How to get over someone you thought was "The One"?

[HeartbreakHotelHere]

I have no one to talk to irl and really need a HH and some advice.

Many years (11) i met and had a brief yet intense fling with a man. The type of encounter that never really left me and would sometimes find myself thinking about him over the years and what could have been. We were both young and things seemed to just fizzle out at that time, plus i had a fair amount of personal issues going on that i had to deal with. I did look him up over the years and it was clear he had quickly moved on to have a significantly long term relationship and 3 kids afterwards. I, too, had my own relationships in this time and later a child.

Around 9 months ago we matched on several dating apps and ended up finally getting into a relationship. He was a year out of this ltr mentioned above but he had claimed that he also had the same feelings i had about our encounter over the years but hadn't reached out for obvious reasons. However, what I thought was supposed to be a second chance type fairytale turned out not to be the case. It became quickly obvious that we didn't really align or work very well together and ultimately we have now reached the breaking point of calling time on everything. I feel he already has mentally left the relationship and to be honest it has all just broke me beyond words. It utterly terrifies me to lose someone who was very special to me for 11 years but I also know I cant force things that aren't mutually there or meant to be for us. And I know feelings are far too strong to ever be comfortable just being friends or platonic.
I just feel that I have lost all sense of hope in love and what I believed in before all this second encounter happened. I am also struggling with the fact that I have spent so many years in a delusion that has come crashing down so quickly and easily.

How can I process and move on?

The pain is terrible and only time heals. Throw yourself into things/going to places you think you don’t want to do that require concentration. It won’t work straight away - you just have to keep at it. Don’t go on dating sites or dates with other men
Took me two years and met someone by chance -completely different to the man I had the limerance for, definitely not at all what I woukd have had on my ‘list’ and this relationship is so much better than the one I thought was ‘The One’.
But it took two years of learning new things and getting to finally enjoy my life before I could be ready for that -you can’t hurry time…

The pain is terrible and only time heals. Throw yourself into things/going to places you think you don’t want to do that require concentration. It won’t work straight away - you just have to keep at it. Don’t go on dating sites or dates with other men
Took me two years and met someone by chance -completely different to the man I had the limerance for, definitely not at all what I woukd have had on my ‘list’ and this relationship is so much better than the one I thought was ‘The One’.
But it took two years of learning new things and getting to finally enjoy my life before I could be ready for that -you can’t hurry time…

You are in love with the idea of him, and that's not who he is.

I had a 10 week relationship with my dream man when l was 19, got dumped, he’d met the girl he went on to marry.

He was very difficult to get over but realistically it would not have worked, our backgrounds were too different. I came from a business owning very catholic and very conservative family but I was neither very catholic or conservative. I think probably the miners strike would have broken us, he was a very active picket and my family considered miners to earn enough and were appalled at the violence . I’ll just add the business we had was now second generation and not enough money to go around.

He had three children, one of which suffered from childhood cancer, he left his wife when the children were around 8 to 11, he ran off with an old school friend.

I seriously dodged a bullet but it’s still the best shag l ever had, late at night by the paddling pool in the park 😂

You reframe your experience to what it actually was, as opposed to your fantasy of what could have been. The reality is: you had a brief fling and then chose other long term partners. 11 years later you had a second bash at it for a few months and weren’t well suited. He was not “special to you for 11 years”, because you weren’t with him and didn’t know him in that period. The IDEA of him was special to you. The reality of him, which you got to know in round 2, was not special to you.

I appreciate all the responses. What @WhattheFudgeareyouonabout said, particularly about the fishing for an emotional response really hit me. As that that does seem to sum up things at the moment. The rejection in the disengagement is ultimately hurting me further a little bit more with each response. I dont know why I feel there is still hope we can have this happily ever after. I feel very silly about it all and how badly i am taking it when I know deep down it likely was just a fantasy that wasnt supposed to become a reality in the end.

On the great love of Linda's life "Oh, dulling, one always thinks that. Every, every time" The Bolter in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.

Good luck 💐

Well, take action. Rip the bandage off. Remind yourself that he was only special to you in your head for 11 years, and that this has nothing to do with the person he actually is. In reality he's just someone you've had two different shots at a relationship with, and it hasn't worked either time because you're fundamentally unsuited.

You've lost a comforting longtime mental prop, not a real relationship.

You realise that your brain made it all up. My sister did a similar thing romanticising two men at different times because it had not worked out when they were young. One ended up cheating on her for 9 months resulting in a baby. The other became a heroin addict.

If he was the one it would’ve worked out the first time round!

This isn’t quite the same, but a long long time ago I was good friends with a guy who I absolutely feel head over heels for. I was genuinely in love with him and he had feelings for me although they may have been more complicated. At the time we worked together so saw a lot of each other. Nothing physical happened between us but we spent a huge amount of emotional time together (lunchbreaks,
pub trips, phone calls after work hours and long text convos, crashing at each other’s house after nights out).

Nothing happened physically (and I didnt try to make a proper move) becuse he was in a long distance relationship with someone else and ultimately he decided to leave our town to move in with her and they are now married with kids. I decided to protect our friendship which I considered more important than risk it for what might have been a short term liaison.

Anyway, two decades later we are still friends and socialise with our spouses and kids. And I’m glad I made that choice. The older I have got the more I have let go of this image I had of him in my head as my perfect match and more see him for the whole person he is and why we probably wouldn’t have made a good long term match. Presumably he was a bit more mature than me and worked this out when we were still in our twenties, and therefore picked correctly…

My point being that you should focus on the person he has demonstrated himself to be and let go of the image you had of him. I also carried an image around for a while and had a lot of “what could have been” thoughts even after I’d met my now DH, but time has proved that we all made the right calls long term. You are making the right call now too.

In time when the pain has faded, you will see him and the relationship for what they really were in reality.

The huge positive side is now you KNOW it would never work. If you hadn’t reconnected, you would have always held him in high esteem in your head and wanted him.

Give yourself time.

Oof I went through this a few years ago OP.
Adored him. Was skipping through life thinking ‘when you know you know’ and dreaming of our life together, loved every minute I spent with him.
Eventually I realised he was quite casually cruel, not in an abusive way but I felt that the character he had pretended to have was actually just him trying to impress me (and his friends and family).
I ended things, because frankly I knew I would be happier day-to-day without him than with him.
I do still occasionally find myself reminiscing back on certain days we spent together, and the feeling of the exact moment I fell in love.
Ive reached the point where I’m both grateful for the experience and enormously relieved not to be with him any more.
Itll take time ❤️

I have finally found the courage to block and delete everything. I really hope this is the start of me being able to close the chapter on it all emotionally. Just trying not to think about it all as it upsets me and is making me quite ill.

Thank you all x