I 32F, thought I met “the one” 2 years ago. He was perfect in my eyes and I thought I was going to marry him! Lo and behold, that didn’t happen. I still think about him daily even though we’ve been no contact for 9 months. How do you move on from the person you thought was the one and become open to dating again? I work a fully job, workout, have hobbies and friends. But he still slips through my mental cracks. I want to heal and move on and be ready to receive the love I deserve
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Honestly? Time.
In my experience, there’s also a healthy amount of fear (oh my god I’ll be alone forever), and idealizing of the ex that happens.
Also try and get over the idea that there’s “the one”. If there’s really only one person out there that is suited to you, it’s going to be a dam. Shame when you live where you live, and they’re a member of an unconnected tribe on North Sentinel Island (spoiler: you’ll never meet because the tribe kills outsiders on sight, and even approaching the island is illegal.)
I realized that if they don’t give a shit about me, why do I give a shit about them.
They can choke for all I care lol.
I dated a woman for 4 years knew her for another one…she was the one at the time and well, because of school, work, i never proposed. Then she met another guy and he was her one. We lived together for 2 years, so that made it also difficult to move on for me. But after about a month of full depression, my friends schemed for me to go out and while out, I met this pretty girl who while talking to her, i realized—what am i doing? all these beautiful women out here, i need to meet them! I no longer hang out with those friends, but I’m fully convinced they talked that girl into talking to me as looking back, it seems all staged, but it did the trick. Otherwise, who knows, i might still be depressed about the one.
I think that the less you buy into the concept of “the one”, the less likely you are to feel beholden to your perceived “one” particularly after a breakup. They were just a person you were optimistic about but that optimism is misplaced, and now you’ve hopefully learned from your mistakes with them to be able to select a more suitable person in the future.
I suppose, to be more precise, to me the one is never really found but made. There are myriad people in life with whom you could potentially build a life, but they only become your one through actual time spent, efforts made, and bonds built together. The one isn’t someone whom you select out of a crowd; they’re someone whom you look back on as the best decision you ever made toward the end of your life.
There is no “the one”. There are no soul mates or ‘meant to be’s”. There is only strong compatibility and full commitment. And sometimes even the great individuals that we might fall in love with can’t give us those two things and sometimes we can’t give it to them.
Heartbreak is grief and grieving takes time. With time you’ll start to be able to look back and see the holes in the relationship and have clear perspective as to why it didn’t work. Really only then will you be able to recognize when the next person you date is the right match for you as well.
I (36F) have only ever loved one guy in my life (hopefully that’ll change soon as I’ve started dating again, but, I just want to give you that context.)
I spent WAY WAY too long wishing he’d come back and once I finally got over him, I actually felt sorrow for myself for losing so much time to pining after someone who ultimately wasn’t my One anyway. So, here’s my honest perspective on it and I hope it helps in some small way.
Your guy had nine months to come back. He didn’t. If he wanted to come back to you, he would have. At this point, if he came back it wouldn’t likely be because he misses you, it would be because he thought he could do better, isn’t finding it and is willing to use you as a placeholder until what he’s actually looking for comes along.
(and if you want to know for sure this is the case, choose to undergo a very dramatic “glow up” and let your mutual friends see it. I guarantee it’ll get back to him, and it will provoke a reaction of some kind and you can interpret it accordingly)
(of course I could be wrong, but IF he comes back, hold him to a higher standard not a lower one to ensure he’s returned for the right reasons)
YOU are the main character of your life. You are not holding space to be someone else’s sidekick. You need to shift the narrative in your head from “I wasn’t worthy of his love, I’ll never find someone else like him” to “I liked X, Y, and Z about him. I liked being loved like this, I liked having a partner who did that. I DISLIKED this and this and this and those contributed to our incompatibility. Now I need to find someone who has those positive qualities without the negatives.”
That might seem clinical, but right now you need clinical. I am a super romantic person and I realized that I deserve someone who is going to give me a Great Love–my guy did until he didn’t, and then he never did again so he can’t be my Great Love.
Being clinical about him, and the fact that he didn’t come back, helped me move on. Don’t lose as much time as I did, I’m begging you. Spend a bit of time separating the parts of him you liked and detach them from him so you can look for those things in someone else, and be harsh with yourself about the things that didn’t work. I hope it helps.
You don’t. You move on.
Well I haven’t. It’s a grief that I carry with me.
It took me several years, self work, some therapy and maturing. I’ve since found someone I’m truly compatible with and can objectively see that “my one” wasn’t the great relationship I thought it was
It took me nearly 4 years, once I worked through everything emotionally and able to process things logically and objectively.
The main thing that helped me was understanding that, after all was (not) said and (not) done, this guy wasn’t “The One”. I then wrote down specific behaviors he did and the corresponding emotion on how everything affected me.
In the end, after putting things together, the real version of that guy was a vile, evil, and egregious character instead of the wonderful image I created about him in my mind.
Hard heads make soft behinds.
Time and therapy
Its just time, and getting out and meeting people again. He might still be present but as you fill your life with new connections, he will have less space.
But, look at this way, it shows you have the capacity for something intense and heartfelt and, if there are “the ones”, they will be with you at the right time. He wasn’t it.
I have my own couple of names that, even after 15 years or more still pop to my head daily – but its nothing, ever at all like it used to be. I’m okay with this because its a remind of who I am and my ability to love and care, and that’s all me – not them.