Healing is rarely a linear process – and even after we heal it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t occasionally feel sad about the end of a relationship. I remember when I was a younger, I was in the back seat of my family car and a song came on the radio. My mom started to tear up. “What’s wrong Mommy?” I asked. “Oh, nothing dear,” she replied. Years later she confided to me that was a song an ex-boyfriend loved. (Note, she’s been happily married to my dad for 35+ years.) She opened up about it because one day wailed about some guy who I was having trouble getting over and she used it to illustrate that while you do eventually move on, it doesn’t mean that you never think (or have feelings) about that person ever again.

anita is right that something probably set this off – like hearing a song – which is again, very normal. She’s also wise to council that you examine why you feel “regret”. Are you possibly just mistaking that for some other emotion (like loneliness)?

My advice is to embrace the feelings and let them flow through you. Like the final coughing fits you have before getting over the flu, these emotions will pass.

Dear anongirl:

In your post to me you wrote “To keep it simple…” Well, what you wrote next is too vague, unclear.

You wrote and stressed that “he was my best friend” – what does it mean? How did it look like/ feel like, him being your best friend?

Then you wrote: “and then like stuff happened”- What stuff? It must have been significant stuff, what was it?

“We never really defined the relationship”- what definition were you interested in?

“I liked him a lot. But I knew he wasn’t the kind of guy I’d spend the rest of my life with.”- What did you like about him and what did you dislike about him? Of the second part, what was it that you couldn’t live with if you were to be in a long term relationship with him?

“So instead of giving him false hope, I thought deleting him out of my life will clear it up”- where you trying to protect him, or you, or both? “Clear it up- clear what?

anita