I Don’t Know How to Get Over My Ex… or if I Even Should!

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I’ve been a long-time reader of your advice and I’ve learned a lot from you over the years. I’m reaching out because I’m struggling with a strong attachment to my ex, and I’m unsure of what to do next.

Here’s a bit of background: I’m a man in my late twenties. I met my ex at my first job after graduating from university, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, all our interactions were online, and we bonded over shared humor and hobbies. I was aware that my ex had a partner, so I never considered anything romantic. Additionally, I rarely feel attraction, so romance wasn’t on my mind.

When we returned to the office, we realized there was a significant sexual tension between us as we worked closely together on the same project. We talked about it and even though I tried switching teams to keep things professional, the tension just got stronger. Turns out, my ex was going through a rough patch in their relationship and they eventually split. We started dating shortly thereafter, and although she never physically cheated her partner, I believe we emotionally crossed boundaries.

Our relationship was amazing. We had this deep connection, especially since we both had childhood trauma and were trying to overcome it. I felt seen, loved and accepted for the first time in my life. But it was intense, and I’d never been in such a serious relationship before, which brought its own anxieties.

A few months later, I was offered a career making opportunity abroad, which I accepted due to my ambitious nature and tendency to throw myself into work. Unfortunately, my ex was dealing with recent losses and sought stability, and to settle down and start a family—something I wasn’t sure about at the time (family brought a lot of stuff up for me that I wasn’t ready for). Ultimately, we decided to break up, and I moved overseas.

Looking back, moving was the right call for my career and my mental health. Distancing myself from my toxic family has done wonders for my mental health and self-development. I have also grown a lot as a person, acquired new skills, learned languages and taken on new challenges. I have also gone on dates with people from many nationalities and backgrounds. However, I haven’t connected with anyone as I did with her.

Despite our breakup, we have kept in contact occasionally, and recently our interactions on social media have become somewhat frequent and flirtatious. However, I found out they moved in with someone new earlier this year, though my ex dodges any talk about it and I know she is avoiding directly telling me for some reason.

Now, as I near the end of my current project and prepare to return home for a visit, I’m torn about whether to meet with my ex. She has hinted at wanting to reconnect, knowing the duration of my project abroad. I still love them and fantasize about rekindling our relationship. However, my career is on the rise, and I’ve been offered another opportunity in the main headquarters, which means moving yet again. My work fulfils me, I am good at it, and it has given me financial freedom, although I also use it as a coping mechanism.

I’m torn. I don’t want to mess with my ex’s feelings or hold her back. I know she waited for me for months after I left and asked me multiple times if I would come back. I always encouraged her to move on so she could start a family like she wanted.

If I meet up and open that can of worms again, I’d have to be ready to make some serious career decisions or maybe completely cut ties to let her move on. It feels a bit silly to still be hung up on something that only lasted a few months years ago, but I haven’t clicked with anyone else the same way and I think I would like to start a family and would be ready this time (and I can´t imagine doing it with anyone else).

I’m not sure what to do and would really appreciate your thoughts. Their happiness matters, but so does my own path and goals.

Thanks so much for your advice. It is very needed.

Detachment Issues

So, serious question here, DI: whose feelings are you really worried about? Are you truly and sincerely worried that your ex is still carrying a torch for you all these years and, despite having just moved in with someone she’s dating, would immediately leap at a chance to get back together with you and wreck her life in the process? Or are you worried that if you see her again, the dam is going to break and the feelings that you’ve tried to put aside are going to come rushing forward and you’ll be dealing with having to break your own heart again?

Or maybe there’s a third possibility: you’re worried that you and she both feel the same way and if you open that door, you’re going to have to choose between her and your job again… and you’re not sure which would be the right answer.

Perhaps a fourth possibility: you’re still carrying a torch and the vague hope that she’s still got feelings for you, but you’re worried that if you actually interact, you’ll realize that she has moved on when you haven’t…

Or maybe, just maybe, this is all a big hullaballoo over not much at all and if you were to actually go and see her, you’d have the warm nostalgia of seeing an ex who you left on good terms with, but you’d discover that both of you have moved on and the feelings you’ve been feeling are an illusion, an echo that you’ve been conflating with the real thing.

Clearly there’s a part of you that feels like maybe you made the wrong choice. Yeah, going abroad and taking that job was a good move for you, had benefits to your career, broadened your horizons as a person and got you away from your toxic family… but what about what you left behind?

So perhaps the problem is that you’re seeing this less as a visit back home and more of having to confront the possibilities that you closed the door on. I suspect that part of what’s itching at you is the worry that you’re going to see her again, feel those old feelings rise up and then see what you’ve “missed out on” as someone else stepped into the role you could’ve occupied, and you’re worried about how much that’s going to hurt. Especially since she very clearly still occupies a prominent place in your heart.

Part of why I suspect this is the case is that a lot of the time, when we have a difficult time getting over someone, it’s less about the person themselves and more about what they represent. In this case, she’s very much the Road Not Taken, and the unanswered questions about a potential future you turned away from. After all, your relationship didn’t end because things weren’t working out or you were falling out of love with one another. It didn’t end because it had reached its natural conclusion. It ended because you were at a crossroad in your life and you couldn’t walk both at the same time. So you chose the path without her and that truncated the relationship at a high-point instead of a point where it would be easier to say “well, we reached the end of our road together and now we had to grow separately from one another.” This is made all the harder by the fact that she clearly felt the same way, at least at the beginning. More, even, to an extent; after all, she clearly held out hope that maybe you would turn back and rejoin her before you’d gone too far down that other path. So you have that extra little twist of the knife in those unresolved questions.

I think that this is part of why you haven’t found other people who made you feel the same way. It’s not that those people don’t exist; they absolutely do. It’s that you’ve still got this open loop regarding your ex that you haven’t fully closed because of the way this relationship ended. You haven’t given yourself closure over it. Maybe part of it is because you haven’t wanted to and you’ve been holding onto the hope that you could pick it back up again. Maybe it’s because you’re not used to a relationship ending on a high note instead of a low one and it’s harder to see this as the end of the relationship you had. Ultimately, I think it comes down to just not fully letting this be your past.

But if I’m being honest? I think your bigger issue here is that you’re borrowing trouble from the future – a future that may well never come to pass. You’re anticipating problems that may or may not exist, but you’re treating them as not only do they exist but that they’re inevitable… and they’re not. You’re reacting to facts not in evidence, but treating them as though they were. I think, before you start trying to figure out whether to choose between “give up my promising career and ambitions” and ”break my (er, I mean my ex’s) heart again”, you wait and see if those are actually the choices you have to decide between. I think you’ll be surprised to find out that they aren’t.

Here’s the thing: you’re not the same person you were when you broke up with your ex. Neither is she. You’ve both grown, changed, seen different things and had different experiences in the times that you were apart. You’re differentpeople now, and whatever relationship the two of you had is in the past. Whatever relationship you two will have in the future – if any – is going to be different. Even if you two get together, it’s not going to be picking things up where you left off. You’re going to be starting a new relationship, a different one with this person because neither of you are who you were when you were dating the first time around.

And that new relationship may well not be romantic. It may be entirely platonic; tinged with the knowledge of what you had, but also with the knowledge that you two weren’t in a place where that relationship could go for as long as you might want and so it ended. Life is full of “in a different timeline” moments like that… but that doesn’t mean that they’re bad. It just means that they’re different and that’s ok.

I won’t say if you should or shouldn’t see her; that’s entirely up to you. But I will say that I don’t think it’s going to be the disaster or upheaval you’re afraid of if you do. I think that’s what you’re afraid of, not what will be. It may well do you some good to see her again, if only so that you feel like you can finally draw the curtain on the past and give yourself closure on your relationship. It may sting… but that’s the sting of cleaning an open cut so it can finally heal, not the crush of a breaking heart.

Then again, who knows. Maybe seeing her again will mean that you’ll discover your priorities have changed, or hers will have and you can find a way of making things work if that’s where you’re both at. Or it may be a big nothing; you see each other, you reconnect, and then you go your separate ways. Always in motion, the future is.

Don’t assume trouble where there isn’t any. Don’t prepare for problems that you don’t know you’ll actually have. If you want to see her again, do so with an open heart and open expectations, to meet her where she is now instead of where you both were in the past. One way or another, you’ll have the opportunity to close this particular loop and finally see what the future has in store for you.

Good luck.

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Dear Dr. NerdLove:I have a guy friend who I’ve known for over a month now through a local meetup group that gets together for coffee every Sundays. From the day I met him, I thought that he was cute, smart, and funny. Although I’ve hung out with him at other social gatherings such as at a board game group I invited him to join, as well as at his church, I have kept my romantic feelings for my guy friend quiet, as I do not want to scare him away nor make things awkward between us if I speak too soon.

Still, I’m afraid that another girl might show interest in him or vice versa. In other words, I am afraid that if I wait too long to express how I feel, it’ll be too late, and he will have moved onto someone else. What should I do?

Too Slow, Too Little, Too Late

This is easy, TSTLTL; ask him out on a date. If he says yes, then congratulations: you’ve got a date. If he says no, then you can move on. Either way, you’ll have your answer.

And yes, it should be asking him out on a date, not telling him how you feel. I’m a firm believer that just making a “confession” of sorts makes for engaging teen dramas or plays into Bridgeton fantasies of having to hide your feelings because of the rules of high-society or whatever, but in the far flung future of the 21^st century, it’s a needless passing of responsibility. Pretty much every love or crush confession is ultimately one person saying “hey, here are feelings I have; now do something with them.” That’s not a great way to get a relationship started; you’re functionally asking the other person to make a whole lot of calls that they aren’t really in a position to make with any degree of certainty.

Asking someone on a date, on the other hand, is pretty simple and straightforward. Instead of asking the other person to decide what kind of relationship the two of you are going to have, right then and there, you’re asking them for something much smaller – just a date. You’re asking for an opportunity to explore how you feel, to see if there’s enough “there” there to decide if you want to pursue more than that. It’s a much easier thing to say “yes” to because the stakes are correspondingly lower. It also means that you’re telling them that you like them. After all, folks don’t ask people they don’t like on dates.

The problem here is that you’re a little too in your head about this. You’re creating problems where there really aren’t any, and you’re letting these imagined problems get in the way of reality. This is especially true considering that what you’re really afraid of isn’t “scaring him away” or “making things awkward” or moving “too fast”. You’re worried that he’s going to reject you. Everything else is camouflage.

This is a tale as old as time. The things you’re trying to avoid aren’t about it being “too soon” or “coming on too strong”; they’re about trying to reassure yourself that there’s a critical path you can follow, some way of asking him on a date that will guarantee he’ll say yes. And there isn’t one. Relationships require vulnerability. Trying to start a relationship with another person means deliberately opening yourself to the possibility of getting hurt – either in the immediate now or in the future. Trying to find the “right” time and the “right” way is just trying to avoid that need to be vulnerable… but the only way to do that is to avoid the question entirely. So you have to decide whether the potential reward is worth the risk of getting hurt by being turned down. You also have to decide if not taking that chance is worth the possibility that someone else will. People can’t call dibs on other people and he’s a free agent. Unless you give him a reason to go on a date with you, there’s every chance that someone else will, and he’ll say “yes” to them instead. That’s part of the risk you choose to accept if you decide to wait for the “right” time, instead of making the right time.

You can’t control his response – either to you or to any other person who might ask him out, so don’t even try. The only thing you can control are your actions and how you respond to things. If you don’t want things to be awkward, don’t make them awkward. Give yourself permission to feel a little sad about it but resolve to power through any awkwardness and just behave the way you did before. That is within your control.

But so is deciding to cowgirl up and ask him out.

So don’t worry about “too soon”, don’t worry about making things awkward; ask him out on a date and you’ll get your answer. One way or another, you’ll be able to move forward and not have to keep thinking about this.

Good luck.

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This post was previously published on Doctornerdlove.com and is republished on Medium.

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