dealing with very strange breakup/run ins with ex

[sparkle222]

in my second year of university, i went out with a friend. i ended the r/s at the end of the year, although i was mainly really enjoying it, because i wasn't sure if i would be able to visit him long-distance and felt guilty about that (stupidest reason i know).

 

there were various insecurities/worries in it as well. at the beginning he asked if i was no sex before marriage (not sure why); i’m not but somehow got locked into my head that i wouldn’t, and by the time i felt ready hadn’t sorted contraception or anything so we never slept together. i never told my parents i was seeing him, probably because i was awkward about it and worried they would think i was wasting my time when i should’ve been studying (i found my first year very challenging). we always knew it would have to go long-distance for the next year, and i had it locked in my head that we should break up for it because that seemed to be what everyone did. i also got it locked in my head that i couldn't visit him if we stayed together long-distance (even though i could’ve asked permission/money from my parents or frankly just gone anyway.) one of our mutual friends liked him as well, and told him this while we were going out and was always hanging around, which he never objected to but annoyed me. he’s very into socially conscious stuff, as is she, and that made me quite insecure. he had a reputation as being a bit overly friendly, fickle and blunt and i was his first gf. i have a tendency to overreact when stressed (which i was at university) and he, being two plus years younger than me (i took gap years), often found this upsetting. i never put it on facebook, i think because i was embarrassed by the age difference, because i’m naturally quite private, but also because i couldn’t really believe my luck (as all things considered on paper this was exactly the sort of guy i wanted to date, and i’ve always been the ‘single friend’/nice girl/am not very aggressive with guys/maybe seem a bit uptight/etc). my secrecy about it really, really bothered him and made him insecure and i knew this. at times i worried that i didn’t really find him that instinctively attractive. by the end i felt so guilty and stressed about everything that i pathetically ended it. i tried to keep in contact with him over the year because i realised when away that i really missed the company and that everyone has worries—that doesn’t justify ending a relationship, and he even visited me three times, but we never talked/etc/i never visited him to try to reconcile and kept saying that my parents would be difficult about it/i just thought i’d screwed up enough and when we returned for our final year, at which point i was really regretting my decision, it turned out that at the end of the year he’d asked out another girl he’d met while abroad and that was that.

 

i was incredibly upset about all of this when i found out and when we returned (especially because he then sort of messed me around for a while and hinted that he might change his mind and break up with the other girl for me, which he eventually did, and then returned to her a week later anyway—which was an extraordinarily unpleasant experience but probably unsurprising). he was still living near me and i would run into him and he would generally laugh at me/tell me how his new gf was a better fit/make fun of me for being single and tell me to keep my dignity/etc; it was also upsetting to be living with girls who knew this story, and who enjoyed analysing my mistakes, and to see the majority of my friends still in relationships. i felt i had lost a best friend/support system upon my return and that was really hard.

 

flash forward six months and we’ve sort of become friends again, though with the knowledge that nothing will ever happen again (he’s still with this other girl and always jokes about my future husband and how i’m nice marriage/wife material, which i find sort of insulting but he claims is a compliment). he’ll even often to cuddle me when i’m feeling down, which i find weird but he claims isn’t (presumably because he has no feelings anymore). i haven’t met anyone new—i’ve half-heartedly tried, but didn’t meet anyone good and then became bogged down with work and exams. i’ve sort of found that i have to be friends with him because everyone is working so hard this year that it’s tricky to find much company.

 

the problem i’ve found is that this whole experience, especially the year abroad and messing around when we returned, is still affecting me, perhaps more and more as i get ready to leave university, knowing i’ll realistically not meet someone anytime soon, and the stress of exams seems to be exacerbating it all (which in turn affects my ability to study). this was really the first normal/eligible (on paper at least) guy who’s ever asked me out, and honestly i’m worried that it won’t happen again; but most of all, i’m quite scared at myself for having just passively let go of a relationship that i was by and large really enjoying and done nothing about it for a year. it makes it scary to spend much time alone because all i can think is that i had a year to fix it and did nothing.

 

any advice on how to stop letting this affect me? not seeing him doesn't work very well because it reminds me of how that didn’t work last time. the irony is that i thought dating him was a stressful distraction but not dating him is even worse on that score. i get told that i can do better anyway/that he’s awful but none of that really helps when i know i could do a lot worse— even he admitted that he wouldn't have broken up with me for the other girl, so i do feel it’s mostly my fault. i know it’s been a really long time and that i should treat it as an experience i learned from but the fact that it still bothers me and is affecting my work is really unnerving.