I see this a lot with people, good people, who consistently think things are never going to get better.

Get this: you're in a relationship. Man and woman or a same sex. Really doesn't matter. Things are going "great." Let's define "great": both are getting by. You both have your flaws but you believe the love you feel is strong enough to sustain whatever comes your way. You remain fearless. You're hoping this person will be with you for a long time as well as growing together. You see it revealed in their eyes. If words don't hold water, the eyes are impenetrable. You make each other better. The selfless happiness you bestow onto them, it gets returned! What an amazing feeling.

Now...whiplash, you didn't see it coming. Distance. Love is draining. What you thought was love. Another woman? Maybe...So, indeed you personally hold onto to the good image the person gave to you and pray to the heavens this person will work whatever the problem(s) out. Love is worth fighting for yes? Stay in the fight. Not all is lost.

Eventually you see it as a "one-sided" shame. Comes the inevitable reality: the other person doesn't wish to save the relationship. You panic and realize some things. The cheating was too much to bare. The communication becomes less and less. Maybe children are involved. His family is falling apart. Its just the wrong time to be together. You grow apart. You don't fall out of love, you just fade away. Dissipate.

What remains now is an "ex," somebody you used to trust, call a friend. Your best friend. No wonder we are so bruised to trust anyone again. Times goes on and you learn to move on, more or less.

But, this is the stuff people never talk about, why do you still feel connected to this person? Knowing that they themselves have moved on, are dating, are "happy" so they say. Why do you have dreams of them? If they are no longer in your life anymore, why do they haunt your subconscious? What is it that they want from us? The walking wounded. The ones trying to do the right thing.

Anybody ever think this is the very thing that makes us so scared to love again?

Even i think of it all d time... :(

At the core of it is our own conception of who we are and who we
want to be. It is often so hard to let go because our own ego is
invested in that relationship. We do not want to fail. No wonder
we are afraid.

So, we persist in our efforts even if it is little more than
illusion. Trying to will the relationship to go on - to breathe
life back into life. Sometimes it even works. Sometimes there is
a mutual renewal. Frequently we finally let it go and move on.

And doing the right thing becomes another adventure for us to get
invested in anew. Shockingly we fall in love again.

Well I have a little bit of sad news for you. If you got into your relationship when you were young and youthful don't ever expected again. That level of love I mean. I will never have what I had before. The best you can do is just find someone that you get along with and try to be happy.

no one size fits all here, i guess the one thing that we can hope for is that it does come back around...eventually. (when we are ready)

I believe in a thing called soul ties. It is like you gave a part of your soul to a person, You need to go through a ritual of saying Goodbye. Forgive them, then break that 'soul connection.' Visuallise the process & then take your love back from them

A certain ex, who i was with for the longest out of any other, there's a certain charm with him. I can't fault him because he truly is a sweet, charismatic person. Maybe if he was a cocky nagging babydaddy, I'd really not admire him as much as I do. We are still on good terms. We have certain in-jokes that no-one else would get. He is a great friend. Always will be.

Thats not true. Your just settling you can do better

Settling settling for what? I'd rather be single for the rest of my life then not have what I want.

You're hard-pressed to find someone that would be willing to live on a ranch. Without running water and electricity. They can butcher and so on and so forth. My ex was Native American. She can cut a sheep's throat and let it bleed out for blood sausage. You're not going to find that every day. Our society is so full of fake people that got their phone shoved up their ***. They'd rather be on Facebook than a relationship. And so on and so on. So yeah maybe a little bit difficult especially living in Denver Colorado at the moment. So full of liberals.

I should be but I'm not scared to love again.

I am sorry if this is your experience but my experience is this is just not a truth for all.

Aat least not me and many others.

I live in a retirement community where many have lost the "loves of their life" (or so they thought) and when the CHOSE to heal and allow love to return to their life it DID!

And was as pure and sweet as any before. Some say actually better because with the pain of the first love lost comes a new appreciation of what you can loose and you treasure more, forgive more of the petty stuff, and celebrate in the stuff you never really realized was the good stuff.

So if you still feel like greiving; that is ok; healing is a process that can, at times, seem endless but I assure you to all things there is a season even love.

I so wish I could get it accross to you that sometimes the greatest love of your life might actually be the person you least think is going to be the one.

When my late husband met me I would not have given him a Tinkers Damn Chance in Hell for being my "ONE".

Friends that knew him actually ask me after they saw him talking to me did I give him the number to the morgue rather than make and issue of one more guy hassleing me for a number.

Not that long off and abusive divorce, Mother of a profoundly disabled child,seriously disabled myself, him clear out of my league of NCO's as an Officer, on orders to soon go, bla...bla...bla; I had a hundred and thirteen reasons NEVER GONNA HAPPEN and you know what BAM that all was knocked down like so many dominoes. The right person listens to your dreams and their dreams become yours.

That pretty little Liberal in high-heel sneakers yapping on her cell phone just might be a rancher in the city buying supplies an to let loose for a weekend and do all and more than you think a gal should. Be really sad if you threw your life away on saying something doesn't exist when it might be close enough for you to reach out and touch.

But if you paint everything you see with bitterness and dissappointment, greif, and predudice before you even get to know them it will look like satan's spawn wheather it is an ANGEL or not.

Some thoughts to ponder. Good Luck in your search. Hope you start looking.

i think i may have had the worst evil ex ever! doing things behind my back while i thought we were still together teling me to leave her alone after she got caught. i thought i was the bomb but i guess i was not i wonder if karma really works? how do you forgive someone that didn't want forgivness? oh well you just have to move on.

You described my situation pretty close. I am not scared to love again, I am scared that the love I currently feel will die.

Reminds me of the story about the guy who got bit by his "pet" snake and said he still loved it even though it almost killed him.

I have learned to forgive and forget.....quickly.
For my own sake.
its one of those situations where......
as the song says.....

"I'm so miserable without her......its almost like shes here"

I prefer to move on and let them slip from my mind....and life!!

An open heart will always surpass a closed heart. Nothing dies when you still have faith.

Why does it always have to be all or nothing?

If I ever meet a gal who can't get over it and move on, I will. There are things that force relationships to keep a life - spousal support, child support, shared children, shared friends. And two people can remain friends after it's all done - people don't have to become enemies. But otherwise move on with new relationships; I don't want to hear about an old flame.

Is that because you wonder if you could let it die that is somehow less than the everything you once thought it was?

I wondered about that when I finally let my love for my late husband subside. Like I was somehow dishonoring him or myself.

Took a while then I realized that my ability to love was not just because it was directed towards a hospitable receptical heart but that my heart was just still working and was my nature to enjoy loving another person.

I figure when the time is right it will connect with someone. Sometimes I don't much enjoy this "drifting" period but I try not to get too worried that my "schedule" is maybe not the only one that has to be considered.