I’m sorry you’re feeling so bad, John. I really do get it, and I still have my moments where waves of grief come, and I think that’s natural. You just have to sit with the sadness for a minute and then do your best to change your focus. And I know that continually trying is difficult and you get tired of trying and feeling like you’re not getting anywhere, but you are. It’s just slow going. For one thing though… letting yourself think about if things might have been different if this or that factor was different isn’t helping you because it’s not anything you can go back and change, so those are the types of thoughts you really have to stop in their tracks and tell yourself “no… it doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen that way and it can’t be changed now.” Stop those thoughts every. single. time. they come, no matter how many times they come. Develop and nurture that skill of stopping the thoughts that don’t serve you and will only set you back.

On the positive side, it sounds like you know what belief you need to work on then…. believing that if you let go, you’ll forget or miss your chance. You won’t. If you let her go and she comes back and you’re not with someone better than her at that point, it won’t be hard for your feelings to come back again just by hanging out with her. Start realizing that, and it’ll be easier to loosen your grip enough to let go for the time being. And I believe this will help because I felt the same way and it helped me. Think of how many people have had exes come back YEARS later and then after spending time together, the feelings come back (or redevelop even stronger) and they get together again. Most of those people had let the other one go completely with no expectation of ever reconciling, but it didn’t matter when they hung out again… the feelings reignited. There have been studies done on this, too… when we develop deep connections with people, our brains form pathways and even years and years of disconnection can go by and when you get together again, it reignites those same pathways that were formed before…. so your worry (and my previous worry) of your feelings going away right before she comes back and then you miss your chance is really not something that will happen. If she comes back and you hang out with her, your feelings for her are likely to come back and you won’t miss that chance, so it really is safe to let go for now, at least enough to where you can stop agonizing over her.

With that said, don’t push yourself before you’re ready. I do think it sounds like you need more processing time. It’s hard to grieve or suffer with 2 things at once, and you basically had 1.5 years of suffering in a bad relationship right in the middle of this process of grieving your relationship with your ex… that kind of thing can prolong the time it takes to get over someone. So if you’re not ready to let her go yet, that’s okay, just take baby steps, keep trying to reprogram your beliefs, eventually they will change. Also start learning something that you’ve always wanted to learn (like an instrument or a new language, for example) and stay busy in your free time studying that. It really helps to keep the loneliness at bay. I went back to college and have zero free time to be lonely during the semesters. haha

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by Valora.