Hi Josh,

I felt the need to reply as i have gone through and still go through some similar emotions to you. I had a breakup just over a year ago that i have found difficult to move on from and actually having a couple of short rebounds afterwards actually didn’t allow me to properly heal from the situation which i have now learnt.

I also had the urges to send that email / letter / one last conversation etc but still haven’t broken contact for a number of months and now that i am in a new relationship i have to let it go. The fact is, we need to have respect for ourselves, they made a decision to leave and if they cannot see the good in you then they don’t deserve you. There are plenty of women out there that would appreciate you. I too setup dating profiles and was not the most confident in communicating but this is a chance to grow and learn for yourself and my advice would be to just be yourself as you are clearly a decent bloke with the right intentions at heart. What i would say is the need to find a woman to be married and have children by 35 is putting way too much pressure on yourself. You need to be happy in yourself and at the right time things will come to you. Relationships are not black and white and we all have different experiences and knock downs that we need to rise from. 5 years is a long time and i am sure things will happen for you if you persevere.

Heartbreaks make us stronger and help us to learn and grow, even a year on for me i still think of an ex daily, albeit just thoughts and not all the time during the day. It does get easier and i am working on acceptance myself as i am now in a better relationship with someone who matches what i desire in a partner. If she really was the one for you she would still be there and wouldn’t have walked away. You deserve and will get a better partner in the future.