Ry, Sometimes we humans focus on other people because doing our own emotional work is challenging. It sometimes is easier to stay stuck in thinking and focusing on the other person and why they have done whatever it is that hurt us or rejected us. Maybe a woman’s love is an addiction for you because it allows you to focus on something other than the hard work of changing for the better. Being in love is our mistaken notion that this will fix us or make us happy. But being in love with a damaged or difficult person doesn’t always bring happiness. I just read this quote today and I wrote it down for myself to ponder on: “Growth always takes place out of your comfort zone.” -Damon West. Being out of our comfort zone is disquieting and weird feeling but when you are there, embrace the road of change that your soul is longing for. “Love” can be the addiction, like any addiction, that keeps us in our comfort zone, happily (at first) but temporarily medicated and later in misery. You ponder about this woman but she is simply the messenger in your life. The things you quoted that she said or wrote to you sound like she is also struggling in her emotional wellness and maturity. It appears to me that you are pondering that which is not fixable by you and has no reasonable or rational answer. You have attached to someone who can’t give you what you seek in life. If we want better in our lives, it has to start within us.  People often get angry at me when I say this because it challenges them in their comfort zone. I think the lesson of her is that you have to rise up in your “stuff” so that you attract an emotionally healthy partner. Perhaps the push and pull you feel for women is your soul saying it is not time and there is more work or lessons it wants to achieve. A year and a half is perhaps common in grief, although there is no normal time in grief. If you are ready to focus on progressing within yourself now and to accept what happened and how she is and how you are, then it is time to move forward. You can stay stuck in this place or you can work out of it, through good counseling, or reading some self help books, journaling, meditating, asking God to give you wisdom and courage, and other things I can’t think of right now.