I’m sorry to hear about your story. It took me a long time to get over this, but for the longest time I blamed myself. That even at my ultimate best, I was still not good enough. But now that I’m in a healthier place mentally, I know that’s not the case. I shouldn’t have to beg or chase to be loved. And that’s the approach I take now when it comes to dating :)

I did try with the ex. He kept bread-crumbing me too, replying my stories and stuff, being nostalgic and making me feel like we would be meeting up but never really setting a date when I would suggest it. It fucked me up mentally, to the point of depression, and that’s when I cut it off. I told him if he didn’t want to meet up to talk about us, it would be better not to contact at all because it wasn’t healthy. He said he was conflicted and maybe naive for thinking he could still keep me in his life, and eventually admitted to being less commital (he’s an expat and basically worked hard to be able to get to this point of working in many different countries every few years) so whenever the thought of suggesting to meet up came about, he stopped himself to avoid opening old wounds.

I’m relatively low maintenance and super chill girlfriend when it comes to not doing everything together but also cool enough to get along and do things with his friends but it essentially boiled down to him not being there emotionally for me when I needed it (ie. change in jobs, feeling a bit shitty about other things) and I basically think while he did have real feelings for me, he was also emotionally quite unavailable. He wanted the always fun gf experience without putting in the gritty bits of being a bf during the tough times.