Ex and I still love each other. I don’t know what to do.

Hi everyone. First time poster here. I sincerely apologize if this is a hefty read but I will try to keep it semi short. I have nobody to talk to about this because of my anxiety and my friends all hating my ex despite my best wishes, and I want some advice as to what I should do.

Just to clarify from the start, we are long distance.

My ex and I were together for 8 months. We’ve known each other previous to getting together for about 2 years (we had mutual friends and played the same game but never really talked). I had him on my friends list for 2 years and had maybe 3 conversations with him, but one day out of the blue in January I sent him a meme I thought was really funny at the time to everybody on my friends list and we hit it off. We instantly got attached to each other like glue, and within a month we were together in February. We were practically inseparable the entire time, and everyone thought of us as “goals”. We met up in August and it was the most amazing time of my entire life. We never left each others sides. I may be looked down on this but he was the first person I ever had sex with and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We were so so so happy even through the distance, and were willing to wait however long it took so we could finally be happy together in real life.

Unfortunately, near the end, we both made a lot of mistakes. He ended up almost cheating on me with a mutual friend (she stopped him full force because she’s an amazing friend and has been with me through this entire breakup) a few months ago, because he was really lonely and depressed. I have a hard time being sexual (I have really really bad body dysmorphia that prevented me from being that way) and he was always more needy in that department than I was. I have since forgiven him and he apologized and improved himself from that moment on.

Everything kind of went downhill near the end for some reason or another. We were always arguing, I was insecure and pushed him away every day, our communication was poor, he didn’t understand my mental illnesses (anxiety, depression, possible borderline personality disorder). I didn’t want to show him myself (not just in a sexual way, he loved seeing the few selfies I coughed up) and he felt like he was dating a voice, but he tried his best to make me feel loved and beautiful until the very end. He ended up breaking up with me in October because he couldn’t take it anymore.

Here’s where things get kind of complicated and weird. At first, he was extremely hostile and cold to me, saying “I’m not going to talk to you anymore, I don’t stay friends with my exes” even though I asked him to stay friends. It broke my heart. It turns out I wasn’t ready to stay friends, as he was the first person I ever broke up with that I truly loved and didn’t lose a spark with, and I found it hard to cope. The reason I found this is out is because a few days later after 0 contact he messaged me saying he wanted to try and be friends again. I denied and was really really hostile towards him, asking why he still cared about me (I left a mutual server on discord because he was really active there and seeing his name made me a little bit sore, so he messaged me asking if I was okay) and told him to fuck off. He took it well and respected my decision.

2 weeks after we broke up, mutual friends messaged me saying he was flaunting a new girl in our mutual server. I, regretfully, got INSTANTLY enraged despite telling them “It’s okay, he can do what he wants” but they were probably angrier than I was seeing how inseparable we were for the entire 8 months. I made a really bad mistake and messaged him calling him a jerk for instantly getting into a relationship. I felt like he didn’t care about me at all, and that I was thrown away. I was not aware of the concept of a rebound relationship at this time, and I felt utterly hurt. He told me it’s not my business and that I didn’t have a right to shame him. He told me “I’m using her to move on” which is a sign of a rebound, but it hurt me at the time horribly. I ended up apologizing to him (genuinely) for attacking him, and he accepted my apology. We ended that conversation on okay terms, and I told myself I wouldn’t message him again (I was wrong lol)

One night while I was especially depressed, I ended up messaging him late at night on his birthday to wish him a happy birthday, but ended up babbling on about how I was going through a hard time. He was intoxicated because it was his birthday, and ended up sort of breaking down his emotional stone wall, letting me know he was really sorry he caused all this, and saying he missed me. He ended up cutting the conversation short, saying he wasn’t in a proper state of mind to talk to me. He apologized and logged off, and I went to bed.

The next morning I wrote up a really long letter expressing everything I felt needed to be said that I wanted to clear up or things I felt he needed to know. It wasn’t very snively, but I told him I still loved him. I just wanted to clear up any mistakes I made and any hostility I had. He read it thoroughly and told me he appreciated it and said he would try his best to treat me with respect when we could be friends again. I ended up blocking him there, and planned on not talking to him for a few months until I healed properly, but then a mutual friend contacted me saying he tried to cheat on me.

I didn’t take it well at all, but I don’t regret taking his digital collar and shaking it. He said he really truly did regret the things he did, and he really did love me, but he was in a poor state of mind at the time and didn’t think that his actions would hurt me. He told me he stopped because he realized he would lose everything if he went through with it, and stopped talking to her after our mutual friend told him “yo, I know you have a girlfriend, are you okay?”. Take note that when he tried to cheat, he was really drunk. This is important. I do not think what he did was okay, but I accepted his apology. Normally I do not forgive cheaters. I have been cheated on in the past, and it took me a year to unblock a previous ex who cheated on me. But I knew something was up.

His ex girlfriend from 2 years ago had cheated on him. It ruined his life. He was madly in love with her and she shattered his heart. It fucked him up. I saw firsthand how much it fucked him up. Every time we would see her in the game we played together he would instantly get depressed and have to leave or take a break because he would get really sad. I was always there for him. I don’t understand why he put that pain on me when he felt that exact same pain. I still loved him, so I asked him why he would do that when his ex did the same thing to me.

He told me he didn’t know. He said that after his ex broke up with him, he started smoking and drinking and developing bad coping habits, and had trouble with a lot of things. I genuinely felt for him. I comforted him and asked him to talk to me about it, because I still cared about him, and I wanted to help him not feel this pain anymore, even though he caused me pain. He was always the type of guy to bottle up his emotions, and never vented to me about his problems, even when I begged him to. He told me he didn’t want to talk about it, and he told me “the fact you’re still here and care for me after what I did to you means you’re too good of a person and I don’t deserve you. I’m so sorry…”. We ended up talking all day, trying to figure out everything. He said he wanted to sleep because he was exhausted and emotionally unavailable, so I bid him goodnight. He promised he would talk tomorrow.

The next day we continued talking, for pretty much the entire day. A lot of it was just normal conversation, like what happened that day or our plans, but most of it was just us discussing everything that went wrong. I wanted to let go of it but I couldn’t, and I realize I should have dropped it far earlier than I did. At some point in the evening he told me he was starting to get overwhelmed again. We had just started to talk about him feeling like the distance was getting to him, but I told him that my family supported us and would pay whatever to have us visit each other, because they told me so. I’m very fortunate to have a supportive family in that regard. He is a lot poorer than I am due to his family being immigrants who don’t have total independence due to their inability to speak English, and he has to do a lot of the heavy lifting. I wanted to help in any way I can. He had never brought up distance as an issue prior to this. The entire time we were together we were perfectly happy being long distance and were willing to wait however long it had to be to be able to see each other and eventually have a life together. I think he got scared and started overthinking, but I can’t be sure. But regardless, he freaked out and said he was going to take a nap.

What happens next still breaks my heart to the core. After about 2 hours he messaged me saying “Hey… I had a dream about you.” I ignored it because I knew it would only hurt me, and started talking about something else mundane because I was scared. He eventually looped the conversation back to it and said “Yeah. It was about you. It was really lovey dovey… it was absolute heaven…” and he immediately just became so back and forth, hot and cold from that point on. He said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” and became emotionally distant again, saying it was a mistake. I agreed it was a mistake. He said “I’m emotionally cheating on the girl I’m talking to and its so hypocritical of me after what I did…”. I didn’t really know what to feel. It hurt too much to say he was right. But sure enough a little bit later… it just kept happening. He told me “I just really fucking miss you, I want nothing more than to hear your voice again” and “The moments where we forgot what was happening and forgot we were broken up and just talked about our day and mundane things was like heaven” and following them up with “I should just… stop…” He seemed so conflicted but it felt like my heart was swelling up like a balloon and breaking all at the same time. I didn’t have the power to tell him to stop. I told him it was hard to stop talking to him, and it was hard because I missed him. I said something like “It hurts missing you…” and he said “You know I miss you too, right? I’ve missed you every single day and it’s so unfair to everybody involved, but I can’t. I’m so sorry.” and then said he started drinking more to cope with the pain, which terrified me.

He’s always had an alcohol problem, but I was too much of a pushover to truly help him, which I regret. I always told him to be careful but I never truly tried to stop him. It’s what caused him to nearly cheat on me. He became a worse version of himself and it caused a lot of fights. I still don’t know what to do in this regard. He says his new girlfriend is helping him…

We started talking about something, I forget what. But he said he was going to go to bed. The last thing he said was “I love you.” He immediately realized he fucked up and said “Ugh. I’m sorry.” and said he would be back the next day since we were still trying to figure things out. He went to bed, and so did I.

The next day he seemed to clear his head, and told me we needed to stop talking like that. He told me, “how can we be together as a long distance couple for years, it won’t be worth it.” I understand his concern and genuinely accept it is a real reason to break up, but I can’t let it go because not once has he ever complained about distance or expressed concern about our future as a long distance couple. We loved each other so much we thought it was all worth it. My parents wanted to fund our trips to each other in the future. The only obstacle is education. I’m planning to go to a college in my state, and he is in college 5 states away. And because of other reasons, we wouldn’t realistically be able to live together for quite some time. But he never really raised concern about it. We talked about it before quite a few times while together, and he said “It’s okay. It’s worth it.” The fact he’s bringing it up now concerns me. I want to be worth it for him again, and I know he lost it because my insecurities and our miscommunication made him miserable. I respect his decision 100% since distance really can be a killer, but I don’t feel like he is being truthful.

One of the last things he told me was “If you love something, let it go…” And said “maybe one day in the future we can make it work again…I hope so…” which really really really makes me feel a type of way. I don’t know if its hope, terror, sadness, or what. But I know it impacted me really hard.

I told him that day we wrapped up our three day long discussion (that I said a lot of immature and childish things during, that I have yet to apologize for. I cannot right now, which I’ll get to it later.) that I was open to be friends. He said “are you sure? I know how bad it’s been for you lately. Please don’t try to be my friend if it still hurts you. I want to be your friend too, but it also hurts, but I want you in my life.” So we tried to be friends.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. I posted something on social media showing off my new hair (I recently dyed it to make myself feel better. It has worked wonders on my self esteem, something as simple as dying my hair to a color I love :]) and he reached out to me saying “You look absolutely fantastic in your picture. I told you you would look beautiful.” Unsurprisingly, this felt like a kick to the gut. I kind of painfully continued the conversation, and told him a few hours later I think I was going to block him. I told him I needed time to have space to myself and heal. I told him that I had absolutely no hard feelings and I still wanted to be his friend when I was okay. He was absolutely fine with it and we are on perfectly fine terms, just not talking. The thing is, I don’t know if it’s total no contact, because I constantly talk in a mutual server we share, and he sees my messages all the time. I don’t see his. He also follows my twitter, where I am extremely active.

And here I am, 2 days later NC. I want to make him happy again and share that love we had, because it made me so happy these past 8 months. The time we were together was quite possibly the happiest time of my entire life and I would literally do anything to have that again. I care about him so much. I’ve been so mad at him in my lowest lows, but I still care about him. I worry about his alcoholism, I worry about his emotional state. I wanted to apologize for the hostile and childish things I said while we talked for 3 days, but I never had the idea until after I blocked him, so I’m going to wait until after I re-establish contact to do so.

I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure how long I should continue the no contact. I don’t know what to do to get him back. We are still so madly in love but he’s scared to commit and I don’t blame him. I was not the best at the end of our relationships, but I want to become even better. I want to love myself again so I stop being miserable for my own sake, and I want him back in my life. At this point I accept that we could only be friends, and I think I am okay with that. I still really care about him and we were always best friends in our relationship. He was the best boyfriend and best best-friend I’ve had in my life. I just don’t want to screw up my chances of having a relationship to him, be it as a friend or a lover again. I want to work on myself and heal so that I can see his messages without feeling that stab to the heart, but I eventually want to have a second go. I would really appreciate any advice, I’ve been stumped as to what I should do. Thank you for reading.