Thank you both @blaice and @butterflynurse78 for your perspectives. I don’t really have any intention of reaching out to him and telling him I’m sorry, etc. because I do recognize that that is not beneficial to either of us (even though it would make me feel better in the short term.) I just am having a hard time with this and needed to vent. It’s also been difficult because I don’t have much of a social life in my hometown, which is where I currently live. I didn’t have many friends when I moved back and easily transitioned into hanging out with him and our mutual friends, whom I would consider more of his friends than mine, so it’s weird to go from an active social life to nothing. I know that will be a lot easier to deal with when I move.

Erin, I appreciate your perspective of feelings of love growing over time, which is not something that I heard about too often. I’m actually a little surprised myself by the intensity of my feelings surrounding this because initially I wasn’t having a hard time when we were acting as friends… though yes, I recognize the “having your cake and eating it too” part of that. I totally left it up to him and that was what he wanted to do, and I guess I didn’t have enough experience just then to recognize that that doesn’t really work right away. For now I just sent him a box of his stuff with a note saying that if he ever wants to talk in the future, I’d be here (I was going to do this when I moved but he actually did contact me to ask for his stuff yesterday.)