Nobody “watched” Kitty Genovese get repeatedly stabbed. The original report overstated the case wildly. There were witnesses, but no one realised what was really going on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese#Attack

The bystander effect clearly doesn’t just effect you, though. It’s a known, unfortunate feature of humans the world over. Why should you carry particular guilt for acting in accordance with human nature – especially if you clearly didn’t mean to?

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Will.

Just chiming in to agree, really. I see no reason for you to hate him, but if it would do your sense of mental peace good not to talk to him at all and let it be done, then that’s fine. Say it’s done. Tell him, thanks for the good times and goodbye.

I think circumstances just got in the way for you guys. It’s sad but it happens, especially when you’re young.

Hope you can find a way to let it go. All my best wishes.

You can’t logic away your feelings.

It seems to me your problem is not so much having “negative” thoughts, but the feelings that underly these thoughts. If you’re constantly asking for reassurance, those feelings may be fear, anxiety, guilt? Your thoughts may prompt these feelings, but they also arise from these feelings. Simply trying to over-write the thoughts may not be working for this reason.

Let’s pretend, as a metaphor, that your feelings are small creatures that give you thoughts to think and want something from you. Perhaps paying closer, quiet attention to the feelings themselves, without trying to “get rid” or piling too much thinking on top of them, will help these “creatures” feel heard and appreciated and they’ll have less need to be so noisy. That means, once you learn to be with the feeling, the thoughts will tune out by themselves.

Or maybe there’s some stuff going on in your life that just makes you really, really worried for legitimate reasons. If that’s the case, no amount of positive thinking or reassurance will make those worries go away. Pay attention to what it is you fear and thinking of ways to increase your sense of safety and security. That might be helpful.

I hope you find peace and safety. My best wishes.

I’d like to argue for the other side, if that’s ok. You’ve had some good advice already, and I don’t disagree with much of it, but I think there are some things you could consider that might both help you in the future and make this situation a little less painful.

So, first, I think she handled this badly. She tells you no, she tells you yes, she picks the other guy after all… it’s a mess. And I’m not absolving her at all. But. This was her first relationship. It was your first relationship. You were both learing how to do relationships and getting to know each other at the same time. Relationships are hard. The first couple times we try we mess a lot of stuff up. She didn’t know what she was doing, what exactly she wanted or how to make either clear to you or this other guy. How could she have known? She’s never been in a situation like this. Maybe thinking about it that way will help you find some forgiveness?

As I said, you were brand new to this too. And it’s possible you didn’t handle things as well as you would have done with more experience. There may be some ways in which you contributed to the mess, not intending to, of course. I wonder what you mean, for example, when you say you “stole” her first kiss. Does that mean you kissed her without her expecting it? Without her being ready for it? And it was her first kiss? If so, you put her into a difficult situation. Here she is, having had her first kiss, and now there’s a level of connection between you that she may not have been ready for yet. Maybe she likes you, maybe you’re the kind of guy she would have liked to kiss at some point, once she got to know you better, but it’s too late for that. It’s already done. She never had a chance to pick you as her first kisser, so how can she now be sure how she feels about you?

This may all sound silly to you. You were close afterwards so clearly she liked it and no problem, right? But you shouldn’t underestimate the pressure you put on her in doing that. Of course she liked you before, but now that you’d kissed, she had to either like you more, enough to keep kissing, or throw you away. She had no chance to naturally grow to like you enough to kiss willingly. There’s a reason you’re not supposed to engage in physical intimacy with someone unless you know they want to do that thing, want to do it with you and are ready to it here and now. If you are not sure of that, do not proceed. It messes things up. You messed with her feelings.

You also say you made her choose between you and this other guy before you started dating. This is not unreasonable. Many people like to be explicitly exclusive right from date number one. On the other hand, many people take a different approach and go on casual dates here and there with more than one person to feel them out and make an informed choice on who suits them best. Either can work in growing relationships, but if one of you is one way, and the other the other, it’s not going to work. Because she’d never been in a relationship before, she didn’t know if she was one way or the other. She may have been told all sorts of things about how she should be. All of this comes together when you ask her to choose before she is ready to, and she chooses wrong. So she has to change her mind later. I don’t think that’s her fault, or your fault. It’s just an incompatibility neither of you had any way of knowing about.

But if you want to draw a lesson from this, I would suggest this: if you push intimacy or commitment on someone who isn’t ready for it, they will either tell you “no” straight away, or they tell you “yes” and you’ve just put a time bomb under your relationship.

One more thing: please don’t fall for the myth that someone who stopped loving you never loved you in the first place. It’s not true. Feelings can change over time, and if you believe that myth, it will turn all your relationships that end, and most of your relationships will, into dirt and lies. And they don’t have to be. You can have something beautiful, and then it goes bad and then it dies. But it was beautiful when it started, and you can hold the memory gladly.

I hope you can move companies soon, because yeah, it sucks to be around an ex all the time. I hope your future relationships will be better and end less painfully. I hope your depression and anxiety will get better, because that is some heavy shit you’re dealing with. Give yourself some credit for dealing with that, and a heartbreak.

All my best wishes.

Okay, so maybe she’s not moved on. What does that have to do with you?

We can’t help you fix this woman. She’s not the one posting here. You’re the one who’s upset and talking to us, so you’re the only one we can advise. What about this text bothers you so much?

Don’t expect yourself to snap out of it. Don’t be angry with yourself for being upset. Don’t bully yourself for not having the appropriate emotions vis a vis your mother’s chemo and your broken heart. Emotions don’t follow rational rules.

Think of emotional you as a small child. It doesn’t know what’s appropriate or how it ought to feel about this or that. It doesn’t know what it needs. It just knows it’s in pain, so it’s screaming its head off. You wouldn’t yell at a small child for being in pain. You’d comfort it. You’d give it time. You’d give it love. You’d hold it as it wailed away.

Try doing that for the hurt part of your heart.

Wow, that sucks. And is it truly a deep dark mystery to you why you run? If you keep running, it’s probably because you’re afraid, right? So what could be some of the things you’re afraid of?

If you know what you’re afraid of, you might be able to do things in such a way that you feel safe even while you push forward. And then you can do things other than run when you’re dealing with this fear.

OK, I will make this fast also.
The fact that he’s not in love with you has nothing to do with your qualities. Most people are not in love with any given person, even if they’re lovely. He doesn’t love you. That has nothing to do with how loveable you are, and everything to do with him, what he likes, etc.

You’ll have to grow your confidence yourself, without looking for a boy to give it to you. If you work on your feelings and your outlook on life, you’ll have a better life regardless of whether someone is attracted to you. Though, if it helps motivate you, they will be once you become a mature, confident and self-contained person.