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Relationships

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Original poster

Worried I let the love of my life go and can’t move forward at all

14 replies

ThatsYourFluff · 12/11/2021 11:32

Met someone in my late 20s who was absolutely wonderful to me. At the time we lived and hour or so apart and months into our relationship I was plunged into battling with mental health issues, mainly anxiety. It became so bad that I began therapy and while I was still with this man, I was completely unable to focus on the relationship, I felt paralysed and ultimately stopped communicating with him and many of my friends for a short period. He didn’t want things to end but I was barely holding down my job and I was in a total fog, I let me whole life crash down around me. He tried to be there.

After six months of therapy I emerged feeling better, back to myself. I got in contact with him and we began seeing each other again. Two months later it turns out that he was having a child with someone he had a one night stand with (she told him when she was six months).

He’s moved on presumably with her, I don’t know as I have no contact with him now. When we ended he was cross with me, saying that none of it would have even happened if I’d just let him be there for me. And he’s right, I pushed him away.

I think about him all the time, compare others to him. I’ve dated but I’m older now and less confident, I also have never met anyone that comes close to how good he was to me. He really did want to just settle down with me and I was a mess and unable to realise it at the time.

Will I ever move on from this? Will I ever feel better about it? Everyone I meet is nowhere near as caring or as loving as him. What if he was the right one and I fucked it up?

OP posts:

Dery · 12/11/2021 11:53

Have you posted about this before, OP? It sounds very familiar.

You can and will move on from this but you do need to reframe your thinking to do so.

Firstly, I think that ending the relationship so you could concentrate on overcoming your mental health issues (which were effecting you so badly you could barely hold down your job) was the responsible thing to do. You were clearly very ill and that was what you needed to do to recover.

I think the whole one night stand thing is a bit odd (didn't he use a condom???; was she really just an ONS?) but in any case him impregnating another woman is entirely on him, not on you at all.

You do need to stop comparing other men with him. It's right to insist that you're well treated by your partners but other men will bring different qualities to the table. You need to give them a proper chance. There are numerous Mr/Ms/Mx Rights for every person on this planet. If there were just the one, what chance would any of us have of finding that person amongst the - what - 7 billion or so of us on the planet?

Good luck, OP.

Original poster

ThatsYourFluff · 12/11/2021 11:58

@Dery

Have you posted about this before, OP? It sounds very familiar.

You can and will move on from this but you do need to reframe your thinking to do so.

I think the whole one night stand thing is a bit odd (didn't he use a condom???; was she really just an ONS?) but in any case him impregnating another woman is entirely on him, not on you at all.

Good luck, OP.

@Dery thanks. Yes I posted a while ago and I’m still thinking about it all :(

I know you’re right there’s loads of people but I guess I keep thinking there aren’t that many round here or even in the whole uk..maybe he was the right one for me in that way. I don’t know.

I’m older now and more battered with life. I have more of a past than I had when I was seeing him. I feel old and past it. I’m finding it all very hard and wish I had just worked things out with him.

OP posts:

Bortles · 12/11/2021 12:03

A big chunk of falling in love with someone is imagination. We imagine who we think they are based on what we've seen and what we want, we imagine a rosy future with them.
The relationship you're stuck on never had the chance to move beyond the imagination stage into the reality stage, where we see our incompatibilities, their flaws, the fact that they are only human and not psychically able to give us everything and understand us completely.
Combine this idea with the idea that who he WAS at the point you were together has now changed. Life will have changed him, his current circumstances will have changed him, also your history with him would change your dynamic together were you to remeet.
Mourn the fact the person you knew and relationship you hoped for are gone, but also realise that that person and relationship existed largely in your head, untested in reality if that makes sense.
There will be someone you can start afresh with and as a stronger person yourself, you'll probably attract an even better person anyway.

SVRT19674 · 12/11/2021 12:20

I am sorry you are feeling so down. But what I don´t understand is why the fact that the other woman was having a kid mean that he couldn´t be with you...Are you sure he was single when you remet?
A few of us have this "the one who got away", and what could have been but it looms larger when we are not satisfied with our lot, and fades into the background when we are. A ghost is stalking you really, don´t give it so much power.

ClawedButler · 12/11/2021 12:38

Oh bless you, it sounds miserable.

Is he really the only perfect man for you? Or is that what you've built him up in your head to be? Are you, perhaps, pining for the life/future you thought you'd have (a bundle of him + being mentally well + having good job etc), and are centering this yearning on him?

Original poster

ThatsYourFluff · 12/11/2021 12:42

@ClawedButler

Oh bless you, it sounds miserable.

@ClawedButler yes I think it’s that. It feels so confusing. He felt safe and I pushed him away. I meet men but they’re not dedicated like he was, they want to go off and travel and drink or don’t have a stable job. This man wasn’t like that and I pushed him away totally.

@SVRT19674 she lived hours away and they met on a night out. So he had to make a decision to be close to her or not. I get why he did it and we’d only been back together weeks when he found out. He did say to me that I’d ruined things between us and we could have had everything together :( he was right.

I never meet good men like him.

OP posts:

samesign · 12/11/2021 12:43

Don't blame yourself for this, the relationship wasn't right for you at the time, he didn't wait for you he moved on, he chose to move on again even when he could of been with you, it's hard but don't keep thinking of how things could of been only look forward.

HeartsAndClubs · 12/11/2021 12:49

Neither of you was in the wrong, but by the same token you both had your own stuff to deal with.

You pushed him away and tbh he had no obligation to stick around after that. And rightly or wrongly MH has an impact not just on the sufferer but those around them as well. if a poster posted here that her partner was having a crisis and essentially wanted nothing to do with her the response would be to let them go and to move on. He wasn’t wrong to do that.

By the same token, he had a ONS with someone and she fel pregnant. You’re not responsible for that either, but given she was 6 months pregnant it’s evident that you were absent from his life for a long time, it wasn’t realistic to expect him to have stuck around.

Sometimes relationships move on for all sorts of reasons. It wasn’t meant to be.

BertramLacey · 12/11/2021 13:23

Two months later it turns out that he was having a child with someone he had a one night stand with (she told him when she was six months).

So he got a ONS pregnant and then blamed you? I mean things were over between the two of you and he can get up to what he wants to, but if he has unprotected or inadequately protected sex with someone he (presumably) doesn't know, that's on him. And if then blames you for the consequences I don't think he's the wonderful man that you think.

I suspect you're scared to be in a relationship and are holding on to a memory of him to avoid having to have a relationship with someone else. I'd work through that with a therapist to be honest.

AgentJohnson · 12/11/2021 14:52

I’m finding it all very hard and wish I had just worked things out with him.

This is a bit like saying I’d wish I had ran the marathon with a broken ankle. You did the right thing at the time. I understand he was hurt but he can’t of been all that if he made your decision of self care all about him.

You’ve put him on a pedestal and most people rarely match up to people in that elevated position.

Cut your past self some slack.

onthegrindbaby · 12/11/2021 15:25

When we ended he was cross with me, saying that none of it would have even happened if I’d just let him be there for me. And he’s right, I pushed him away.

One of things that make having relationships of any kind difficult when you have mental health problems, is that people who are 'on the other side' continue to hold us to standards of people with good mental health. Pushing people away was part of your illness. A very common one at that.

To say that you messed it up by pulling away is like saying you messed it up by having a mental health issue. It's sad it didn't work out, but you did't do this, it happened to you like it happened to him.

Seeing the lost opportunities is very hard once you are also 'on the other side'. What happened to you then wouldn't happen to you now, because you're well. That you are well now is a credit to you.

By the by, he actually made a choice by being with the baby's mother. Plenty of men have been in similar situations and chosen to co-parent while staying with their current partner. He made that choice. Not you.

AnAutumnAfternoon · 12/11/2021 16:31

If he really really wanted you, he could have waited a little longer. He moved on pretty quickly, so really he's the one that ruined things. He knew you were in a bad place and should have given you time. Dont cry over split milk. I agree 100% with Bortles. You need to move on OP. I wish you every happiness

Helpimfalling · 12/11/2021 18:55

@Bortles

A big chunk of falling in love with someone is imagination. We imagine who we think they are based on what we've seen and what we want, we imagine a rosy future with them. The relationship you're stuck on never had the chance to move beyond the imagination stage into the reality stage, where we see our incompatibilities, their flaws, the fact that they are only human and not psychically able to give us everything and understand us completely. Combine this idea with the idea that who he WAS at the point you were together has now changed. Life will have changed him, his current circumstances will have changed him, also your history with him would change your dynamic together were you to remeet. Mourn the fact the person you knew and relationship you hoped for are gone, but also realise that that person and relationship existed largely in your head, untested in reality if that makes sense. There will be someone you can start afresh with and as a stronger person yourself, you'll probably attract an even better person anyway.

Ohhhh your good!! Really well put!

TheFoundations · 12/11/2021 22:30

You're pissed off with your life and you're hanging all the pissed offness on the loss of this relationship.

Focus on making your life better, and the intensity of the feelings about this relationship will diminish.

If you think about that happening, do you find that you are actually attached to this particular heartbreak, and deep down, you don't want to let it go/get over it?

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