I think I'm coping okay - just jealous of my ex.

[whitevulf]

I'll try and sum things up. I've lived a generally uneventful life abroad, and then moved to the UK when I was 14. Made a couple of good friends at school but that was it. Always felt a little out of place with them. Got talking to a girl through a forum, got on with her really well and we liked each other. Things escalated and we started an LDR. It was very strange at first, but we eventually became best friends. I was a year ahead of her, and so when I went to university after a gap year, I still tried very hard to get a balance of my new life at university and her. It worked, and I introduced her to my friends, and my friends introduced their respective LDR girlfriends to us, and it was a neat happy little circle.

 

First year at university has the same baggage that first year at college seems to in the US; it's expected that 'the quiet people' change a lot, get really drunk or whatever, and just suddenly have exciting things happen to them.

 

My girlfriend, a year later, when I'm very settled into having a handful of good friends, goes to university; we grow distant because it feels like she's really throwing herself into university, since she's never really had a good friend (she was homeschooled, and when she went to college [uK High School] she met a couple of people who were okay, but that was it) She then kisses someone and sleeps in the same bed as him while blind drunk; this was a friend she got talking to online a year and a half ago, and she felt really comfortable with him that night, when she felt generally socially anxious around everyon else at university. So yeah, we go on a break, in which I kept, maybe stupidly, instinctively saying there was little chance of us getting back together, during which we grow even more distant. She gets closer to him. Gets into a relationship with him. This was in November of 2011. She suffers a relapse in her previous self-harm issues and memories of abuse whn she was younger, I think the stress of university somehow brought it all back. She gets diagnosed with depression and is put on antidepressants.

 

We still talk, and I never quite understood what she saw in him. Anyway, he introduces her to his 'crowd' of friends, some closer to him than others. A week ago, he broke up with her, saying he felt bad that he didn't actually have feelings for her, and stayed with her out of guilt of ruining her relationship. I should note that she was very very clingy and passive-aggressive with him.

 

So, last week, she got very very drunk with a firend of this guy's who came to console her after the break-up, one of the people she got on better with during her time at university. They slept together, and apparently had amazing sex that nearly tipped me to being the best she ever had, and they've been going out since, and I think she's now said he is the best she's ever had, naturally. I used to feel bothered about it, but I don't much any more; she was my first, and she was a lot less confident with her sexuality while we were togehter. It was with me that she got comfortable sexually, and had her first orgasms and all, but she was generally at an unhappier place in her life. This guy, however, has been with a few girls and so, uh, yeah. Rationalization 101.

 

Anyway, she says now that she actually likes this guy as a person, whereas she feels she was only desperately trying to make herself happy with the first guy because she needed to convince herself that he was worth ruining things with me. In the first two weeks or so when she was with him, she told me numerous times that she still loved me and felt that a part of her still rly wanted to be with me.

 

Meanwhile, guy #1 tells her he made a mistake, and wants her back. She doesn't reciprocate, and now there's tension in the guys' friendship group. And, from what she tells me of this new guy, he does seem really nice, and I can understand her attraction to him in a way that didn't click with the first guy.

 

Anyway, that was the summary.

 

Here's where I stand: The first 3 months were awful. Right now, I feel like I am over her, and I don't want her back; the thought of being with her doesn't do much for me.

 

But I just feel very jealous of her; one of her flatmates summed it up with mock-envy to her; she's intelligent, works hard, still has time to go out and have a good time, and has amazing sex with her new boyfriend.

 

I'm also kind of jealous just because of the way they met; she *really* didn't see herself as the 'sleep with someone impulsively' and the day after it happened, she rang me in a strange mess of happy confusion, because while she enjoyed it, she felt she didn't know who she was any more.

 

Whereas I'm in my second year of university, things are a lot more settled. While I have a few good friends, I pretty much live with them right now, and the balance I established in my first year between friends = work = girlfriend now makes my single life seem a bit hollow. I'm jealous that she's had the stereotypical 'first year of university' experience of feeling drastically more socially confident and doing impulsive things, whereas right now, my life seems pretty dull.

 

Not to mention, this guy is, I suppose, more successful than me, in a sense; he's been a political blogger type since he was 18, and is relatively 'big' in the 'political twittersphere' and he seems nice and well-rounded.

 

Whereas I have never got as close to someone as I did to her; I feel like I don't even know how to get that close to someone in person. From what the world tells me I get the impression I'm alright looking, I've been generally told I'm physically attractive. But I have this crippling social anxiety whenever I'm one-to-one with any person. On a good day, I'm alright in groups and can make people laugh and what not, but somehow, most of the time I feel like my natural instinct around people is to just be a passive observer and to be quiet.

 

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. I know it sounds shallow, but I feel a little envious that now that I'm halfway through university, nothing impulsive like what happened to her is likely to happen to me, I guess; my friendship group is pretty solidified. I'm also worried that I'm not suitable to be in a relationship, because I somehow feel like I don't exert myself enough as a personality, and I end up feeling like half a person whose idea of conversation is just a mess of platitudes and 'Oh yeah?'s and what not. I don't know.

 

Also, she mentioned (and she is brutally honest) that while the sex, when it was good, was very good, that she thinks I have a problem with my odour, generally. I'm quite hairy, and I admit, most of the time I only showered on alternate days. But she also says that I had bad breath, which is why she couldn't kiss me much, even after I'd brushed my teeth and mouthwashed and flossed. I appreciate her honesty, but now I do just feel like I'm destined to be physically repulsive in some shape or form. I'm going to see a doctor about my breath; I get the impression it's just my saliva that smells weird. At first I thought it was her being characteristically high-maintenance, that even after I brushed my teeth and mouthwashed she didn't want to kiss me much, and she'd maintained she didn't like it much even with her ex, but this new guy she's with is a *smoker*! and she loves kissing him. That's when she told me, I guess, that even a smoker has better breath than me.

 

So, yeah. Jealous of my ex who has spent less than 2 days in the last two and a half years single, who is now having amazing sex, whereas I seem to have lost all confidence in myself as a person. I should note that a few days before guy A split up with her, she did still maintain one night that she regretted a lot of what happened, and I get the impression she still sees me as a very good friend, and is very very glad that I am, because I'm one of the few things that have stayed constant for this long in her life.

 

Another thing, I don't know if anyone else feels this; I get the impression that if I listened to everything I'd say on a regular day to people, I'd think 'that guy's a douche'. I also think I do have a good sense of humour, but that nervousness makes me say silly **** often, and that practising a sense of humour is like a muscle that you have to start at the bottom somehow, but I think I feel nervous as a person and just opt to not take the risk that being funny naturally involves. I feel like I want to change my natural introversion, but I don't know how.

 

oh i don't know, i'm sorry for this huge bilge of crap.

[whitevulf]

In a big way, I guess all of this involves the fear that university will be the years of my life that have the potential to be the most exciting, and that I'm throwing them away. And that 'young romance' is one of those things that somehow hold a more special place in your memory, which sounds ridiculously short-sighted, I know.

 

 

 

It doesn't help that I don't know what I'm doing with my life; I'm doing very well academically, and love studying English Literature, but... I just feel lost.

[whitevulf]

That said, I am going on a sandwich year-abroad as part of my degree to Berlin, with two of my closest friends here. Maybe I can just have all my navel-gazey 'life revelations' and exciting life changes or whatever then.

[Philosoraptor]

If you're this concerned about your ex then you are not over her. Cut those ties until you are truly healed and you wont have this issue anymore. It matters not what she is doing and who she is doing it with. Everyone moves on at some point and odds are the person they decide to spend the rest of their lives with become their "best" at everything. You'll find better as well. Just worry about yourself and find your happiness.