What can I do to get over my first love? =\

Anyone who claims that you'll be over it before you know it when it comes to first loves has clearly never experienced their own. You can distance yourself from that person. You can turn your attention to the other fish in the sea. You can follow all of the generic advice that all people tend to give you and some of it might soften the blow, but ultimately you will suffer. Getting over a first love is very much like getting over a virus. You can take precautions to make the recovery more comfortable, but it is something that you will have to slowly wait out.

You will have far more emotional nights than you will ever want to admit. You will find yourself frustrated with the fact that you are still thinking of them months later. You will have days were you tell yourself that losing them actually wasn't a big deal and that they actually weren't as amazing as you thought they were. Then you will spiral back into the same pain after a couple of days or weeks. The point is that this experience is supposed to feel dreadful. You have gone from thinking of a partner everyday to thinking of a breakup everyday. Dreaming of a future alongside someone to dreaming of a future without them anywhere in sight. Yes, considering the way he handled this situation, he probably wasn't worth your time. Yes, there are plenty of more fish in the sea, but those fish will also still be there a month from now, a year from now, etc.

Allow yourself the time to get over this. Moving on is often described as some euphoric walk into the sunset, in which all prior cares and concerns are lifted off of your shoulders. The process of moving on is more like slowly emptying a bottle. All of these emotions will pour out of your for far too long, until you are finally empty. You have cried the last tear or felt the final longing for that person and you have nothing left for them. It might take time for that to happen, but it will. By allowing yourself to feel thee emotions and not attempting to avoid or suppress them, you will only quicken the process.

 

Often times, I try to take solace in the fact that the pain and hurt that I feel for someone in the here and now, is truly indicative of just how deeply happy and loved they had made me feel at some point in time, at some point in the past... Idk, it was always about validating, for myself, that what I had, and what I felt was real. That I had met someone who was capable of hurting me so much, meant that I had also met someone who was also capable of giving me so much happiness too. Regardless of how much he has tried to invalidate the relationship that you two had in the past, know and take pride in the fact that the relationship was real to you, that it mattered to you, that the feelings were real foryou... hope you heal soon...

 

My "first real love" was also someone who just decided that being gay was too much--he didn't even say he was straight he just said it was a path he wasn't strong enough to walk. He even apologized for it. And the good and the bad news of it is that--well, I never did get over it. But you move on. It's been 25 years and I still occasionally think about him and what might have been--my partner of 17 years knows all about him, there's a picture of the two of us in a collection of framed photos in our living room. He was a part of my life, a part of making me who I am. It was a very bittersweet time in my life--feeling so many things, so many new things, so strongly. And it was hard, really hard, but it was also pretty wonderful. The fact of the matter is that the people who tell you to just get over it probably do just get over it, but in my experience they do it by just feeling less and less over time. In my experience and opinion feeling less is always a mistake. Move on... but don't get over it. You only get one life, why would you want to get over it?

 

My suggestion is to keep busy and try to put some distance between you and him. IT might sound crazy now, but in time you can come to see that you can be happy without him.

It will probably take a long time to get over it. You may look back on it and recall that it was a happy time, but in time stop dwelling on it or getting upset about it.

I've been in the situation before where I've found it hard to get over someone. Eventually I had to get them out of my life and do other things (after a very long time of torment). But eventually I was abole to move on.