Mainly how to move on, especially when through all of it you’re still “in love” (I use that loosely because I think it’s just attachment at this point). And how to deal with the conflicting emotions, because there are still times I feel like part of us falling apart is my fault, although I can still recognize that the relationship was doomed from the beginning. The cognitive dissonance is eating me alive & keeping me in a loop. I just want to move forward & trust myself again to love because this was honestly a traumatizing experience.

I guess in all of this, I am just confused as to how someone would go through such lengths to use someone at their disposal, then have absolutely no remorse for it. My mother and I have both reached out to him several times, and he’s ignored us both. He’s blocked my number, email, my social media accounts…everything. Of course there is the natural feeling of jealousy that he’s back with his ex, even though I understood our relationship was no where near healthy. And mostly, I’m experiencing cognitive dissonance in many ways. I still love him & care for him deeply despite what he did and I wish I didn’t. But I’ve also had the time to reflect on the abusive/manipulative/narcissistic patterns of his behavior. I’m almost able to pin point when he chose me as his next “victim”…very early on in our friendship before we were ever romantically involved, and almost every instance after that that should have been a red flag. I just have a rush of conflicting and cycling emotions – hurt, betrayal, jealousy, disbelief, anger…but love and the yearning to forgive. I imagine that last part has a lot to do with attachment. But he implemented so many things in my head: that he loved me, that he was leaving me because it was toxic to the both of us, but that with time he wanted to get back together…all for me to figure out that he’d been setting up things with his ex long before he even left me. I don’t know. I’m just a cluster of a mess and am not sure how to make up my mind on how I feel about everything. I just don’t know how you could love someone so much that hurt you so deeply. I want to believe he loved me, but I can’t understand why he did all of this. It hurts to feel like he didn’t love me at all and I was only there to be used. I feel that if he truly loved me, he’d at least offer some sort of closure rather than leaving me high and dry like he has.