Dear Dove:

You shared that you had a boyfriend who lived in your state while attending university. In the beginning he was “so sweet and kind”. He kept saying every day that he loved you “so much”. For your birthday he went out of his way to get you “a really thoughtful birthday gift”, and in the birthday card he wrote: “we’ll create the best and most powerful love any two humans have ever known”, and “I look forward to many more years with you”.

You shared that you have “such a low self esteem”, that you have an anxious attachment style, that at one point in the relationship, you felt that he was your savior and “the biggest highlight” of your life.

Toward the end of the relationship the two of you fought a lot, he “became extremely cold”. He told you that the relationship was not healthy, and you thought so too (“I know our relationship wasn’t healthy.. he said so, and I thought so”). And then, he broke up with you, and soon afterwards told you that “he was planning on breaking up with (you) for MONTHS now”- during the time that he got you the thoughtful birthday gift and wrote those words of love and promise in that birthday card.

The following things happened in succession: (1) He broke up with you, telling you that “he had feelings for this girl in his home state”. (2) He  changed his phone lock screen from a picture of him-and-you,  to a picture of him-and-her. (3) He signed up to online dating “for fun”. (4) (The day before yesterday), he told you that he quickly deleted his online dating profiles and decided to “work on himself and his studies for a year”. (5) He expresses romantic interest in one of the girls in his online classes and said that he “got a Covid test a few days ago just so that he could kiss her safely”.

The two of you agreed that “it would be best to cut off all contact”. You currently feel “absolutely dreadful being replaced.. obviously, he didn’t think I was worth it… barely able to eat or function with how much pain I’ve been in over him… All our good memories feel tainted.. I feel hopeless”. You created a new profile on Instagram and are thinking about contacting him and finding out “more about the  new girl who he’s seeing”.

“Please help me to feel better”, you asked.

My reply to you: you will feel better, you will see. Feelings don’t stay the same and when we feel down, we don’t stay down forevermore. What I found out in my life is that misunderstandings caused me a lot of misery, and that the more I understand correctly- the better I feel. Sometimes I understand things that I don’t want to understand, things I wish were not so, but after the new understanding sinks in- I feel surprisingly better.

And so, I want to help you understand better what happened. I will suggest things to you, and if you want to, you can tell me if what I understands feels true to you, or not. Eventually, if we communicate long enough, we can reach an accurate understanding.

It seems to me that your ex-boyfriend is an emotional thrill seeker, that he is chasing excitement and that his feelings of love for you (and for the new girl) are not deep, but rather have to do with his need to feel excited, so to .. overcome the boredom of his routine living from day to day. If his feelings of love for you were deep, I would think that he wouldn’t want to hurt you by telling you about his interest in another girl.

Any of this feels true to you?

anita