A lot of people might be mad at me and say i’m what’s wrong with gen z but i here i go.
I’m (22f) still seeing my ex (24m) and we’re still in love. Our current relationship has been chill but recently we went camping together and not suprisingly it seems like we’re getting closer to getting back together. Even though i still love him and feel really comfortable around him i don’t want to get back together. I wouldn’t prefer but definitelt be okay to be just friends and i have encouraged him to see other people in the last months (we have been separated since the end of april).
Let me tell you a bit about the relationship and the break-up. We had met right after i ended a toxic af 3 year long relationship. I definitely wasnt looking for anything serious at the time so we kept flirting and sleeping together for 6-7 months. Out formal relationship lasted 10 months and he broke up with me. Before the break-up his reason was that he needed time alone and even though i said this first we both agreed that we weren’t good for each other becayse we couldn’t grow, our lives had become stagnant. After we broke up we kept bumping into each other until we started to meet up planned and he confessed that he broke with me because he saw that i was unhappy and i needed to do my own thing alone. I wasn’t aware of this until we broke up but he was right. Now we still see each other every other 2-3 weeks or sometimes only a couple days and we still sleep together. It seems like we’re going to get back together but i don’t want to yet.
The issue is that we’re not really compatible on some levels. We think very differently and we want to perceive and experience the world differently. I gave up my way of thinking in order to be with him. He gave up the way he rests for me. Our very first months were brutal beacuse of the difference of our minds, we spoke the same language but he couldn’t understand me and i couldn’t find soothing answers to his problems. We got better at communicsting but we’re stil very different and even though there’s suprisingly high chance of us getting married someday, i don’t want to abandon my ideals about my way of thinking and my way of living. I don’t want to miss out on experiences by “tying the knot” too early. My day gets better when i look at him, i want him to be happy, i really do care about him and i do love him but i just don’t want either of us to let go of our ourselves to be together.
I need advice, thank you for reading this…
TLDR: Me (22f) and my ex (24m) still love and see each other and it seems like we’re going towards a relationship but i don’t want to even though i love him and want him in my life. I’m okay with being just friends but seems unlikely.
Comments
This isn’t a gen Z thing, it’s a young thing. As you get older, you realize that love matters, but other stuff matters, too.
Stop meeting up with him and definitely stop sleeping with him. You are encouraging him to see other people – how do you think those relationships are going to go when his new partner finds out he stills hangs out with his ex who he also slept with a bunch post-breakup and broke up with despite not wanting to himself.
You know you’re not compatible, so you have to find the discipline to move on. Once you’ve both processed the breakup and fully moved on, maybe you can rebuild a more distant friendship with extremely platonic boundaries, but trying to transition directly into friends and sleeping together is holding you back from moving on.
this is so messy there’s no way you’d actually listen to any advice lol so just take whatever happens next as an opportunity to learn. life’s long whatever happens you’ll be alright
I’m going to give it to you straight. Y’all need to let each other go. If you can’t control the feeling that you want to get back together then that means you can’t be friends. Too messy. It’s just human nature though, it would be a mess for most of us who try to stay friends for someone we’re still in love with.
If BOTH have zero romantic feelings, you can be friends. If either of you still have romantic feelings, y’all need to get out of each others lives. Seriously. It’s not fair for you, him, or any future partners. It’s as simple as that. No context needed.
You need to make a clean break and go no contact for awhile.
I think you need to break it off and tell him you can’t we each other. If you still love him you’ll always be drawn to him. What conversations have you had with him about boundaries?
Okay? What are you asking for relationship advice on?