6 Months later and it still feels like yesterday…
I (27M) got out of a 4-year relationship 6 months ago, and honestly, it still feels like it happened yesterday.
She was my first real relationship. Before her I’d only had situationships and hookups. We met at work, started talking, and after a couple of months together I told her I loved her because I genuinely meant it.
Early in the relationship, I made the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I stayed in contact with a girl I’d hooked up with before we started dating. I told my girlfriend she was “just a friend,” but we had flirted a few times. About six months into the relationship, I admitted everything because the guilt was eating me alive. She was devastated, but she decided to stay and try to work through it.
Things were never quite the same after that. Trust became harder, and although we had plenty of good memories together, we also had more arguments as time went on.
As the years passed, other issues started showing up. I wasn’t financially stable, I didn’t have a real career yet, I struggled to save money, and I constantly promised I’d improve only to change for a week or two before falling back into old habits. Looking back, I also wasn’t setting healthy boundaries with my parents, and she felt like they had too much influence over my life.
She wasn’t asking me to buy expensive gifts. She wanted consistency, creativity, little love notes, planned dates, and for me to follow through on what I said I’d do. She carried a lot of the emotional and mental load in the relationship, and eventually she got tired of reminding me.
A couple of days before Christmas she ended things over text. She told me she loved me but that love wasn’t enough anymore and that the relationship was causing her too much anxiety.
That part broke me.
We didn’t actually see each other until almost two weeks later, and that made it even harder to process.
A few weeks after that we ended up seeing each other because we were both in one of our best friends’ weddings. Being surrounded by everyone celebrating love while knowing ours was over was one of the hardest days of my life. At the end of the night I drove her home, we cried together, and she said something I’ll probably never forget: “What else do you want from me? I gave everything I could.” That was the last time I ever saw her.
Since then we’ve barely spoken. I wished her a happy birthday a month later, she responded kindly, and I ended the text saying “I’ll text you through your number going forward (I was texting her email cuz her phone got stolen).” We haven’t spoken since.
A mutual friend later told me he asked her if she ever thought we’d get back together, and she said she didn’t see it happening. Hearing that crushed me.
Over the last six months I’ve tried to rebuild my life. I started therapy for a while, became a CDL driver, picked up a second job managing a valet company, got my finances under control, and I’ve genuinely grown as a person. I can finally see the ways I failed her and the ways I needed to mature.
The thing is… even after all that growth, I still think about her almost every day. Wanting to speak to her and text her but I don’t.
People tell me, “It’s been six months. Just move on.”
I know they’re trying to help, but it honestly makes me feel even more alone. I don’t miss the relationship because I’m afraid of being single…I honestly miss her. I miss the person I thought I’d spend my life with. I still catch myself wondering if she’s already with someone else, and that thought hurts more than I’d like to admit.
I’m doing better than I was. The first few months I cried almost every day. Now it’s maybe once a week. So there has been progress.
I know I can’t change the past, and if I could, I would. I truly believe I’ve become a better man because of everything that happened, but part of me still wishes she’d get to meet this version of me.
I guess I’m posting this because I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this.
Did you ever truly get over someone you thought was your forever? Did they ever come back? Did it eventually stop hurting? And if it did… what finally helped?