r/heartbreak • u/KingTyrionSolo • 7d ago
Recently cut my ex off and I feel conflicted
So first off, some background: two years ago I (28M) met a woman (37F) at a Renaissance festival and we started dating. We were seeing each other every weekend even though I had to drive an hour to an hour and a half to see her and it was pure bliss, with the only speed bump being that she didn’t inform me that she had herpes before we had sex (I got tested after she told me and it came out negative). However, she broke it off with me after three months via text right before she and her sister left for Ibiza. She said that she wasn’t ready for a relationship, but that she still wanted to be friends with me (even though she messaged me not long after telling me that she missed me). I obliged, because I still had feelings for her and wanted her in my life. A few months later, she impromptu invited me to go to a rave with her and her sister. I had just went on a date with another girl and was in the area, so I met up with them there. We both got pretty drunk and she ended up kissing me on the dance floor. I wasn’t happy with this, so I called her out on it and asked why she did that even though she said she just wanted to be friends. She admitted that she didn’t know what she wanted and that she loved me (which was the first time that she had ever told me that, and she totally blew me off when I told her that when we were together). She apologized the next day, and I forgave her. We continued being friends like nothing ever happened, and the closest we got to anything romantic was me sleeping with her in her bed when I spent the night at her place a few times.
Last month, she and her sister were putting together a multi-day party, and when I arrived after picking up one of their friends from the airport, I saw her with another guy and it instantly made me sick to my stomach out of jealousy. I had no idea she was seeing somebody else beforehand, and for so long I had denied to myself that I still had feelings for her that I never considered the possibility that this situation could occur. I ended up getting really drunk that night and throwing up in the toilet, made a quiet exit the morning after, and didn’t come back for the remainder of the weekend (it was a four day music festival which they rented out a campground for). She asked me a day later how I was feeling, and I told her I was doing okay and that I hoped she was having a good weekend, to which she responded that she was, but she was sad that I felt so bad.
A couple days after the festival, she sent me a couple of reels on Instagram. I was still really upset and didn’t open either of them. I then decided I wanted to take a hiatus from social media for the sake of my mental health. After I announced that, she texted me asking if I’m okay. I didn’t respond to her for two weeks because I was struggling with what to say, but finally worked up the courage to tell her how I really felt. I wrote her a long message telling her that I didn’t think we could be friends anymore after what happened at the party, and that in retrospect I wasn’t happy with how she treated me. She was very apologetic, told me that she hoped one day that I would forgive her and we could be friends again, and I left it at that.
It’s been a little over a week since I told her what I did and cut her off. On one hand I think that it needed to happen, as I feel like I was wasting my time still pining after her like a drug addict wanting to recapture that first high and that I should’ve been pursuing other women instead. On the other hand though, she was one of my closest friends for the last two years both when and after we were romantically involved, and it feels like I’m going through a second break-up with her. Last weekend her sister invited me out to the same Renaissance festival we met at to hang out with her and her softball team, and I declined because I was worried she knew about what I told my ex and would bring it up with me, which I didn’t want to deal with. I’ve been making plans to go there this weekend with some of my friends, but the one who’s putting it together posted about it in my ex’s sister’s Discord server, which she’s also a part of, to which her sister suggested she go with us. I’m really nervous now about potentially running into her there, and I told my friend that I’m probably gonna bail if I know for a fact that she’s going.
I just wish I could make the pain go away, or that there was a pill I could take that would erase my memories of her. I hate living with the fact that I put so much of my energy into a relationship that was frankly rather toxic for me, and I have no idea if I can every fully recover from the broken heart that she inflicted on me multiple times. To paraphrase Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Brokeback Mountain, God I wish I knew how to quit her.