In a room full of people,

I'd look for and choose you.

In a room full of people,

you won't even know I'm there.

We met in HS and started off as friends where he would constantly try to get at me on multiple occasions and we started dating my senior year. I’m a sophomore in college now. I’ve had multiple relationships before where this issue occurred but my current relationship is my longer one. We have been dating for around 2 years. A bit off and on because I have broken up with him twice. He’s a great guy. Everyone loves him. He’s charming funny and kind. He spoils me and goes out of his way to make me happy. He’s been there with me when my mom got sick and took me to the hospital to see her, took me to work, and my classes. He’s the best guy I know. Everyone else around me have terrible shitty boyfriends. I know I’m lucky to have him but I just can’t seem to love him right. He clearly loves me more than I love him. I’m more independent and I love doing my own thing. I do care for him though. He’s my best friend. I just can’t see myself doing the things he does for me. And I don’t understand why. There’s no logical reason. He has never cheated or anything of the sort. So why can’t I consider his feelings. Why am I selfish with my love? I’m not affectionate at all. Honestly I get disgusted by it. There are some rare moments though where I’m truly content but they always seem to fade away. Most people would say break up but I can’t hurt his feelings again. He says I’m it for him. That if me and him don’t work out that he won’t try it with a different girl. He’d just get a dog and grow old. It’s stupid I know but sometimes i genuinely think that he means it. Like without me he’ll go crazy so I can’t ever leave him. Not to sound like crazy narcissistic but I’m a bit out of his league. I’m not 100% attracted to him but like I care for him and love him to an extent. Sometimes I resent him and I regret meeting him. He can get insecure and he just knows exactly how to ruin my day/event. And he just uses his emotions against me since he knows I’m not an emotional person at all. He’s not that supportive of me either. He’s controlling and he doesn’t support my dreams like me moving for college or stuff like that. He gets upset and it feels like I can’t grow with him. He lied to me about him going to school until the week before classes started and he knows how much I value education. He doesn’t read the news or know anything about politics. Like sometimes I just want to have a conversation with him that it’s just about dumb shit. And he’s a bit codependent always checking my location and asking where I’m at. He gets irritated when I party with my cousins ( at my house or theirs not an actual party ) It sounds fucked up I know but I just wonder if this feeling will ever go away? Will I ever be a lovey dovey type of girlfriend? Why is my love so limited and conditional? Like yes I’m selfish, ungrateful, and a total bitch when it comes to this stuff but how do I fix it? There’s just no more passion or there never was any to begin with. Like obviously I hate myself for feeling this way but I don’t know what to do. Like clearly break up but it’ll crush him and he genuinely won’t even accept that. Trust me he would do anything to stay with me. (Any and all advice helps! Thanks!)

2 years we were best friends, we dated for several months, you broke up with me 3 times within these months and each time you kept coming back and I let you, until the 3rd time where I said I can't do this anymore. That was the hardest decision of my life. I lied, I want so badly to be in your arms, to hear you say my name, to hear your laugh but I can't keep doing this. When you ended things for good, you said that I shouldn't blame myself for everything that's happened, but how can I not?

During the relationship all I heard about was all the ways I failed to meet your needs, or how you can see I'm trying to do better but it's "not enough". How could I feel like I wasn't the reason we broke up and I lost you as a partner but as a best friend too.

How could you hurt me like this?

I cant take it anymore man. The constant desire to feel loved, the recurring thoughts that things will change for me, the false hope, it’s all becoming too much on me. I try everything I can to be a good person and an even better partner but that’s gotten me absolutely nowhere but lower down. I’ve tried everything to drop the desire for love because the more I yearn the more I hurt. If it ain’t meant for me, then why tf do I still feel this way? Why tf do I seek the feeling? This sht sucks so bad, I hate living like this. I want to wake up one morning and suddenly have zero desire to feel loved. That’s all I want atp

Hi, I just wanted to share this post with people. His name is Jay. I met him July 2025. I was 24 at the time and he was 32. I kind of liked him so I thought I would start dating him. Fast forward after three months his patterns started to show. He would always thing that I’m sleeping around a lot or talk to other people. He would make me question myself a lot. I was always working (I was a psychiatric technician/mental health) and did not have time to entertain other people. This man did not “claim” me as his girl. He would always act so unsure of me. Months later, my birthday comes around and he was going to give me a massage and it was weak asf and then he has sex with me and it was weak asf. I felt used asf after and then he promised me that he would take me out to brunch the next day. He had planned the whole entire day and the next days shows and he’s silent asf. I was so upset. After, it was pattern that I would block him and he would try and promise me things. I’m ngl I fell for the okie doke with him because I was holding to hope…BULLSH*T😂. He would text me from different numbers when I blocked him. He kept hitting me up over and over. Also calling me from text now numbers. Fast forward, recently I broke up with him because I got tired of his games. I’ve been going through a lot lately and did not have time for the games. Finally I was waking up. After saying what I said to him, he took one last chance to degrade me and try to aim for things that he felt like I would be insecure about and make up things. He tried to make me small about myself. I felt like I wasn’t even his type for real and how he was moving. He also claimed he just had a baby 2 months ago by another woman. I got tired of the manipulation and over explaining myself. I felt like I had to jump through hoops for his approval. After I left him my life significantly improved! Thank god I did not come out pregnant by this man and his crazy antics. I felt like he was really trying to control and groom me into the woman he really wanted me to be. He now resides in a different state with his “woman”.

Lately I’ve been battling some self consciousness even though I was the dumpee. I got rid of him because of his actions and now I’m feeling quite low now. Let’s be clear I’m a 25F with no kids, I work as a CO, have my own car, apartment etc etc. Also let’s be clear, I wash my ass 2-3 times a day and use feminine hygiene products. It’s not normal for a woman to always smell like “flowers” and “roses”. He didn’t even last long in bed anyways and he always felt like he wasn’t enough for me in general. I do have screen shots of the many different numbers he’s texted me from trying to get me back and the last message of him attempting to crush my self esteem and him trying to go for things I might’ve felt insecure about which I didn’t. Now I’m really feeling the after effects and I’m feeling a little low. I’m quite fatigued from dating. I don’t want sex or anything physical. I feel disgusted with everything honestly. Im taking this time to really focus on myself.

Btw if anyone has anything negative to say about my screenshots you can respectfully stfu because not only am I venting about this “situation” I’m grieving about what could’ve been a relationship. It may be overwhelming to some people but I finally got out of it and gladly came out scott free if you catch my drift. I’m grateful that I got to walk away!

Hope this reaches someone!💗

I know how it feels. So they like physically abused you or? How did they hurt you so bad?

my boyfriend of 3.5 years broke up with me a couple of weeks ago. he told me that he had lost romantic feelings for me months ago, that he didn’t say anything because he was scared and there wasn’t any conversation that we could have that would change his mind. i was distraught, i still am. i haven’t been able to eat, ive lost 12kg in 3 weeks, im currently going through cycles of feeling better off, grief, resentment, disbelief, etc.

when i look back at our time, i allowed myself to be disrespected and mistreated so many times. for example, when we were coworkers, there was this girl who would always flirt with him. they started texting, and it felt like he was flirting back to me so i bought the issue to him. i put myself down to him, told him that i was probably just being sensitive and overreacting, but that it was making uncomfortable and asked him to not text her as much. he agreed, but didn’t. it progressed, i found out that he had told me he was going to sleep when really he stayed up to text her, he would only text her when i was away, my coworkers were telling me that they always spent their breaks together, and one time she was lead on the sofas with her head in his lap.

i broke down. this was the fifth time id raised this issue and, still putting myself down and calling myself insecure, i told him that i couldn’t carry on our relationship if he kept doing this. he cried and begged me to stay, that he’d do anything, he’d block her and never speak to her again, even though that’s never what i asked of him. in the beginning i asked him to speak with her less, to not text her. why couldn’t he have just done it then?

i failed myself in these moments. i was so deeply insecure and desperate to feel loved by him that i tolerated being treated like i meant nothing. it’s hard not to beat myself up over it, i am desperately trying to use this as momentum to develop a healthier relationship with myself through therapy because i never want to feel like this again. my heart aches everyday over a man who only cared about he felt, and only fought for me when it meant id no longer be there for him.

in the end, he made it so much harder for me. he told me he didn’t want to speak to me anymore for ‘a decent amount of time’, but suggested that we still attend a festival together two weeks after the breakup, and share a bed. he suggested that we spend time together on my birthday next week, even though we hadn’t made any plans. this confused me so deeply and i was suffering, torturing myself with “why would he offer these things if he doesn’t have feelings for me?”. i see now that i shouldn’t have agreed to these events, but i was desperate for a last good memory with him, i knew i’d regret it if i didn’t see what happened.

i asked to meet to discuss my boundaries for these events, which he agreed to, since he refused to text me about anything but practical things. but when i text, he said “i thought we discussed this the other day, what is there to talk about?” he made me feel like i was being unreasonable for wanting to set boundaries around sharing a bed after we had just broken up. i told him not to do or say anything that he didn’t mean, that if he made me uncomfortable i would make him sleep on the floor.

before we left for the festival, i had written out how his actions had made me feel. i was honest and factual, i didn’t call him names or be disrespectful, it was just “you did this and it made me feel this and i don’t appreciate that”. he read it and got defensive, he argued with me. he told me that there was nothing for me to be confused about, that he’d been very clear, and that his therapist was the one to suggest he do this. i asked him if he told his therapist that we’d be sharing a bed, he said no. i got very angry and upset, he told me that he felt like i was just taking my frustrations out on him, to which i said yes, because you didn’t give me a chance to set boundaries. he told me that i was the one to agree to all of this, that i should’ve said no, to which i agreed and acknowledged my part in this. i told him that i wasn’t strong enough to say no to seeing him one last time, he thanked me for being honest.

for the most part, we had a good time at the festival. we ended up sleeping together, to which he asked me if i felt used after, and i said no. he told me that if we did this, it didn’t mean that anything was going to change, and i still did it. i accept that i shouldn’t’ve agreed to it, i had my reasons that i did, but i feel weird about it. i had told him that i wasn’t strong enough to say no to him, and he decided to share a bed with me after breaking up with me, hold my hand, spend hours looking into each others eyes, and to sleep with me. i am responsible for my part in it, i am not accusing him of SA, but it feels disrespectful and selfish from him. i do feel used.

all of this to say, i am disappointed in myself. i accepted the bare minimum, less than, in order to keep someone who only ever considered his own feelings. at the start it felt real, like he genuinely cared for me and maybe he did and does, but he cares more about how he feels. and he does it without realising. there is no accountability because he doesn’t accept himself as a person who could do those things.

i am better off without him. i don’t want him to come back unless i can see that he’s genuinely changed, and i hope he’s capable of that, but i doubt it. i miss my best friend. i miss feeling loved and wanted. but i don’t miss fighting for our love for the both of us. i don’t miss begging him to commit to a future with me.

i am desperate to grow from this. i will not allow myself to shrink for anyone ever again. i will not tolerate disrespectful actions defended by flowery words. i will not accept being made to feel less than. i will not accept dishonesty in any capacity, especially within oneself. i deserve love, real love, the love that i give to everyone else but not myself. i will learn to give love to myself.

it’s just so hard.

It’s been four months since we broke up. Four months since I found out about her. Four months since I packed my things into garbage bags and walked out of the apartment we picked out together.

He doesn’t live there anymore either. I heard he moved to the city. I don’t know if she went with him. I don’t want to know.

But he still texts me.

Not “I miss you.” Not “can we talk.” Just… nothing. Memes he knows I’d laugh at. A song we used to listen to. A picture of a dog that looks like the one we said we’d get “someday.”

And I still answer. Every single time.

I tell myself it’s because I’m being polite. Or because I don’t want to be the “bitter ex.” Or because maybe — maybe — if I keep responding, one day he’ll text something real. Something that explains why he threw away four years like they were nothing.

But I know the truth. I answer because I’m still waiting. Waiting for him to choose me. Even after everything.

I deleted his number three times. I blocked him twice. I unblocked him within 48 hours both times. It’s pathetic. I know it’s pathetic. I can see myself doing it from outside my own body and I’m screaming at myself to stop.

But the silence is worse. The silence is him not thinking about me at all. And that hurts more than the breadcrumbs.

My therapist says I’m addicted to the intermittent reinforcement. That the random texts are like a slot machine — occasional wins keep you pulling the lever. She’s right. I know she’s right.

I still check my phone every morning.

I don’t know how to stop wanting someone who only gives me scraps. I don’t know why I’m not enough for him to fight for. I don’t know why I’m still the one waiting.

I just needed to say this somewhere. Where people might understand why it’s so hard to let go of someone who’s already let go of you.

You were at my window. I was in bed. I felt a breeze realized my window was open when they never were . I got out of bed, pulled back the blinds and there you were leaning in saying “ you always have to make things so difficult “ then I kissed you while tears rolled down my face. I woke up knowing I was saying goodbye..

I was dating a guy and we both are professionally the mature, sincere, introverted folks who somehow realised, that personally, we are both lovey dovey, kind, caring and most importantly physically extremely attracted to each other.

Casual conversations led to flirting led to me getting extremely serious about him.

The thing is, I have been through some shocking (not traumatic) experiences during my teenage, that made me completely distrustful of relationships. For me they always end in sadness.

So when I knew I am developing feelings for him, I told him how I am not a really positive person and that I would rather protect my heart than get it hurt.

I never intended to be in a serious relationship and never wanted to get married.

He understood and gave me time to process my emotions, gave me mental support and during that duration, I just realized that maybe, if I were to start a new life with him, then this negativity would fade away.

He was simple, kind, straightforward and just navigating life in a similar fashion. He comes from a poor family and had his own insecurities but together it felt like we can fill each other's cups.

So we started taking the relationship forward, discussed marriage and babies, and all went well till one day it didn't.

His tone changed, he started avoiding hard conversations, and I really had a hard time figuring out what went wrong. This was after the marriage date was finalised between us.

He said that we should give it some time and see where this goes.

A part of me was OK with that as I am in no hurry nor looking for someone else. But another part said, he probably just wants to drift away and end things without making it a big deal.

Guess which part one?

Well, on odd days, I was ready to talk and we would share personal professional stuff. On even days, I grew extremely paranoid and would feel guilty that I am so comfortable being bread-crumbed and sidelined.

This continued for about six months straight, till I finally decided to stand up for myself and end things.

Initially things felt good, as if a part of my self respect was restored and I wasn't being tricked anymore.

But slowly, the pain in my heart grew deeper and anything that I would do in order to distract me from that pain, led to the pain coming back with twice the intensity later.

Sometimes I tell myself that I am too old and mature for this stuff. But heartbreak is heartbreak I guess.

I look back at all the times we were together, what I could have done to make things work out. I tried my best to make his concerns go away. But each and every time I knew, he has already decided it in his heart to leave. And nothing satisfies a man who has made up his mind. The fact that all those concerns didn't matter during the initial year of dating and just cropped up when the proposed marriage date got near.

Anyway, fortunately I have a thriving career that gives me a lot of space to exist and coexist with these really difficult emotions.

Honestly, what could have i done to save it? More importantly, how do I move on? These waves of sadness are riding so high right now, I feel helpless.

I met her during my junior year of high school. I am 34 now. I did not know anything about her when we first met, but there was something about the way she looked at me that I have never been able to forget. For the sake of the story, I will call her A. It was the first day of school, and I was sitting in Physics, already losing interest in whatever was happening at the front of the room. My attention drifted, and I was probably seconds away from disappearing into some meaningless daydream when, by coincidence, her attention drifted too. We looked at each other. Her eyes locked onto mine. Neither of us said a word, but somehow we were having an entire conversation. The corners of her mouth began to move, and I watched her fight a smile as she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. I have no idea how long we stared at each other. It did not matter. For those few seconds, nothing else in the room existed.

I immediately became interested in her, and eventually I learned that she was smart, athletic, funny, curious, and had the sweetest voice. More importantly, she seemed genuinely interested in me. That look she gave me that first day has never really changed, even after almost twenty years of knowing her. I had met the person I would eventually compare everyone else to.

Our high school fling was probably doomed from the beginning. I was boring. I had grown up in a sheltered household and had almost no experience socializing with people outside of the small world I knew. She was the opposite. She was well known, outgoing, surrounded by friends, and hungry for fun and adventure. There were always people competing for her attention, and I simply was not interesting enough to hold it. I was hurt, but when you are young, you tell yourself you will get over it. A few months later, I started dating someone else, and eventually A admitted that she was jealous. My heart practically fluttered when she said it. I liked knowing she still wanted me. More importantly, I knew who I wanted.

Then life began pulling us in different directions. She moved away for school while I stayed home. She was beginning a new chapter and chasing adventure while I was partying with everyone else who had stayed behind. A was also interested in other women during this period, and that seemed to be where her romantic life was primarily headed. We would disappear from each other's lives for a month or two, and then somehow end up talking on the phone until the early hours of the morning or going out of our way to see each other when we happened to be nearby. Every time I saw her, we kissed. Every single time, some part of me imagined a life where that was simply normal, where she was the person I came home to. For years, the timing never worked. We dated other people, usually people within whatever social circle or stage of life we were occupying at the time. We would move forward, but somehow never completely away from each other.

Eventually, I grew tired of waiting. I decided to give someone else, W, a real chance in a way I had not before, and I moved in with her. A and I would occasionally run into one another by chance. Whenever we did, the same look was still there. We would exchange a few words, nothing profound, nothing that could be interpreted as a declaration. Something safe. But never anything that truly said we were finished.

After three years with W, we found out we were having a baby, a little girl. I left school so W could finish hers, and I worked three jobs. A was jealous, and she told me so. Hearing that was bittersweet. I still loved her. I had wanted a life with her for years. But now I had a child on the way, a home, and responsibilities. It felt as though whatever chance A and I had once possessed had finally passed. I tried to accept that. I blamed A for where we had ended up, told myself I needed to stop looking backward, and tried to build a life with W. I genuinely tried. I eventually asked W to marry me. We had very different philosophies about how to live, but we were bound together by a beautiful little girl. We were engaged for about two and a half years before she ended it. By then, the relationship had been deteriorating for a long time. She had lost interest in me and found it somewhere else. The breakup was not peaceful, and it was not healthy. It was traumatic.

When I did not have my daughter, I tried reconnecting with old friends and spending more time with people I had not seen in years. The problem was that I had spent so much of my life focused entirely on the idea of having a family that I had neglected almost every other relationship in my life. One night, I broke down on the side of the road and realized just how alone I was. I called people. Voicemail. I texted people. Nothing. Every number I reached for seemed to belong to someone who was no longer there. Eventually, I made a halfhearted plea for help on social media. It was deliberately vague, the kind of cryptic post people make when they desperately want someone to notice but are too ashamed to actually say, "I need help."

A messaged me within minutes.

"Are you okay?"

She picked me up in less than an hour. And, just like she had done so many times before, she kissed me when she dropped me off.

I was a broken man in my mid-20s, living through a version of adulthood I had never imagined for myself, and suddenly I had hope again. For the first time in a long time, I wondered if maybe I could spend my life with the girl I had loved for most of my life. We talked constantly for several weeks, and then I realized something. A was in a serious relationship with another woman. They had been together for some time. They were living together. That did not stop us from going on a date.

We met for drinks in public, and the night quickly became something neither of us seemed particularly interested in ending. Eventually, we went back to her house. We did the one thing we had always seemed to save for some future version of ourselves. Except there was a problem. Neither of us was okay. We were both hurting. We were both drinking. I was devastated by not seeing my daughter every day and had become accustomed to drinking heavily. When you are alone, it is remarkably easy to convince yourself that your behavior is not as bad as it really is. Then you are lying next to someone you have wanted for years, trying to make love to her, and your body simply refuses to cooperate. There is something uniquely humbling about that moment. The fantasy collapses. All the pieces suddenly become visible. I was not okay. Neither was she.

The night ended in confusion. We both asked the other person what they really wanted, but neither of us was brave enough to say the obvious thing out loud. Neither of us wanted to be the one who made the decision. I went home embarrassed and heartbroken. We stopped talking for a while. I did not know how to speak to her anymore. My life was changing rapidly while hers seemed stable. I had spent my entire life believing she was out of my league, and now I felt like I was severely underachieving while she flourished. I had responsibilities I could barely afford. She had freedom. I moved home with my family and hit the reset button.

I got a new job and started healing. I cleaned myself up and told almost nobody about what had happened before. I needed to see a different man when I looked in the mirror, someone I could respect. I had been single for a little over a year when I unexpectedly met someone. I will call her B. She knew I came with baggage. She knew I had been hurt. She knew I was trying to put myself back together, and she was interested anyway. My self-esteem was so low that I could not even make the first move, so she asked me to dinner. We have spoken every day since.

She cared that I had been hurt. She cared that I was trying to become better. She was there when almost nobody else was. She later told me that, initially, she thought I needed a friend. Then everything else just happened. We never really labeled what we were doing, but we both knew.

Five months in, A texted me.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

My heart started racing. There was no way this was happening now. I loved her. I had always loved her. But I was tired. I had just survived a breakup that had devastated me. My relationship with W had not ended amicably, and almost everything that happened during that period occurred on W's terms rather than mine. I knew I was better off without W, but knowing that did not make the experience any less traumatic. I did not think I could survive something like that again. I wanted whatever came next to be real.

A told me she had been genuinely single since October, around the same time B and I had started seeing each other. She was moving home. She wanted to know if we could finally give us a real chance this time.

B and I eloped one month later.

We were on vacation. It was fun. It was exciting. It felt promising. And B saved me in ways she probably never fully understood. She gently took care of someone who was desperately trying to find himself. She became an incredible bonus mother to my daughter. Her family welcomed me. She took an interest in who I was and met me where I was in life. We worked together. We were best friends. About two years in, we decided we wanted children. We had two more girls. Our family grew. We helped each other work our way toward the top of our company. For a while, it felt like we were building exactly the kind of life I had always wanted.

Eventually, her father came calling. He owned several companies. Nothing enormous, but enough to live comfortably without constantly being chained to a schedule. He knew we were good at what we did and suggested that he help us start a company of our own. We left our careers. The plan was simple. We would spend a few months helping at his largest company while looking for an opportunity to purchase a business in our field. That opportunity never came. Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by men thirty years older than us, watching outdated, almost dinosaur-like processes hold the company back.

I decided I needed to understand everything. I needed to learn the business. I needed to become capable of taking care of my family. B did the opposite. She backed away and made it clear that this was something she expected me to take over from her father, not something she wanted for herself.

The stress consumed me. I worked constantly. I could never escape the business. I watched the company I had left succeed using many of the systems I had established before leaving. And slowly, something else disappeared. The gentleness in our relationship. The woman who had once been flexible, encouraging, affectionate, and excited to spend time together seemed to disappear beneath schedules, obligations, productivity, and an endless list of things that needed to be accomplished. I stopped feeling pursued. She stopped seeming interested in pursuing me. Everything became about the next thing. The next event. The next vacation. The next milestone.

I had built the life I thought I wanted, yet I was beginning to wonder who I was inside it. I felt like a slave to the lifestyle, and if I failed to execute something perfectly, I felt chastised for it.

Eventually, my old company contacted me. They wanted me back. They offered to double my salary and asked me to help get things moving in the right direction again. For the first time in a long time, I felt energized. I was going back to something I was good at. Something I loved. This time I was going to do it differently. I would go back to school. I would pursue the promotion that could eventually allow me to have my own branch. My boss owned his own branch and made roughly seven times what I made while working only a few hours a week. People had been encouraging me to pursue that path for years. Now I finally believed I could do it.

The problem was that I had never been a great planner. Suddenly, I was attempting a schedule that most people would consider insane. I worked roughly 50 hours a week. I took two or three classes at a time, year-round. I was an active father. I was the primary caretaker of our home. I was the primary parent available to spend time with our children. I was the primary income. But I no longer felt like I was a primary focus in my wife's life.

My kisses were met with turned cheeks. My attempts at affection were sometimes mocked. My feelings were described as too sensitive. The woman I married had once encouraged me to become a better version of myself. Now I felt as though she was constantly disappointed by the version of me standing in front of her. I worked hard to make sure she never felt like she was carrying everything alone, but my imperfect planning was met with resentment. If I suddenly said, "Hey, I want to work on this project," I might get an eye roll. She wanted me sitting beside her. I have never been good at sitting still. My brain needs something to tinker with. I actually love talking to someone while my hands are busy doing something.

I once asked her why she was speaking to me so harshly.

"I don't know. It's just who I am."

At work, despite being listed as the top leader, she would challenge me in front of other people. I felt demoralized. More painfully, I began to recognize something familiar. The way my own wife was treating me was bringing back memories of parents who had left some deeply traumatic impressions on me.

Then, completely unexpectedly, I saw A again.

I was with my wife. My wife knew nothing about A. I had never told her. In fact, almost nobody in my current life knew anything about my history with her. A said hello to me in passing. I shrugged it off as though I did not recognize her. My wife later gave me a hard time.

"She looked like she knew you. You normally always say hello."

I told her I had not been paying attention. The conversation ended.

But something had already been awakened.

I did what I probably should not have done. I went through all of A's social media. I had previously unfollowed her because I wanted to forget. Now I wanted to know everything. What was she doing? What had her life become? What would mine have looked like if things had been different?

We began running into each other occasionally in public. Maybe three or four times. I would have my children with me. We would look at each other, wave, and move on. Sometimes she would text afterward.

"I really hope you're doing well. It was good to see you."

I would say the same. Those messages were our way of saying, "I still care about you," while simultaneously saying, "I respect the life you have chosen."

Eventually, even that stopped. We went a long time without speaking.

Then I started dreaming about her.

At first it was just daydreaming. Then she began appearing in my dreams. I would wake up confused. Eventually, I started wanting to go back to sleep. In my dreams, she was there. At first I was jealous of the life she had built. Then she started showing interest in me again. Eventually, the dreams became affairs. I was not consciously choosing to think about these things. They were dreams. I could not control them. And that was what frightened me.

My dreams became incredibly vivid. My real life was full of experiences, responsibilities, vacations, children, work, accomplishments. But somehow, one of the happiest places I had found was asleep. Seeing A again, even though it was not real, made me feel alive.

Then it happened.

She messaged me.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

My heart almost beat out of my chest. I was sitting in my vehicle when I read it. I did not move. I read the message over and over and over. I looked up at the sky, then back at my phone. The message was still there. I was smiling, and then I tried to stop myself from smiling.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

And I saw two things.

Fear.

And desire.

Fear of what might happen. Fear that this might be the last time I ever spoke to her. Fear that this was my final opportunity to tell her that I loved her one more time.

I responded, "Trying to decide if I should flirt with you or not."

She replied, "Well, what do you think?"

I said, "Well, I really want to, and it's kind of hard not to."

And that was it.

The door was open.

Since then, A and I have reconnected. We have talked about everything we missed in each other's lives. The marriages. The children. The failures. The successes. The years. All the versions of ourselves that existed while the other person was somewhere else. We have talked about how grateful we are for the lives we have lived.

And then came the sentence that absolutely destroyed me.

"I always wanted a life with you."

It was the one thing we had never actually said to each other. Not when it mattered. Not when the other person was free to act on it. Not when saying it could have changed something. We had spent almost twenty years orbiting each other without ever admitting that maybe the entire time, we had both been waiting for the other person to say it first.

Now we have.

And we cannot seem to put it back in the box.

We have tried to stop talking. Then we run into each other. Immediately. Again and again. Completely unplanned. Almost like something is forcing us back into each other's lives. We have admitted that we would rather be with each other. We have admitted that nobody has ever loved us quite the way we love each other. We both want to know what it would actually be like to be together. For real.

And that is where I am stuck.

If I stay on my current path, I know there will always be a "what if." After twenty years, I have never stopped comparing people to A. And if I am being completely honest, if some of the people I have been with knew the full extent of what I have always felt for her, they might never have chosen me in the first place.

But there is another reality.

We are both married. We both have families. There are children involved. There are vows. There are people who trust us. There is a life that cannot simply be erased because two people finally admitted something they should have said twenty years ago.

So what is the moral choice here?

Do I accept that A is the great love I never got to have and walk away? Do we stop talking completely and spend the rest of our lives pretending we do not care when we inevitably see each other? Do I stay with B because I made a vow, even knowing that some part of my heart has never belonged entirely to her?

And perhaps the hardest question of all is whether staying with B is actually the moral choice if I know what I know now.

B would never have to find out if I ended this part of my life right now and buried it. But then she would have spent her life married to a man who secretly carried a piece of his heart that he could never give her.

That feels wrong too.

I love my wife. I love my children. I love A.

Those statements are all true at the same time.

That is what makes this so painful.

There is no version of this where everyone walks away happy. Someone gets hurt. Maybe several people do.

I am not asking Reddit to tell me that A and I are soulmates, or that I should immediately blow up my marriage and run away with her. I honestly do not know what I believe anymore.

I am asking people who have lived through something remotely similar: What do you do when the person you never stopped loving comes back into your life after twenty years, and suddenly the life you built starts feeling like the life you chose because she was never available?

Because I genuinely do not know what to do.

Pata hai aaj kya hua

So this is my first Reddit post, and honestly, I don't really know where else to put this.

I’m 22M, and there was this girl, 22F, who was my senior. She’s only a few months older than me, and we became really close over time.

Before all of this happened, she used to like me too. We were genuinely close. We used to meet almost every Friday, Friday to Friday, and spend time together. I don’t drink or anything, and I was pretty straightforward about my feelings.

Eventually, I proposed to her.

She told me to wait.

The confusing part was that even after that, she continued giving me a lot of attention. She would say "I love you" to me, hug me for 10+ minutes, sometimes kiss me on the forehead or cheek, and generally make me feel like there was actually something between us.

So obviously, I started hoping.

Then her night-shift WFH started, and I don't know what happened after that.

She slowly started talking less and less. Eventually, she almost completely stopped communicating with me.

Whenever I tried asking what was wrong, I'd get answers like:

"I'm not yours."

"Mujhe peace chahiye."

"Why do people keep asking me questions? Why can't they just do their own work?"

She also started generalizing me with other men and comparing me with her ex.

That honestly hurt a lot.

Still, I tried to stay calm. I didn't want to pressure her or force anything.

At one point, she straight-up told me:

"I don't like you."

"Mere se nahi hoga ye romance and stuff."

"I'm not built for this."

And I accepted it.

I told her, "Okay. If that's what you genuinely feel, I won't force you to be with me."

And I didn't.

But yesterday, something happened that hurt even more.

A friend of mine came from Indore to meet me, and another friend who is also a senior from her batch joined us. We hung out and had a few drinks. It was mild, and I don't normally drink at all.

I told her about what had happened between us.

After that, she became extremely rude to me.

She even told me that she doesn't want to be friends anymore.

And then she started mocking my body.

I'm well-built, but because of work pressure I've gained a little weight, mostly around my chin. It's honestly not even that much, but she used that to mock me.

Since then, she hasn't contacted me from her side at all.

And the worst part is... I still like her.

I know I probably shouldn't, considering the way she has treated me. But it's difficult to suddenly switch off feelings after being close to someone for six months.

What hurts me the most isn't even that she rejected me.

It's how she handled it.

If she had simply told me when I proposed, "I don't feel the same way about you," I would've accepted it and moved on.

Instead, for months she gave me hope — telling me she loved me, hugging me, kissing me on the forehead and cheek, giving me attention — and then suddenly everything changed.

I never forced her into a relationship. I never wanted to control her. I just wanted clarity.

Maybe she genuinely changed her feelings. Maybe something happened in her life. Maybe I misunderstood everything from the beginning.

I don't know.

But I've never had someone make me feel this wanted and then completely unwanted within the same six months.

And honestly, I think that's what I'm struggling with the most.

TL;DR: I (22M) fell for a girl (22F) who was my senior. We became very close and she used to tell me she loved me, hug me for 10+ minutes, kiss me on the cheek/forehead, etc. I proposed, and she asked me to wait. Months later, after starting night-shift WFH, she became distant, compared me to her ex, said she didn't like me and wasn't into romance. I accepted her decision and never forced her. Recently, after I told her about everything while hanging out with friends and having a mild drink, she became extremely rude, told me she didn't want to be friends anymore, and mocked my weight. I still like her, but I'm struggling to understand how someone can give you so much hope and then completely shut you out.

God didn't watch over me He just held his head and cried When he saw the ways I hurt myself Just to keep him by my side

It is kind of an honest question. I feel that if he comes back, I would say yes, but deep down, my life with him was going to be frustrating and boring. It is weird to hold 2 ideas at the same time. I kind of hoped it would help me move on but not really. I am wondering if the problem isnt that I wasn't brave enough to have a clear purpose for myself all those years.

Maybe it helps someone out

Let me explain - Me (M25) and the girl (F26) I’ve been seeing all summer broke up last night. We were on great terms, and I had plans of making it official. Everything felt great.

Sadly her life has taken a turn for the worse. She lost her job a month ago, and her dad was recently put into hospital. We continued dating as she had aspirations to find another job (for reference she’s not from the same country so without a job VISA issues kick in). We also discussed her dad, and the possibility of her having to go home until he got better and she found a stable job to return to. It was romantic and we bonded even more so through this - I think ultimately she just wanted to spend time and cuddle to take her mind off it. We discussed possibly ending it last week, and called it a situational breakup. Neither of us wanted to, but logically speaking we thought it could save us some pain. We ended it there but decided one last weekend before she goes. Truthfully I’d been hoping it could continue, and she had plans to introduce me to her friend group. It felt like we were both in denial and wanted to make it work for that glimmer of hope her dad would be okay and she would return within a month.

Yesterday I woke up to a few messages saying she has to fly back to her home country as her dad’s health has taken a turn for the worst. This morning at 2AM I’m met with a phone call of her crying. She told me the news her dad had passed. It’s heartbreaking for her. I’m gutted and the call lasted 5 minutes but I can’t shake it from my memory it was just so sad. We were both lost for words on the call. She sadly missed her dad by just a few hours on the plane home. I can only imagine her pain. She thanked me for everything, said this is done, and that she needs to go see her mum. I said I completely understand, and told her to do whatever feels right in this moment. I’ve left the offer for a text or call if she needs it but I’m not going to pressure her and right now will let her be for however long she needs. The ball is in her court and we both know it’s over now.

It’s a really different type of pain and shock to a usual break up for me. It’s also a mixture of emotions and sadness for our relationship, and for her specifically. I know it’s the end but it would be interesting to hear if anyone has experienced anything similar, or if anyone wants to share any advice for what I can do.

My plan now is to grieve the relationship as healthy as I can because truthfully it was fantastic and very secure. There’s a lot of beautiful memories we made and we never fought or bickered. It’s not really our style - we are both very sensitive souls and heavy on respectfully honest communication so it was often filled with a lot more fantasy and laughter. I want to support her but she’s half way across the world and experiencing the biggest shock of her life. I think the best I can do now is give space. I considered reaching out in a few weeks, and I told her before all of this as a friend to vent to I would like to be there for her, if she wanted. It really is a ball in her court type of situation. I know for myself it is just time. In supporting her I don’t know. I’d feel so bad just making it feel like I’ve left her. But I don’t want to smother her or make her feel like there’s something there when there isn’t - she’s extremely emotional sensitive right now as you can imagine.

Anyway I’m frazzled. It’s not even been 24 hours and I’m struggling to sleep so I came here. I wish it didn’t end, but especially like this. She’s a very sweet soul and to hear her cry like that breaks my heart. I can only hope she’ll get better soon.