Long post ahead. Please bear with me.
I’m getting married soon. It’s beautiful. It’s exciting. I’m building a life with someone who is kind, loving, patient, and who sees me in ways I thought were impossible. I’m grateful. But I can’t lie — I’m also grieving.
There’s someone else. Not someone I’m with, not someone I’m cheating with, not someone I even talk to anymore. But someone who was everything to me for so long that the imprint of them still exists in the way I fold laundry, the way I decorate a room, the way I dream about what a backyard should look like.
We were college sweethearts. Bright-eyed, hopeful, broke but full of plans. We grew up together, in all the mess and beauty that comes with that. After graduating, we started laying the bricks of a shared life — slowly, imperfectly, but with so much intention.
We had our highs. God, we had some beautiful highs. Nights we stayed up talking about what our kids might be like. Days we danced in the kitchen like idiots. Trips where we felt like the only two people in the world.
And then… we had our lows. Real ones. The kind that make you wonder if love is enough. The kind that test your patience, your pride, your ability to forgive. And somewhere in all of it, we got tired. Not in one big moment, but slowly. Gradually. Quietly.
We stopped being each other’s safe place and became each other’s habit. We held on — not because we still believed, but because we didn’t know how not to. Familiarity is a powerful drug.
Eventually, we let go. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just time. It hurt like hell, but it also brought peace. And then life moved on, the way it does.
Now, I’m here. Engaged. Starting the life I always dreamed of — the house, the future, the silly traditions. But the strange part is, it’s not with the person I dreamed it with.
All those plans we once whispered in the dark, I’m now making real with someone else. Someone who deserves every bit of the love I have left to give. And I do love them, so deeply.
But a part of me — the part that still remembers your laugh in the middle of an argument, or the way your hand found mine at every movie theater — that part aches.
I don’t regret where we ended. I don’t regret who I’m with. I think we both ended up exactly where we needed to. But if there’s a next life, I hope we get it right. I hope we meet with a little more grace and a little less fear. I hope the timing works out.
I love you my c2. This is my last I love you to you — the person who will always have half of my heart. Not because I want you back. But because I’ll always carry the version of us that believed we’d last forever.
And maybe, in some universe, we still do.
Comments
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Wow… it’s truly something. The way we hold onto pieces of ourselves, even when we’re building something entirely new. It’s so brave to put it into words, um, I mean, to articulate the complexities of love and loss. Sometimes, those past connections linger, not as regrets, but as echoes of shared history. And it’s lovely to see you thriving, building a joyful future. A future, I’m sure, filled with laughter, contentment, and maybe even a very happy cat getting extra chin scratches. Because, honestly, who doesn’t deserve extra chin scratches?
You are going to ruin the new person’s life… with your this past…
You might be overly romanticizing the past. You guys didn’t work out for a reason, and you remember the highs more vividly than the lows.
this is so poetic & very well written but pls don’t marry ur fiance if u believe someone else will always have half ur heart. they deserves someone who feels that way about them, instead of unknowingly being treated like a consolation prize winner. i genuinely wouldn’t want to marry my partner if i knew they pined for an ex the same way u do.
Feel like a lot of people missed the point in this comment section, anyways I hope your engagement works out well and good luck to your future!
you should watch past lives
OP I think you need to take more time (and potentially go to therapy) to actually get over this ex. I had a similar relationship that lasted seven years with someone who I firmly believed I would marry. We talked about the same things you mentioned: our future together, the trips we’d take, the dreams we’d achieve. We split because at one point we realized that our life plans were starting to veer in different directions, and we were stressed out by trying to stick to the same path as each other.
I think it’s important that when you think back to those “glory days” with the ex that you think long and hard about why you split up. My ex and I are still on good terms, but we are with different people now for a reason. I am grateful to him for the things he taught me and the experiences that we shared, but he doesn’t have a claim to my heart anymore. Whenever I think of him, it’s from a place of “I hope he and his current gf are doing well” not “I wonder what we could have been”.
I think your penultimate line says it best. You don’t miss them you miss the idea of them. It’s not wrong to appreciate you two had a good time together; I don’t believe we have to automatically hate our ex’s, but you don’t need to cheapen the very real, tangible and forward-focused actual love you have in your (will be) marriage by comparing it to what is in effect a ‘longing’.
I don’t mean to be harsh, sorry if it comes across that way
PLEASE, DON’T GET MARRIED!
Talk to your current you’re not quite there yet, and work on getting over your ex. Go to therapy, talk to a pastor or something … I would kill myself if I ever heard my wife talk to an ex the way you talked about your ex.
Best of luck from one that understands. Love and hugs
damn, i feel bad for whoever thought it was a good idea to marry u
how selfish are u?