u/ExpertJeweler3447

We dated for a year, she dumped me, we stayed friends afterwards, it became kind of toxic, I went no contact.

During the past 8 months I have grown a lot, however, I came to the realisation that this friendship with her really felt more and more irreplaceable. The past weeks I have gotten really nervous whenever I was on campus, until I came to a decision yesterday: I will stop hiding from her and reach out. It took me a lot of courage since she was sitting with her friends, but I could really tell how glad she was that I approached her. For the next 2 hours we walked through campus, talked about the past months, laughed a lot, cracked jokes, and we both realised that it felt like nothing has happened. We started talking about mistakes we have made, she apologised for the ways in which she has hurt me, and for the first time I could put many of my thoughts to rest: I also mattered to her, she also didn't take the no contact easy, she also felt like I was the closest person she had during the friendship.

However, she has also grown. Towards the end she said that, while hanging out is just extremely nice, and that our chemistry does feel irreplaceable, that keeping contact would be too risky. She would not want old feelings to come up again, and we should continue to keep distance. In October she will be moving towards the other end of the globe anyways. However, we agreed to stop forcing avoidance and to say hi if we walk by. I think this total avoidance, the act of not going to university because i was scared to see her, made me really isolated, and I am happy about that outcome.

It is still very fresh so I don't know what to make of it. It was exactly the outcome I hoped for, since I also knew that a friendship would just be too risky. I am also glad that she apologised and that my perception of our dynamic was mutual. However, I am still let down? It feels very bittersweet. I don't feel any resentment towards her anymore, but being reminded of the warmth we shared makes it hard to say goodbye. I genuinely never met someone like her, but maybe thats alright. I will find peace.

To summarise: We have been together for a year, after we broke up we still kept hooking up for a while, then just remained friends. I never really got over her since she was my closest friend that I spent almost every single day with. However, as I realised that things would not be the same again, I did the very impulsive decision to tell her that i want to go no contact. Initially I was naive enough to say "Just give me a couple months to put my feelings back in place".

For the past 8 months I have not texted or talked to her a single time. However, there is not a single day where I don't think about her. It has been rough, I went through a lot of changes, and became an entirely different person. And still, every day, I come to the conclusion that the friendship I had with her might have been one of the most important things I had, which has left a big hole ever since. I honestly don't think there has been a single day since no contact where i have been as happy as on an average day where she would be in my life still. Then again, I am aware that memories bias positive experiences and that I was fighting with crippling jealousy while we were still friends.

We are both in our 4th uni year right now, most of my friends graduated and I also tried to avoid her friends, which leaves me pretty lonely. I think I have gained a lot of distance to the thought of ever being together with her again; I have heard that she started seeing someone, and i cared way less about it than you would expect. still, the thought of facing her really terrifies me. Its difficult for me to pin down why exactly, as I honestly don't think that she would mind being friends again. I think it is mainly because I would feel like I "failed".

Is this something I will get over? My biggest fear is that I will always be confronted with what could have been. I don't want to regret never having reached out to her.