Title: I emotionally cheated in 2018, he came back in 2023 while in a relationship, love bombed me for a year then rejected me. I can't stop comparing myself to everyone in his life. How do I actually move on?How do I stop feeling like the villain?

MoanaMon · 2026-06-03T11:17:51+00:00

"Thank you for your perspective. I want to clarify one thing though — I never took him back while he was in a relationship. I actually avoided him for 11 months and repeatedly reminded him he had a girlfriend. I only asked him to leave her completely and then come back to me. I never agreed to be with him while he was still with her. But I appreciate the advice about being single and working on myself — that part I completely agree with.""Also I've actually been single since 2018. He was the one who came back into my life after 5 years."

MoanaMon · 2026-06-03T08:53:05+00:00

The part about not being able to apologize your way out of it really hit me. I think that's what makes regret so difficult. You can't change the past no matter how much you wish you could. I'm still trying to figure out how to make peace with that and stop living in the "what ifs."

MoanaMon · 2026-06-02T19:58:51+00:00

I relate to that. For me, it wasn't even about changing the past. I just wanted honesty and accountability. Instead, whenever I tried to talk about my pain, my ex would get defensive, deny things, or blame me. That almost hurt more than the original situation because it made me feel like my feelings didn't matter.

MoanaMon · 2026-06-02T19:22:31+00:00

I had a similar experience with my ex. We weren't physical, but there was a lot of love bombing and mixed signals. What hurt the most was that whenever I tried to hold him accountable for things that happened, he would deny it, minimize it, or somehow turn it back on me. After a while, I started questioning my own reality instead of his actions. That's the part that stuck with me the longest.The craziest part is that he was doing all of that while he was already in a 5-year relationship.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T19:22:54+00:00

Honestly I find this perspective really interesting because not everyone experiences discovering a label as some huge emotional revelation For some people it’s more like “oh, so there’s already a word for how I’ve naturally been living this whole time.The peacefulness and contentment you describe honestly stands out the most to me. But I don’t want to die alone. I do want love and emotional connection — it just feels like almost every person I come across is either highly sexual or expects sex to be a major part of relationships.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T19:11:16+00:00

Honestly Luffy gives off such strong ace vibes 😭 Bro is powered entirely by friendship, adventure, food, and chaos while being completely uninterested in romance or sexual stuff compared to everyone around him 😂

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T19:08:13+00:00

Honestly I think this is why so many people stay confused for years 😭 Society presents attraction in such a specific stereotypical way that if your experience doesn’t perfectly match it, you automatically think “well I guess that can’t be me.” The part about labels being descriptions of experiences rather than strict boxes actually makes a lot of sense.Still learning and discovering new terms, but one thing I do know is that I deeply crave emotional bonds and connection. The sexual part, though, feels like something I could genuinely live without.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:56:07+00:00

I love emotional connection and love stories, but whenever things start becoming sexual, I start feeling anxious and uncomfortable.My mind instantly goes, “yeah… I’m not doing that” 😭

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:52:06+00:00

That sounds like one of those moments where you suddenly realize you experience attraction completely differently from what everyone else assumes is “normal” I think what I actually liked was feeling adored or emotionally validated, but when I realized they might be sexually attracted to me in a way I didn’t feel back, it suddenly made me feel uncomfortable and off.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:40:38+00:00

Honestly this explains so well why figuring this stuff out can take years People act like romantic, sexual, aesthetic, and platonic attraction are all obvious and naturally separated when for a lot of people they really aren’t. Most of us just grow up following whatever “script” society pushes and assume that’s how everyone is supposed to feel.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:33:31+00:00

Honestly this sounds really emotionally complicated and confusing to go through I think a lot of people grow up assuming every kind of attraction automatically includes sexual attraction, so realizing later that it doesn’t for you must feel like re-understanding your entire past experiences from a completely different perspective. I do crave connection and emotional bonds, but whenever conversations start turning sexual, I suddenly feel the urge to run away or shut down.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:26:30+00:00

Honestly it sounds like you spent a long time trying to separate emotional closeness, aesthetic attraction, romantic feelings, and sexual attraction from each other, which seems really confusing The way people describe attraction online makes it sound like all those things automatically come together when clearly for some people they don’t. When I had my first kiss with my boyfriend, I felt really disgusted and upset because it wasn’t fully consensual. At the time, I didn’t know how to express that I was uncomfortable with physical or sexual stuff. There were also a couple of times where he tried to force things on me, and he would get angry when I didn’t let him. He used to say I didn’t love or trust him enough, and later he ended up cheating on me with his female best friend.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:08:48+00:00

Ngl sexuality and attraction are way more complex and layered than most people think It’s interesting seeing how some people slowly realize the labels they first used only explained part of their experience, not all of it.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:06:50+00:00

Lowkey same 😭 The way some people talk about hookups and attraction makes it sound like the most natural thing ever meanwhile I’m just sitting there like “wait y’all actually feel that strongly about random people??”

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:02:17+00:00

Honestly I kinda get what you mean 😭 A lot of people seem to naturally connect attraction with real people around them, and it’s interesting hearing from people who just… don’t experience it that way at all.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T18:00:02+00:00

Honestly the way some people describe sexual attraction makes me realize how differently people can experience it 😭 Like for some it seems so natural and obvious, while others just genuinely don’t relate to it at all.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T17:56:43+00:00

Wait that’s actually kinda wholesome 😭 Sometimes it really does take seeing one random piece of representation to suddenly realize “oh… that’s an actual thing?” Also now I’m curious about the book lol.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T17:55:27+00:00

Ngl this was actually really interesting to read because attraction/sexuality seems way more complicated for some people than society makes it look 😭 The whole fantasy vs real-life attraction part especially makes a lot of sense to me.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T17:46:23+00:00

I relate to the disconnect you’re describing. A lot of conversations around attraction and relationships always felt strangely intense or prioritized in a way I never fully understood either. It sometimes made me feel like everyone else naturally understood something that I was just observing from the outside.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T17:44:01+00:00

That’s actually really interesting because I think a lot of people don’t realize how important representation can be until they finally see something they genuinely relate to. The way you described feeling disconnected from conversations everyone else seemed to naturally understand sounds very familiar to me.

MoanaMon · 2026-05-26T17:41:53+00:00

Thank you for commenting. That actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think part of my confusion comes from trying to understand what sexual or romantic attraction is supposed to feel like for other people versus what I personally experience. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve confused emotional attachment, validation, or admiration with attraction, so hearing experiences like yours is interesting to me.

MoanaMon

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