Note: it's a pretty long one. If you read my other posts from a month back you can probably skim through the details about the relationship since you know most of them already.

Also I'm not looking to be yelled at. Constructive criticism is fine but I ask that you be tactful.

I am stuck in a rut because of that relationship that ended over a month ago. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know that I met a girl, young and beautiful, full of energy and fascinatingly worldly for her age (19). She inspired me to lose exercise and helped me get through a 40-day vegan diet. I was feeling better than ever, and I owed it all to her. I wanted to make her my own. But, there was one problem: like most amazing women out there, she was taken.

That didnt’t stop her, though. Her boyfriend only came into town once a month, and during his three weeks of absence she began spending a lot of time with me; too much. The inevitable happened, and her guilt drove her to leave her boyfriend. Two days later she was in bed with me.

Say what you like; I deserve it. I’m not proud of what I did and I never will be. Worse yet is that I had met the guy before. We weren’t friends but I knew him. I allowed myself consciousness and fear of never finding a beautiful woman (even though I had been with a couple of them up to that point) to get the better of me and allow me to seduce this young girl. Though the feeling was mutual and she made no effort to stop me, I made the first move.

From there things got even more complicated. I wanted to turn this negative into a meaningful relationship. That’s who I am and what I do. She, on the other hand, jaded from a bad relationship with her parents, a very rough childhood, and a history of promiscuity, infidelity, and incredibly bad taste in men, wanted to keep it casual.

I agreed to it, but even though I knew this was a fling I still wanted to keep her all to myself. Like I said, I don’t do flings. Over the next couple of weeks we continued to sleep together frequently, and we continued to fight about what we were exactly. She tried several times to break it off, but I wouldn’t let her go, and her attachment to me made her continually make the wrong decision and stay on board.

After some time she broke it off. We made it six days. That night, as she put on enough clothes to walk across the house to the bathroom, I noticed her phone laying on my nightstand. She had been telling me that she was not in contact with her ex at all, much less in a romantic way (not that it should have mattered; she wasn’t my girlfriend. I just really wanted her to be). She left the room, and I remembered my friend’s words to me earlier that week:

“Dude, she’s playing you. Look through her texts, you’ll see I’m right.”

Fear swept through me as I recalled her history of infidelity. She cheated on the last guy three times in one year, the third with me. He wasn’t the only one either; she had cheated on others as well. After a few seconds I was overwhelmed with anxiety and I flipped open her phone. My friend was right; not only was she in contact with her ex but she was still referring to him as her boyfriend.

She came back into the room with a smile on her face. She was enjoying my company. I glared at her. “You lied to me,” I said.

Her face fell. “You went through my texts…”

For the next several minutes I yelled at her, asking why she would do that to, demanding to know if I meant anything to her, if she felt I deserved any respect, even as a person if not as a boyfriend. She simply looked at the floor and let her eyes well. It should have ended there. But that’s not what happened. I forgave her. Yes, I was that stupid. I told her that if I ever caught her in a lie again I would cut her out of my life. She agreed to cut contact with the guy.

From there we went on a trip to New Orleans together with a volunteer group. While we were down there, she had some sort of revelatory moment, and she agreed to make the relationship “official.” The week we had together down there was perfect; I would give anything, anything in the world, to be able to relive that week over and over for the rest of my life. The city was beautiful, the work we did was fulfilling, and we were completely infatuated with one another; I don’t think we stopped holding hands for more than an hour the entire week.

After we came back, things were great…for about two weeks. With the taboo of our original sex-capades out of the picture, she quickly became bored with me physically. She also said that she was ashamed of how our relationship began and wanted to “do this right” by cutting out the sex until we had spent a few months together and gotten to know each other.

That was a perfectly reasonable request. If only I hadn’t been a sex-crazed dumbass. See the relationship began as just sex, so we were having it frequently. Her physical beauty and sexual prowess honed through years of promiscuity combined to form a powerful chemical addiction inside of me. That, and the fact that I was sleeping with a gorgeous 19-year-old was validating to my ego. With all of these issues I think you can gather that I didn’t handle the news of “no more sex for a good while” well.

Sure, I tried to go along with it, but I was too hooked. The funny thing is that with the exception of the last ten days of our relationship, we never went more than five days without having sex. And even those last ten days were only sexless because the majority of the time was spent fighting with ourselves and each other over whether we should break it off.

She tried a couple more times to break it off. Each time I convinced her to stay. Finally, it all came to a head on a Monday night. I had been gone for an entire weekend, and when I came back Monday night, I noticed that not only was she not excited to see me at all, she was actively trying to avoid touching me in any way. We went to Wal Mart to do some grocery shopping, and where she used to reach for my hand and occasionally peck me on the lips, she was now actively staying a few feet away from me.

I knew what I had to do. It killed me inside, but I knew. On the way home I stopped the car.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

I didn’t look at her. I just stared into space. After a beat I sighed and said, “You’re not happy, are you?”

She didn’t miss a beat. She knew exactly what I meant. “No,” she said. “Not in the way I should be.”

We had a long talk. She told me that she still had feelings for her ex, that she loved him and she wanted to marry him. That was gut-wrenching to me. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I was more qualified than another person. I was taller, I was more intelligent, I was more dedicated to fitness (for the first time ever), and I was more romantic than he was. And yet she wanted him.

This was crushing to me. And again the self loathing began. I told myself over and over that a 5’2” foul-mouthed drunkard was more appealing to her than me. She tried to stop me from doing this. She told me that it was blind love and that it wasn’t something I should envy because it was not that there was anything wrong with me.

And yet, there was something wrong with me, as she revealed a few minutes later. I was a self deprecator. She even said to me “how can you expect me to be happy with you when I constantly have to console you for problems you bring on yourself?” The next day, when we parted ways for good, she even said “you would be an amazing guy if you didn’t always get in your own way.”
I admit it; I sobbed my eyes out after I left her at her place. I had never felt so hurt, so unappreciated, and so utterly rejected. Over the next few days, between tears and thoughts of suicide, I did what every man does: I tortured myself by constantly reanalyzing what happened and trying to figure out where I went wrong.

I figured a few things out: one, she left me because she didn’t give herself time to get over her ex. That was as much my fault as it was hers. But the second reason, that was all me: it was because when she met me, I was in a rare place of confidence. I had gotten a small job in my field of choosing right out of college, I was being paid for my opinion, and I was in Grad School. The man she met was confident, even a bit arrogant, and when I am feeling confident, I am a fun guy to be around. That’s what roped her in.

As time passed, her history of infidelity drove me to madness with fear. I never wanted to leave her side. I smothered her, constantly keeping her occupied, and never allowing her to be with her friends without me. I checked her phone every chance I got. She didn’t seem to be in touch with the old ex, but she could have just as easily deleted any messages she was sending and receiving from him.

Anyway, in the course of two months I went from a confident, respectable young man to a simpering, fearful, clingy and jealous idiot. I had abandoned my grades and my ambitions to spend more time with her, and this turned her off. I was constantly asking her if she thought I was attractive, if she still found me sexually appealing, and if she still liked me. Ironically all my effort to force her to like me (I now see how dumb that was) is likely what drove her away.

After the breakup, I tried a couple of times to make amends, and even though it wasn’t on the surface, I believe I was subconsciously trying to win her back. That ended badly, and she cut me from contact, something that I was supposed to be doing.

A few days ago, at the 30 day point, she got in touch with me via text. I think she wanted me to go visit her. I declined. It was the hardest thing I had done in years, but I made myself do it. It hurt to do so. My mind was at war with itself, with my logical side assuring me that I had done the right thing and my emotional side screaming “You IDIOT! You could have won her back! Why would you let this opportunity go?!?!”

It’s been a week since then. She’s made no further attempts to get in touch. It’s been five weeks since the breakup and I still can’t get over her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m much better, and I’m past the point of denial, anger, and bargaining, but I lodged deeply in the depression phase and I can’t get out.

I need help. I need real, practical help aside from “get over it” or “go get laid.” I want to be over her; I am not going back, no matter what. It hurts, but I’m not going back.

Still, I’m depressed all the time. I hate myself, I hate my life, and I hate most of all the burden of knowing that this relationship could have worked if I had just stayed confident and secure, if I had not given up my grades and dreams and if I had not been so clingy that it bordered on stalking.

I have tried a lot of things to cheer up; I’ve gone out with friends, I’ve gotten drunk, I’ve begun training for a 10k, I’ve tried flirting with women both in public and on dating sites, and I’ve been trying to get another job. My plan back during the anger phase was to completely change my life and myself for the better in the next few months and go back to school in the Fall a completely new man and ultimately make her regret leaving me.

Now that I’m in the depression phase, my motivation is at an all-time low. I have to put on a face at work and pretend I’m happy for 20-30 hours a week when really I’m dying inside because a wonderful girl left me, I have no career, I have no prospective replacements for the aforementioned girlfriend (who I am certain by now has replaced me) and I have no money.

Someone please tell me that this will end and I will finally be able to move on to acceptance. I am so miserable that suicide remains an active part of my thoughts. I just want to get over her. My emotional brain still wants her back so badly, but my logical side knows that there is no hope for the two of us. I just want my emotions to agree.

Don't worry guy, in time you will be tired of sitting on the pity pot being miserable and you will get back to the world of living, and enjoying life.