Hey mate, yours truly here again.

I’m honoured to meet another highly sensitive person (HSP), because they seem to be in dwindling supply lately or at least harder to find since men are typically supposed as strong, insensitive alpha brick-heads and anything else is not masculine. Let me tell you that investing heavily in emotions, believing in true love, and going to pieces over well-kept memories are in no way mutually exclusive with masculinity. I wouldn’t recommend trying to get over her until or unless you feel it is impeding you becoming the best person you can be. If you stay in contact with her family that indicates to me that they too harbour some confusion as to how and why things seemed to break down so easily. I stayed in contact with my ex, my ex’s friends, and my ex’s family after we broke up. But I did eventually stop when began the threats, the misrepresentation, and the complete disregard to address unsubstantiated claims about me made by my ex. Basically, at some point, they decided to change from fairly regular people to active participants in my emotional demise, refusing to consider my side of things. I wanted to keep up appearances with these people because I wanted them to know that (a) I still cared for them independent of my ex and (b) I was still willing to be responsible and convivial. I think keeping an ex in one’s life is not demonstrative of an inability to move forward but a sign of strength, courage, and maturity. Don’t excise them from your life unless their ill attitude warrants it – that is to say, unless they are deep, spreading malignancy that exists only to torture, humiliate, and undermine. My ex did this, even though I entreated her and her world to be caring so we could at least have a friendship. She didn’t want this, so I acted accordingly. It tells more about the person willing to maintain a friendship after a breakup than it does of the sad, malicious, contemptuous person actively engaging in ways to hurt you for absolutely no reason other than unaddressed hurt.

On a personal note: I’ve never been capable of completely removing someone from life. This is especially the case for those I’ve cared for and subsequently been hurt by. In fact, more often than not I need to keep them in my life in order to move on. Because every time I’ve tried to utterly purge someone and my memory of them it’s never as rigorous and thorough a process as one might think. To the point that you think you’re coping and moving on until you suddenly happen upon something – a picture, a shirt, a hair – and go to pieces, realising you truly aren’t over that person. I avoid that by always attempting, where appropriate, to keep that person in my life. That way you condition your heart to the finality of the relationship so that, when you do find that ‘something’ months later, it doesn’t cut as deeply.