texts, calls, visits, social media communication. In short, HE gets to do all the work. He will become more interested in a relationship he has to actually work on. Or, the relationship will naturally ebb down by itself.

    2. You don’t have to seek love, but IF love seeks YOU, please give it a chance. That is a Message from the Universe! IF a cute/nice/happy/normal/and/or smart guy asks you out, say “YES”! You don’t have to marry him or anything, but enjoy the sensation of being courted, pursued, given a cup of coffee. This will CHANGE YOUR ENERGY. Girl, all my ex’s contacted me from hundreds of miles away as soon as I put on lipstick to go out (even with reluctance) on a date.

    Worked for Me!

    Inky

    November 14, 2018 at 4:32 am #236793
    Feathering my nest
    Participant

    Hello City Girl,

     

    I can relate to your situation somewhat, and am sharing my story with you. Make of it what you will.

     

    I’ve been in love with one of my best friends for almost a decade. Over that decade, I have been humbled to see him grow into a wonderful man. Generous, diplomatic, practical, loyal. Honest.  He really is the person I love most in this world- possibly because we’ve never had the complications of romance to deal with.

    He loves me dearly as a friend and it would hurt us both if I cut off our friendship. But yeah: being together as a couple will never happen. I finally had the courage to tell him 5 years ago, he said he did not feel the same way and nothing has happened to suggest he feels otherwise now. (Indeed I was with his brother for 3 years, so I know he would not be with me simply out of honor. Stupidly I dated his brother because I could not face telling him how I felt.) In many ways, he fills the role of a partner for me. When he has a girlfriend I experience a tangible loss as he gives his time and energies to them.

    Anyway: I have met, and loved, people since. My heart is big enough for more than one person – he taught me that.

    But I still want the things that come with a relationship, I accept that they will be with others and not with he. My feelings for him will probably not change and at times I do feel conflicted, it is hard to see  him with another woman. It really hurts.
    (But then maybe he found it hard to see me with his brother for so long too – I have this intuition that we could have been together, long ago.) I accept these difficulties as being the cost of my friendship with him.

    Lovers come and go but some friends are for life and I cannot imagine my life without him.

     

     

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