This is my first post, so hello Mumsnet. I've been lurking for a while now, and it's clear it's an excellent community where so many people find help and insight.
What has made me post now is the recurring feelings I'm having for an ex boyfriend. We were together a year, well actually the last three months of that time were spent breaking up and reconciling- and frankly, were horrible. I know a year is not a long time, but I really felt we would be together long term, he was one of my best friends as well as a lover. And now, nearly a year after we've broken up, I still miss him.
I know in my head this is really stupid. He couldn't commit to me which is why we broke up- he clearly wasn't that into me and I did the right thing to finally be strong and stay broken up. But we live in a small community and I see him out and about every so often, and I saw him with a girl last week and I was shocked how upset it made me. I don't even know if they were there as an item or as friends, but it made me so sad. I miss being loved by him, miss the way things were before he suddenly decided I wasn't actually that important to him after all. Sometimes I am so sad for all I have lost, still.
The time before that when I saw him was the first that I'd seen him in a long time- and I had a drink taken, so when he sidled up instead of making an excuse and walking away I spoke to him, and we ended up arguing mildly with me insisting that he never gave a toss about me and he should be honest about that, and him saying he "loved me to distracion" before it all went wrong.
Sorry Mumsnetters- I know I must sound awfully pathetic, and I have never been like this over a man before. It was not my first serious relationship but it was my first real heartbreak (I am in my late twenties) is this normal? Can it really take a year or more to get over somebody, or do I sound emotionally unbalanced?
I think he is playing games in a way, by coming up to speak to me one night and then flatly ignoring me the next (in my perspective the arguing wasn't serious, and we had a companionable smoke together, I didn't think it ended on bad terms?) and that doesn't feel great. Why do I fucking care? I know he thinks NOTHING of me. So why am I thinking of all the good times? I don't know if it feels worse to think he never really loved me at all and it was all fake and I was taken in, or if it's worse to think he did love me and then coldly just stopped when he got to know me and decided I wasn't good enough.
Argh Mumsnet, sorry for the rant!