u/Ill-Associate2486

HELP A GIRL OUT

hi, I really need an outside perspective because I genuinely don’t trust my own judgment right now.
I was with my ex for about 3 years. I loved him deeply and for a long time he felt like home to me. I was the one who eventually ended the relationship, but not because I stopped loving him. I was exhausted. We kept having the same conversations, hurting each other over the same things, and I felt like I had tried for a long time to fix it until I just couldn’t anymore.About a month after we broke up, I started dating someone new.Looking back, I think I made a really stupid assumption: I genuinely liked this new person, I was excited about him and wanted to be with him, so I thought that automatically meant I had gotten over my ex.
I basically thought, “If I can have feelings for someone else, obviously I’ve moved on.”Now I’m realizing those two things apparently aren’t the same.I’ve been with my current boyfriend for about a month now and my feelings for him ARE real. I’m attracted to him, I care about him, he treats me well, respects me, gives me attention, we have great conversations and the physical chemistry is insane. I don’t think I consciously used him as a rebound or replacement.
There are complications: there is a significant age gap, we’re coworkers, and my family strongly disapproves of the relationship, which has put an enormous amount of stress on me. But the actual relationship between us has been good.Then my ex started talking to another woman, and seeing him potentially move on affected me way more than I expected. I became jealous and started obsessing over the idea that somebody else could take the place I had in his life.Eventually my ex and I had a very emotional conversation and he told me that he wanted us to get back together.That should have been easy to reject considering I have a boyfriend.It wasn’t.I actually started considering it.
And that’s when I realized I may not have processed our breakup at all.Something else happened yesterday that made this even clearer to me.My ex and I were talking and he basically told me that there aren’t really “his people” and “my people” anymore — after three years together, a lot of them are just people we both know now.We started naming people and eventually I mentioned a particular girl I used to be EXTREMELY jealous of while we were together. I had been so insecure about her that I once made him promise me that nothing would ever happen between them.
The conversation triggered me, I hung up on him, and then — probably not my finest moment — I contacted her.
Except something completely unexpected happened.
She and I ended up talking for around TWO HOURS.
And I found out that there was literally nothing going on between them.From what came out of that conversation, it seems like my ex had actually been deliberately playing into my jealousy / making things sound a certain way because he knew it would get a reaction out of me. Meanwhile, when I actually spoke to the woman I had spent so much time being threatened by, reality was nowhere near what I had built up in my head.That really messed with me because it made me question how much of my jealousy right now is based on reality and how much is me panicking because I feel like I’m losing him.There is another woman he is currently talking to, and I’ve been jealous of her too. They talk frequently and have discussed traveling together. I even found myself wanting to contact her and tell her that my ex asked me to get back together.Part of me thinks she deserves to know. But if I’m completely honest, part of me also just wants her gone.
I don’t like admitting that.At the same time, I’m angry at my ex because I feel like he knows exactly what makes me jealous and sometimes deliberately pushes those buttons. So now I’m stuck wondering whether I’m reacting to an actual threat of losing him, whether he is provoking me because he still has feelings too, or whether we’re both just falling back into unhealthy patterns from our old relationship.And underneath ALL of this is the actual problem: I still have feelings for my ex.
When I imagine losing my current boyfriend, it hurts. I would miss him, his personality, our conversations, the physical connection and having him in my life. He genuinely matters to me.But when I imagine my ex permanently disappearing from my life — never hugging him again, hearing his laugh, having our stupid conversations, or eventually watching him build a life with someone else — it hits somewhere completely different.I miss him as a person. I miss his presence. I miss the familiarity and safety. He still feels like “home” to me. I also still love him. I also want that future with him.But I also don’t completely trust him when he says he wants me back.I don’t know whether he genuinely wants to rebuild our relationship or whether he misses me, is jealous himself, or likes knowing he can still get a reaction out of me. And the fact that he apparently still knows exactly how to trigger my jealousy makes me even more cautious.Most importantly, the problems that made me leave him didn’t magically disappear just because we miss each other.I also feel horrible toward my current boyfriend. He didn’t sign up to be part of some unfinished love story between me and my ex. My feelings for him are genuine and I don’t want to cheat on him or keep him around as a backup while I decide whether I want my ex.When I asked myself, “If neither man would be hurt and nobody would judge me, who would I instinctively choose?” my answer was probably my ex.
But when I imagined being with NEITHER of them for a while — just being single, properly ending one chapter and figuring out what I actually feel without either man pulling me in a direction — I felt relief.And now I’m wondering if that’s the answer I’m avoiding.Maybe getting into another relationship only a month after a three-year relationship ended was way too fast. Maybe liking someone new convinced me I had healed when really I had just moved forward without processing the loss.
I genuinely don’t know.
What would you do?
Would you stay with the current boyfriend and accept that missing/grieving an ex doesn’t mean you should go back?
Would you end the current relationship, stay single for a while, and only later decide whether the relationship with the ex deserves another chance?
And how much weight would you give to the fact that, underneath all the jealousy and chaos, if I imagine having to permanently choose one person, I still instinctively lean toward my ex?
Please be brutally honest. I know I’ve behaved irrationally in parts of this and I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right. I genuinely want an outside perspective because right now I can’t tell the difference between love, grief, jealousy, nostalgia and fear of losing someone.

I got into a new relationship 1 month after leaving my boyfriend of 3 years. Now my ex wants me back and I realized I might still love him. Help

HELP A GIRL OUT

hi, I really need an outside perspective because I genuinely don’t trust my own judgment right now.
I was with my ex for about 3 years. I loved him deeply and for a long time he felt like home to me. I was the one who eventually ended the relationship, but not because I stopped loving him. I was exhausted. We kept having the same conversations, hurting each other over the same things, and I felt like I had tried for a long time to fix it until I just couldn’t anymore.About a month after we broke up, I started dating someone new.Looking back, I think I made a really stupid assumption: I genuinely liked this new person, I was excited about him and wanted to be with him, so I thought that automatically meant I had gotten over my ex.
I basically thought, “If I can have feelings for someone else, obviously I’ve moved on.”Now I’m realizing those two things apparently aren’t the same.I’ve been with my current boyfriend for about a month now and my feelings for him ARE real. I’m attracted to him, I care about him, he treats me well, respects me, gives me attention, we have great conversations and the physical chemistry is insane. I don’t think I consciously used him as a rebound or replacement.
There are complications: there is a significant age gap, we’re coworkers, and my family strongly disapproves of the relationship, which has put an enormous amount of stress on me. But the actual relationship between us has been good.Then my ex started talking to another woman, and seeing him potentially move on affected me way more than I expected. I became jealous and started obsessing over the idea that somebody else could take the place I had in his life.Eventually my ex and I had a very emotional conversation and he told me that he wanted us to get back together.That should have been easy to reject considering I have a boyfriend.It wasn’t.I actually started considering it.
And that’s when I realized I may not have processed our breakup at all.Something else happened yesterday that made this even clearer to me.My ex and I were talking and he basically told me that there aren’t really “his people” and “my people” anymore — after three years together, a lot of them are just people we both know now.We started naming people and eventually I mentioned a particular girl I used to be EXTREMELY jealous of while we were together. I had been so insecure about her that I once made him promise me that nothing would ever happen between them.
The conversation triggered me, I hung up on him, and then — probably not my finest moment — I contacted her.
Except something completely unexpected happened.
She and I ended up talking for around TWO HOURS.
And I found out that there was literally nothing going on between them.From what came out of that conversation, it seems like my ex had actually been deliberately playing into my jealousy / making things sound a certain way because he knew it would get a reaction out of me. Meanwhile, when I actually spoke to the woman I had spent so much time being threatened by, reality was nowhere near what I had built up in my head.That really messed with me because it made me question how much of my jealousy right now is based on reality and how much is me panicking because I feel like I’m losing him.There is another woman he is currently talking to, and I’ve been jealous of her too. They talk frequently and have discussed traveling together. I even found myself wanting to contact her and tell her that my ex asked me to get back together.Part of me thinks she deserves to know. But if I’m completely honest, part of me also just wants her gone.
I don’t like admitting that.At the same time, I’m angry at my ex because I feel like he knows exactly what makes me jealous and sometimes deliberately pushes those buttons. So now I’m stuck wondering whether I’m reacting to an actual threat of losing him, whether he is provoking me because he still has feelings too, or whether we’re both just falling back into unhealthy patterns from our old relationship.And underneath ALL of this is the actual problem: I still have feelings for my ex.
When I imagine losing my current boyfriend, it hurts. I would miss him, his personality, our conversations, the physical connection and having him in my life. He genuinely matters to me.But when I imagine my ex permanently disappearing from my life — never hugging him again, hearing his laugh, having our stupid conversations, or eventually watching him build a life with someone else — it hits somewhere completely different.I miss him as a person. I miss his presence. I miss the familiarity and safety. He still feels like “home” to me. I also still love him. I also want that future with him.But I also don’t completely trust him when he says he wants me back.I don’t know whether he genuinely wants to rebuild our relationship or whether he misses me, is jealous himself, or likes knowing he can still get a reaction out of me. And the fact that he apparently still knows exactly how to trigger my jealousy makes me even more cautious.Most importantly, the problems that made me leave him didn’t magically disappear just because we miss each other.I also feel horrible toward my current boyfriend. He didn’t sign up to be part of some unfinished love story between me and my ex. My feelings for him are genuine and I don’t want to cheat on him or keep him around as a backup while I decide whether I want my ex.When I asked myself, “If neither man would be hurt and nobody would judge me, who would I instinctively choose?” my answer was probably my ex.
But when I imagined being with NEITHER of them for a while — just being single, properly ending one chapter and figuring out what I actually feel without either man pulling me in a direction — I felt relief.And now I’m wondering if that’s the answer I’m avoiding.Maybe getting into another relationship only a month after a three-year relationship ended was way too fast. Maybe liking someone new convinced me I had healed when really I had just moved forward without processing the loss.
I genuinely don’t know.
What would you do?
Would you stay with the current boyfriend and accept that missing/grieving an ex doesn’t mean you should go back?
Would you end the current relationship, stay single for a while, and only later decide whether the relationship with the ex deserves another chance?
And how much weight would you give to the fact that, underneath all the jealousy and chaos, if I imagine having to permanently choose one person, I still instinctively lean toward my ex?
Please be brutally honest. I know I’ve behaved irrationally in parts of this and I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right. I genuinely want an outside perspective because right now I can’t tell the difference between love, grief, jealousy, nostalgia and fear of losing someone.

HELP A GIRL OUT

hi, I really need an outside perspective because I genuinely don’t trust my own judgment right now.
I was with my ex for about 3 years. I loved him deeply and for a long time he felt like home to me. I was the one who eventually ended the relationship, but not because I stopped loving him. I was exhausted. We kept having the same conversations, hurting each other over the same things, and I felt like I had tried for a long time to fix it until I just couldn’t anymore.About a month after we broke up, I started dating someone new.Looking back, I think I made a really stupid assumption: I genuinely liked this new person, I was excited about him and wanted to be with him, so I thought that automatically meant I had gotten over my ex.
I basically thought, “If I can have feelings for someone else, obviously I’ve moved on.”Now I’m realizing those two things apparently aren’t the same.I’ve been with my current boyfriend for about a month now and my feelings for him ARE real. I’m attracted to him, I care about him, he treats me well, respects me, gives me attention, we have great conversations and the physical chemistry is insane. I don’t think I consciously used him as a rebound or replacement.
There are complications: there is a significant age gap, we’re coworkers, and my family strongly disapproves of the relationship, which has put an enormous amount of stress on me. But the actual relationship between us has been good.Then my ex started talking to another woman, and seeing him potentially move on affected me way more than I expected. I became jealous and started obsessing over the idea that somebody else could take the place I had in his life.Eventually my ex and I had a very emotional conversation and he told me that he wanted us to get back together.That should have been easy to reject considering I have a boyfriend.It wasn’t.I actually started considering it.
And that’s when I realized I may not have processed our breakup at all.Something else happened yesterday that made this even clearer to me.My ex and I were talking and he basically told me that there aren’t really “his people” and “my people” anymore — after three years together, a lot of them are just people we both know now.We started naming people and eventually I mentioned a particular girl I used to be EXTREMELY jealous of while we were together. I had been so insecure about her that I once made him promise me that nothing would ever happen between them.
The conversation triggered me, I hung up on him, and then — probably not my finest moment — I contacted her.
Except something completely unexpected happened.
She and I ended up talking for around TWO HOURS.
And I found out that there was literally nothing going on between them.From what came out of that conversation, it seems like my ex had actually been deliberately playing into my jealousy / making things sound a certain way because he knew it would get a reaction out of me. Meanwhile, when I actually spoke to the woman I had spent so much time being threatened by, reality was nowhere near what I had built up in my head.That really messed with me because it made me question how much of my jealousy right now is based on reality and how much is me panicking because I feel like I’m losing him.There is another woman he is currently talking to, and I’ve been jealous of her too. They talk frequently and have discussed traveling together. I even found myself wanting to contact her and tell her that my ex asked me to get back together.Part of me thinks she deserves to know. But if I’m completely honest, part of me also just wants her gone.
I don’t like admitting that.At the same time, I’m angry at my ex because I feel like he knows exactly what makes me jealous and sometimes deliberately pushes those buttons. So now I’m stuck wondering whether I’m reacting to an actual threat of losing him, whether he is provoking me because he still has feelings too, or whether we’re both just falling back into unhealthy patterns from our old relationship.And underneath ALL of this is the actual problem: I still have feelings for my ex.
When I imagine losing my current boyfriend, it hurts. I would miss him, his personality, our conversations, the physical connection and having him in my life. He genuinely matters to me.But when I imagine my ex permanently disappearing from my life — never hugging him again, hearing his laugh, having our stupid conversations, or eventually watching him build a life with someone else — it hits somewhere completely different.I miss him as a person. I miss his presence. I miss the familiarity and safety. He still feels like “home” to me. I also still love him. I also want that future with him.But I also don’t completely trust him when he says he wants me back.I don’t know whether he genuinely wants to rebuild our relationship or whether he misses me, is jealous himself, or likes knowing he can still get a reaction out of me. And the fact that he apparently still knows exactly how to trigger my jealousy makes me even more cautious.Most importantly, the problems that made me leave him didn’t magically disappear just because we miss each other.I also feel horrible toward my current boyfriend. He didn’t sign up to be part of some unfinished love story between me and my ex. My feelings for him are genuine and I don’t want to cheat on him or keep him around as a backup while I decide whether I want my ex.When I asked myself, “If neither man would be hurt and nobody would judge me, who would I instinctively choose?” my answer was probably my ex.
But when I imagined being with NEITHER of them for a while — just being single, properly ending one chapter and figuring out what I actually feel without either man pulling me in a direction — I felt relief.And now I’m wondering if that’s the answer I’m avoiding.Maybe getting into another relationship only a month after a three-year relationship ended was way too fast. Maybe liking someone new convinced me I had healed when really I had just moved forward without processing the loss.
I genuinely don’t know.
What would you do?
Would you stay with the current boyfriend and accept that missing/grieving an ex doesn’t mean you should go back?
Would you end the current relationship, stay single for a while, and only later decide whether the relationship with the ex deserves another chance?
And how much weight would you give to the fact that, underneath all the jealousy and chaos, if I imagine having to permanently choose one person, I still instinctively lean toward my ex?
Please be brutally honest. I know I’ve behaved irrationally in parts of this and I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right. I genuinely want an outside perspective because right now I can’t tell the difference between love, grief, jealousy, nostalgia and fear of losing someone.

HELP A GIRL OUT

hi, I really need an outside perspective because I genuinely don’t trust my own judgment right now.
I was with my ex for about 3 years. I loved him deeply and for a long time he felt like home to me. I was the one who eventually ended the relationship, but not because I stopped loving him. I was exhausted. We kept having the same conversations, hurting each other over the same things, and I felt like I had tried for a long time to fix it until I just couldn’t anymore.About a month after we broke up, I started dating someone new.Looking back, I think I made a really stupid assumption: I genuinely liked this new person, I was excited about him and wanted to be with him, so I thought that automatically meant I had gotten over my ex.
I basically thought, “If I can have feelings for someone else, obviously I’ve moved on.”Now I’m realizing those two things apparently aren’t the same.I’ve been with my current boyfriend for about a month now and my feelings for him ARE real. I’m attracted to him, I care about him, he treats me well, respects me, gives me attention, we have great conversations and the physical chemistry is insane. I don’t think I consciously used him as a rebound or replacement.
There are complications: there is a significant age gap, we’re coworkers, and my family strongly disapproves of the relationship, which has put an enormous amount of stress on me. But the actual relationship between us has been good.Then my ex started talking to another woman, and seeing him potentially move on affected me way more than I expected. I became jealous and started obsessing over the idea that somebody else could take the place I had in his life.Eventually my ex and I had a very emotional conversation and he told me that he wanted us to get back together.That should have been easy to reject considering I have a boyfriend.It wasn’t.I actually started considering it.
And that’s when I realized I may not have processed our breakup at all.Something else happened yesterday that made this even clearer to me.My ex and I were talking and he basically told me that there aren’t really “his people” and “my people” anymore — after three years together, a lot of them are just people we both know now.We started naming people and eventually I mentioned a particular girl I used to be EXTREMELY jealous of while we were together. I had been so insecure about her that I once made him promise me that nothing would ever happen between them.
The conversation triggered me, I hung up on him, and then — probably not my finest moment — I contacted her.
Except something completely unexpected happened.
She and I ended up talking for around TWO HOURS.
And I found out that there was literally nothing going on between them.From what came out of that conversation, it seems like my ex had actually been deliberately playing into my jealousy / making things sound a certain way because he knew it would get a reaction out of me. Meanwhile, when I actually spoke to the woman I had spent so much time being threatened by, reality was nowhere near what I had built up in my head.That really messed with me because it made me question how much of my jealousy right now is based on reality and how much is me panicking because I feel like I’m losing him.There is another woman he is currently talking to, and I’ve been jealous of her too. They talk frequently and have discussed traveling together. I even found myself wanting to contact her and tell her that my ex asked me to get back together.Part of me thinks she deserves to know. But if I’m completely honest, part of me also just wants her gone.
I don’t like admitting that.At the same time, I’m angry at my ex because I feel like he knows exactly what makes me jealous and sometimes deliberately pushes those buttons. So now I’m stuck wondering whether I’m reacting to an actual threat of losing him, whether he is provoking me because he still has feelings too, or whether we’re both just falling back into unhealthy patterns from our old relationship.And underneath ALL of this is the actual problem: I still have feelings for my ex.
When I imagine losing my current boyfriend, it hurts. I would miss him, his personality, our conversations, the physical connection and having him in my life. He genuinely matters to me.But when I imagine my ex permanently disappearing from my life — never hugging him again, hearing his laugh, having our stupid conversations, or eventually watching him build a life with someone else — it hits somewhere completely different.I miss him as a person. I miss his presence. I miss the familiarity and safety. He still feels like “home” to me. I also still love him. I also want that future with him.But I also don’t completely trust him when he says he wants me back.I don’t know whether he genuinely wants to rebuild our relationship or whether he misses me, is jealous himself, or likes knowing he can still get a reaction out of me. And the fact that he apparently still knows exactly how to trigger my jealousy makes me even more cautious.Most importantly, the problems that made me leave him didn’t magically disappear just because we miss each other.I also feel horrible toward my current boyfriend. He didn’t sign up to be part of some unfinished love story between me and my ex. My feelings for him are genuine and I don’t want to cheat on him or keep him around as a backup while I decide whether I want my ex.When I asked myself, “If neither man would be hurt and nobody would judge me, who would I instinctively choose?” my answer was probably my ex.
But when I imagined being with NEITHER of them for a while — just being single, properly ending one chapter and figuring out what I actually feel without either man pulling me in a direction — I felt relief.And now I’m wondering if that’s the answer I’m avoiding.Maybe getting into another relationship only a month after a three-year relationship ended was way too fast. Maybe liking someone new convinced me I had healed when really I had just moved forward without processing the loss.
I genuinely don’t know.
What would you do?
Would you stay with the current boyfriend and accept that missing/grieving an ex doesn’t mean you should go back?
Would you end the current relationship, stay single for a while, and only later decide whether the relationship with the ex deserves another chance?
And how much weight would you give to the fact that, underneath all the jealousy and chaos, if I imagine having to permanently choose one person, I still instinctively lean toward my ex?
Please be brutally honest. I know I’ve behaved irrationally in parts of this and I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m right. I genuinely want an outside perspective because right now I can’t tell the difference between love, grief, jealousy, nostalgia and fear of losing someone.