Helping my (f18) boyfriend (m18) of 5 years/six months heal after being hurt by his ex.
Hey guys I’m sorry this is going to be long, it’s been long for me, I’d really love some advice though.
My boyfriend first fell in love with me when we were in grade 7. We’d met in grade 5 and had been close friends for two years and his god-sister was my best friend. It was his first time being in any sort of love and it became a tiny bit obsessive, I was everything to him and he once got into a fistfight with someone who considered asking me out. He asked me out in grade 8 but I rejected him because I have clinical depression and at that point was managing it horribly, was crazy depressed all the time, attempted suicide and and I needed a totally fresh start for high school or I felt like I would do it again, and I adored him as a friend but wasnt in love.
I started getting treatment for my depression and by the end of grade nine it was still a struggle but I felt ready to reach back out to all the people I loved from before I needed to get away. The two of us fell in love with each other completely but weren’t in a relationship, we were best friends, would say I love you platonically, there was no one in the world who knew me as well and I didn’t know anyone like I knew him. He fell in love with me romantically again, maybe was the whole time, and asked me out again in grade 10 and I rejected him again, his friendship was the most important thing in my life and due to a mix of my still struggling mental health and platonic love for him I couldn’t see/didn’t want to risk us together. I knew I was too immature for a relationship with someone that important to me, and I totally was had we dated then I would have broken up with him in an ugly way and ruined things.
I dated someone else for six months and started maturing and learning more about myself, I was still immature then and broke up with him when I felt I was getting “bored”, in the mean time we were still best freinds, he was the most important person to me and I to him. He started talking to someone else and when he fell in love I was so incredibly happy for him, he’s such a loving person and deserves it, she was incredibly jealous of me which is fair considering the history, and also quite toxic which I didn’t know until later. About a year into their relationship he and I stopped talking for six months because of how complicated things were, it wasnt fully a conscious decision it sort of happened.
He fell incredibly in love with her and they dated for a year and a half, but the further into their relationship they went the worse she treated him, she started getting bored and found someone new, but didn’t want to be the one to break up (as in her past two relationships including with my bf she had broken up with the person she was with just to be dating someone else a week later) so she treated him worse and worse in the hopes of him breaking up with her. He was still hanging on so after a year and a half of their dating she broke up with him, effectively ghosted him, talked a lot of shit to their mutual friends and had a new boyfriend within the week.
This absolutely broke his heart and he didn’t know how to heal from it, he was so down on himself, “the guy who can’t stop talking about his ex”, didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know any of that until later. I ended up reaching out to him five months after their breakup because I missed him, still loved him though I didn’t say that to him or myself, and we were graduating that year and didn’t want to leave anything on the table. He responded within two hours and we started talking again. When we started messaging it I could only describe what I felt as scurvy, all the old wounds and complicated feelings opened right back up and it hurt so bad, but predominately among them was that I loved him. At this point was about three million times better than it was before, I was managing my depression successfully and most importantly in my mind we were young adults who were capable of loving each other romantically. After a complicated month of talking and getting reintroduced to each other, and actually falling back in love with each other as we are not as we were, and a very flirty first meeting which we in retrospect call our first date, we started dating for real.
Things have been complicated every once in a while, we both have our mental health, choosing our uni, some lingering jealousy, but it’s the happiest I’ve ever been. He’s always been my person and now everything feels complete. A couple months ago his ex reached back out to him trying to apologize/I don’t fully know what. She’s changed a lot in her first year of uni I think but not that much at least in my opinion. This revealed just how much he was still hurt by her despite the time, he has no idea how to heal. He’s over her now, he’s not in love with her and only wants to be with me, but she hurt him a lot and he doesn’t know how to process things.
Two days ago was my birthday, we’re both 18 now, and while we were spending the day together a close friend of his and mutual friend of him and his ex reached out and warned my bf that his ex’s current boyfriend was planning to message me and “hey girlie” me, saying that he was still in love with her because of how he acted when she reached out to him a month and a bit ago. They don’t talk anymore I wasn’t comfortable with it. In showing me these messages with his friend he showed me a conversation where he said that I was “absolutely perfect in every way and he loves me so much but things don’t feel right sometiems” when talking about that he said that he doesn’t feel like he belongs in my world. For context my family is a higher socioeconomic class than his and he’s really aware of it, I go to private school now and my stepdad really likes the finer things, we have an imported rug from turkiye in our living room. It’s never been any sort of issue for me, I feel like I can reallly seemlessly slide between the envionrment of the pretty poor middle school I went to when my mom was single (i no longer really talk to my biological dad but until a year ago I lived with him half the time and he basically lives off child support, I did not live glamourously when I lived with him, there was a lot of food insecurity, and those parts of me are still parts of me even though I don’t talk to him anymore (for abuse reasons not poor reasons)). and the more privlaged experience I have now, they both feel like me. His ex was greek, big family and his exact socioeconomic class, in his neighbourhood. Their families became very close when they were dating, he said that it wouldn’t be uncommon for him to stop by in her house on his way home even if she was out to give his mom a kiss and talk for a little bit. He felt like he belonged completely with her family and was always home. He says that “my world”, especially all the new parts of it, feels foreign in comparison, he’s anxious around my parents despite knowing my mom longer than he knew his ex’s parents.
He says that dating me and being in love with me feels different than expected, it feels perfect when we’re alone in my room or out, but he can’t help compare things with me to with his ex and while before he loved me to the absolute maximum he could love someone, he feels that he’s hurting too much to be able to love to the maximum he can right now. He doesn’t know what his ceiling is and he feels guilty because he doesn’t love me what he feels is enough, he wants to love me completely with his whole being but feels he’s too hurt to.
We have one summer until we go off to uni, we’re going to different schools. In my ideal world he would be able to heal and be close with my family, and we would stay together for univeristy. Ever since grade 6 when I imagined my future he was always a fixture of it in some way, we’ve been pillars in each other’s lives since a couple years after we first started forming memories. But if we go into long distance when he’s not healed it would be like us dating back in grade 10 when I wasn’t healed yet, I know it will go badly, both of us know that. I’ve said I will always be there for him, and he’s said the same for me, but right now I don’t think he’ll be ready when it’s time to choose whether or not to stay together romantically.
We’re still talking things through and I’d really love some advice. He’s still in love with me and is terrified to lose me, although I know I’ll be okay even if we don’t stay together I’m kind of in the same boat. I’ve decided that at the very least I’ll enjoy my summer and being in love with him, we’ll spend all the time together we can and enjoy it before we go onto our next chapter whatever that looks like. But I want to help him heal, he doesn’t deserve to still be in pain and for me or anyone else he may fall in love with he deserves to love to the max of his capacity. Preferably he’ll heal enough by the end of the summer that we’re ready for long distance but either way I want to help him, and his healing will make our summer way better.
He’s going to try therapy again, which he tried for his anxiety pre either relationship but wasn’t super effective, but what else can we do? How do you recomend he process this? I’m going to talk to my therapist too but any advice will be so appreciated.