Dear SG
This will sound cruel but I am glad for your sake that he has called it a day. It sounds like he knew he couldn’t love you properly but when you were around he would take advantage of your love for him.
Being in love is addictive and takes away your notion of who you are and what you want. Us girls are brought up on fairy tale romances (Disney, rom-coms) and we all want the happy ever after. It sounds like you put a whole lot of feeling into a frog who would never turn into your prince.
Before this relationship happened, where & what did you want to do with your life? Can you try focusing on what matters to you.
He is not worthy of you holding love feelings for him, 5 years has shown you it’s not gonna work out (unless you want to accept mistreatment).
You are capable of a whole lot of loving and another guy will come along, but don’t rush in (this is how I got into my current possible ‘dead end’ relationship).
Those first 6 months to a year of a relationship make us blind to the potential relationship faults as we are enjoying sharing fun times, cuddles, flirtation.
I’ve just been diagnosed with severe depression and I so want to be out of my black hole but it takes time and learning to be kind to yourself. Replaying conversations and times together won’t help unless you are concreting the thought that he just didn’t love you enough. I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but these things happen, 9 years I stayed with the last boyfriend, deep down knowing that I wouldn’t ever truly be happy as I never had any say, the final straw for me was when he wanted a Rottweiler dog and I didn’t (we lived together) because I’ allergic, I’d end up doing all the cleaning up (as he was lazy) and because I was a bit frightened of having a big dog around. He got the dog, I moved out, we saw each other a few times after that but after I’d just end up feeling disgusted with myself for allowing myself to carry on thinking that our love was going to conquer all the problems.
Today, I will write a list of all the things that make me happy, soaking in a bubble bath, being by the sea, painting, etc. Maybe you could try something similar.