Struggling with losing "the one who got away," my failed love life, losing 4 years of my 20s, turning 30

[tipoftheRGB]

I'm 29, female, going to turn 30 in less than 4 months. My life is a MESS. And it was all preventable. But I didn't know at the time what I know now and I don't have a time machine so how do I survive this?

I had a lot of psychological issues before age 29 that I was unaware of and had just learned to cope with in maladaptive ways. But I had a mental breakdown at age 26, stopped working and stopped leaving the house. By age 28, I was actively planning to kill myself but at this point friends and family pointed out to me I should go to therapy and I did for over a year and I fixed most of my psychological issues (as far as I'm aware) and I finally feel like I can see life, the world and myself clearly unlike before where I was viewing it through a broken warped lens and acting in self sabotaging ways without realising.

I have never had a relationship before and have limited experiences in that area of my life so I'm sorry if any of this sounds weird or immature but I guess I am making this post because maybe someone can explain something to me that I don't understand:

Anyway sometimes when you love someone, you push them away. And the more you love someone, the more you push them away. It happens for psychological reasons. But people who haven't experienced it sometimes find it hard to understand but its real and I could write pages and pages about it. I met the man I was supposed to be with who was the love of my life at 19, we were fwbs on and off until 23 and we were in each others lives until 28. He is the love of my life. Its like he was made for me. I have the rarest physical type in men, the rarest sexual type, the rarest mental type. Its like he was designed for me. He is 1 in 8 billion. There is no one else like him. He is perfect for me in every way. No one else compares or comes close. I loved him and I pushed him away because I was fucked in the head. I didn't understand I loved him and I didn't understand I was pushing him away either. It was a weird complicated psychological thing where I had a huge amount of cognitive dissonance and internal conflict and I didn't understand what was happening. Hes gone now. His type in women is me and women like me. And he found a woman exactly like me in appearance, personality and sexually when he was 28 and she was 26 (I was 28 at the time). The type of woman I am is nowhere near as rare as the type of man he is but isn't the most common type of woman either. But he found her. Shes exactly like me but shes slightly better than me in every way. Shes hotter, 2 years younger, mentally stable, more competent and successful in every area of life - shes just a slightly better version of me. But she is so much like me. And now I see them on social media having the most amazing time together, obsessed with each other and in love with each other. They are perfect together and I've never seen him so happy and they are so happy. I know he will marry her and have kids with her but thats what I wanted to do with him. Shes so much like me that everything they do together is what me and him were supposed to do together. That was supposed to be me. I know I was supposed to be with him and I was supposed to marry and have kids with him. And now hes gone forever and I don't know how to deal with this loss. Because no one compares to him - no one. At my age, as a woman, it looks like the quality of man I'm going to be able to attract will be lower because I am not the young, attractive, seemingly carefree woman I used to be (I'm sorry if that sounds offensive but its just a biological reality isn't it?). Add in the fact that no one compares to him. And I just don't know what to do. I can't move forward or move on because hes gone and being with anyone else in the future will be like eating sand compared to being with him which felt like the best feeling I've ever experienced. I just feel so bad right now after seeing a photo of him and his girlfriend last night where they were at an event I would have attended with him.

Also I am long term unemployed and socially isolated because of the mental breakdown I had before and I feel stuck where I spend large amounts of my day feeling despair and hopelessness about the future and I spend large amounts of my day procrastinating and ruminating without realising. And I feel terrible about turning 30 in less than 4 months and being in this situation and losing 4 years of my 20s to mental health problems. And I'm trying not to look back at the past or feel bitter and angry but I am hurt that I could not find support for my mental health before age 28 and no one around me helped me and I just rotted alone in my room for years and it all hurts and I'm so upset about the lost time. Has anyone got any advice for me? I would really appreciate that. I just feel like I'm not thinking straight and I have no one to talk to. (If anyone responds to this, please tell me your age if possible (but its fine if you can't) because age affects the way a person sees the world.)

 

[antarctica]

hey, im 24 M , i dont have your exact experiences but i hope just talking about it helps in some way and im sorry youre going through all this.

i related really strongly to what you said about pushing people away when you love them. it is definitely hard to describe to people who dont understand. its so weird and makes my brain feel broken. people think its a paradox that you love someone and they love you too and you want to push them away and lash out but its real. i dont know exactly how it is for you but for me i think its because i cant be vulnerable and open about anything. i dont feel like i deserve good things. im frustrated with myself and take it out on the people closest to me. i dont know how to help myself so i dont know how others can help me. and i dont want someone to know me inside out because they will either leave or still love me anyway and i cant deal with either of it. this behaviour is so self destructive it hurts but if you can understand where its coming from its a good start. sorry for rambling, maybe you can relate to these things or maybe you have a different reason you push people away?

my mental issues also made me miss out on things too. it feels really hard that everyone else can go and do things and live life and we cant, and that when we do start wanting to get better it cant undo the years we spent not

my advice for you right now i think is to avoid looking at their socials and everything. i know it will be really hard but it will just keep sending you down this spiral of being reminded of it, and it will just make your pain worse. it will keep opening this wound and make it impossible to heal if you keep hurting yourself mentally by checking their pages. it wont fix everything but it is a start

 

[tipoftheRGB]

hey, im 24 M , i dont have your exact experiences but i hope just talking about it helps in some way and im sorry youre going through all this.

i related really strongly to what you said about pushing people away when you love them. it is definitely hard to describe to people who dont understand. its so weird and makes my brain feel broken. people think its a paradox that you love someone and they love you too and you want to push them away and lash out but its real. i dont know exactly how it is for you but for me i think its because i cant be vulnerable and open about anything. i dont feel like i deserve good things. im frustrated with myself and take it out on the people closest to me. i dont know how to help myself so i dont know how others can help me. and i dont want someone to know me inside out because they will either leave or still love me anyway and i cant deal with either of it. this behaviour is so self destructive it hurts but if you can understand where its coming from its a good start. sorry for rambling, maybe you can relate to these things or maybe you have a different reason you push people away?

my mental issues also made me miss out on things too. it feels really hard that everyone else can go and do things and live life and we cant, and that when we do start wanting to get better it cant undo the years we spent not

my advice for you right now i think is to avoid looking at their socials and everything. i know it will be really hard but it will just keep sending you down this spiral of being reminded of it, and it will just make your pain worse. it will keep opening this wound and make it impossible to heal if you keep hurting yourself mentally by checking their pages. it wont fix everything but it is a start

Thank you. It is helpful to know someone else gets the pushing the people you love away thing because no one in my life understands that problem. And so people have called me "cold and heartless" and "not a relationship person." And they downplay the significance of the situation I had with that man because I myself downplayed it to other people and said things I subconsciously didn't agree with because I had cognitive dissonance. It feels like people think I deserve this without them recognising the pain I was in that led me to act the way I did and where it all came from (issues from childhood, anxiety etc). I feel stuck as well because I can't talk about my problems to people. Like people don't understand the pushing people away thing and I was never in a relationship with that guy and it looks like it was my fault and that I consciously ruined everything when I was actually acting in ways that conflicted with how I truly felt without realising. So I can't talk about that man. Also there is a huge stigma for women to be upset about their love life at my age so I can't talk about that either because I'll look like one of THOSE women. So I feel like I am suffocating and dying slowly in front of everyone around me and either people don't notice or they don't care depending on who they are. I have tried to explain my problems to people and either they don't care or they don't listen or they dismiss me. I tell people I am hopeless and suicidal and they don't seem all that interested. I'm just dying slowly in front of everyone and I'm reaching my hands out and screaming for help and no one is there. I just wish I had any kind of support and there is no one. And I'm not ok but I can't explain it to strangers because its not an accepted behaviour in society.

Yes I relate to your reasons for pushing people away as well. A mix of negative core beliefs about myself, negative deeply held beliefs about myself and my life, negative deeply held beliefs about the world and how it works, bad coping mechanisms, anxiety, low self esteem etc. And yes you say and do things that are the opposite of how you subconsciously feel and have cognitive dissonance about it all. I strongly recommend you go to a good psychiatry-critical/anti-psychiatry integrative psychodynamic therapist if that is in any way possible for you because that was what helped me understand and overcome all of the issues I had before. Psychiatry-critical/anti-psychiatry because this is psychological and psychiatry keen people try to lump people with mental disorders they don't have and drug them up and act like the problem is medical/biological when it is psychological. Psychodynamic because CBT covers surface level thought distortions (it helps a bit) but psychodynamic goes deeper in to your childhood and for me I needed that like CBT felt like a plaster on an internal wound but psychodynamic therapy felt like I was able to sort out my internal problems and its really good for internal conflicts and cognitive dissonance so now I feel like I see myself and life in a completely different, healthier way. Integrative because tbf that therapist might have been doing other stuff I wasn't aware of.

It is hard. I will say that as a 24 year old and a man you have every chance to have an amazing life that is better than what you could have had if you'd made perfect choices at a younger age. Like look at the guy I lost - he was 28 when he found the right person for him and even that is young for a man. For me, losing that man, and also my age and gender and life situation are killing me. And then having no social support or any type of support is like the final nail in the coffin. I feel like a person who had so much potential and it was wasted because no one cared. And its not normal not to care like we're tribal community animals but for some reason I seem to be in a position where no one cares and at a time where I need help, there isn't any.

Thanks for the advice. I should stop looking. I guess I just like to monitor the situation praying for some signs they could break up but I also know they will last. But even without looking at his social media, no man I meet compares to him so even when I'm not paying attention to him, its like just experiencing him has permanently left me unable to be with anyone else because they can't compare to him. And I do want to have a relationship with someone I love and get married and have kids even though I cringe to admit it because it was hammered in to me in childhood that I shouldn't want those things and society seems to look down on women my age who want those things. And all of that stuff looks impossible. Thank you for your advice!

 

[byec560]

I'm 29, female, going to turn 30 in less than 4 months. My life is a MESS. And it was all preventable. But I didn't know at the time what I know now and I don't have a time machine so how do I survive this?

I had a lot of psychological issues before age 29 that I was unaware of and had just learned to cope with in maladaptive ways. But I had a mental breakdown at age 26, stopped working and stopped leaving the house. By age 28, I was actively planning to kill myself but at this point friends and family pointed out to me I should go to therapy and I did for over a year and I fixed most of my psychological issues (as far as I'm aware) and I finally feel like I can see life, the world and myself clearly unlike before where I was viewing it through a broken warped lens and acting in self sabotaging ways without realising.

I have never had a relationship before and have limited experiences in that area of my life so I'm sorry if any of this sounds weird or immature but I guess I am making this post because maybe someone can explain something to me that I don't understand:

Anyway sometimes when you love someone, you push them away. And the more you love someone, the more you push them away. It happens for psychological reasons. But people who haven't experienced it sometimes find it hard to understand but its real and I could write pages and pages about it. I met the man I was supposed to be with who was the love of my life at 19, we were fwbs on and off until 23 and we were in each others lives until 28. He is the love of my life. Its like he was made for me. I have the rarest physical type in men, the rarest sexual type, the rarest mental type. Its like he was designed for me. He is 1 in 8 billion. There is no one else like him. He is perfect for me in every way. No one else compares or comes close. I loved him and I pushed him away because I was fucked in the head. I didn't understand I loved him and I didn't understand I was pushing him away either. It was a weird complicated psychological thing where I had a huge amount of cognitive dissonance and internal conflict and I didn't understand what was happening. Hes gone now. His type in women is me and women like me. And he found a woman exactly like me in appearance, personality and sexually when he was 28 and she was 26 (I was 28 at the time). The type of woman I am is nowhere near as rare as the type of man he is but isn't the most common type of woman either. But he found her. Shes exactly like me but shes slightly better than me in every way. Shes hotter, 2 years younger, mentally stable, more competent and successful in every area of life - shes just a slightly better version of me. But she is so much like me. And now I see them on social media having the most amazing time together, obsessed with each other and in love with each other. They are perfect together and I've never seen him so happy and they are so happy. I know he will marry her and have kids with her but thats what I wanted to do with him. Shes so much like me that everything they do together is what me and him were supposed to do together. That was supposed to be me. I know I was supposed to be with him and I was supposed to marry and have kids with him. And now hes gone forever and I don't know how to deal with this loss. Because no one compares to him - no one. At my age, as a woman, it looks like the quality of man I'm going to be able to attract will be lower because I am not the young, attractive, seemingly carefree woman I used to be (I'm sorry if that sounds offensive but its just a biological reality isn't it?). Add in the fact that no one compares to him. And I just don't know what to do. I can't move forward or move on because hes gone and being with anyone else in the future will be like eating sand compared to being with him which felt like the best feeling I've ever experienced. I just feel so bad right now after seeing a photo of him and his girlfriend last night where they were at an event I would have attended with him.

Also I am long term unemployed and socially isolated because of the mental breakdown I had before and I feel stuck where I spend large amounts of my day feeling despair and hopelessness about the future and I spend large amounts of my day procrastinating and ruminating without realising. And I feel terrible about turning 30 in less than 4 months and being in this situation and losing 4 years of my 20s to mental health problems. And I'm trying not to look back at the past or feel bitter and angry but I am hurt that I could not find support for my mental health before age 28 and no one around me helped me and I just rotted alone in my room for years and it all hurts and I'm so upset about the lost time. Has anyone got any advice for me? I would really appreciate that. I just feel like I'm not thinking straight and I have no one to talk to. (If anyone responds to this, please tell me your age if possible (but its fine if you can't) because age affects the way a person sees the world.)

Not asking this in a judgey way, but what aspects do you think made your former crush /FWB(?) so unique? You said you have the rarest mental, physical, and sexual type. What's that type and why do you think you can't find it elsewhere? Also, fwiw I feel like most people don't age that dramatically from 26 to 30 so I don't think you would compare too terribly to a 26 year old all else being equal.

Edit: Don't want to say my exact age tbh but I'm a similar age to you. Late 20s.

 

[FoolsExpedition]

29 here turning 30 next year, similar-ish in that i didn't really "know" i was ill until much later (around 17 or 18 i believe, i was autistic the entire time and i'm being queried for bipolar at the moment)

the different part is i've had a slew of relationships, the one that got away for me was my 5th relationship, or 6th depending on if a fwb situation is counted or not. that person was just so different to the rest and felt like my mirror more than anyone i'd ever met. nobody has come close since and it's not for lack of trying on my part and i'm average looking enough to get attention. i don't wanna say too much here but i relate a lot. i don't have any advice of my own to give but know that you're not alone. i'm interested in what advice people might have other than "find someone else/get over them", i definitely don't mean to be rude in my saying so but i find it unhelpful and i definitely would of moved on and got over that person in the past almost year or so it's been if it were that easy

 

[never mind me]

It sounds like you are in a really tough situation. Especially that you have noone in real life you can talk to about what is going on in your head. I would also say that it would help to not constantly look at the pictures and stories of this now unreachable man.
You are also mentioning other problems like social isolation and unemployment. If you are still so upset by losing this man it might be easier to try and fix your other issues first before trying to find another man you can love. I think it is nothing bad to long for a relationsship and kids and you shouldn't think badly about yourself, just because you want that and are a certain age. Still it maybe helpful to also learn to do stuff for yourself and try to have a life that is fulfilling even, if you are not in a relationship. And sometimes it is not necessary to actively look for a suitable man, but sometimes you find someone just by coincidence. Also I think you have a very stereotypical view on relationsships. I don't know where you live and how the culture is there, but at least in many Western countries it is quite common for people to form new relationships in their 30s, 40s and even older. So I don't think you don't have a chance to find a new partner just because you will soon turn 30.
I can understand that you regret not getting treatment sooner. All I can say is that most people don't make perfect choices for themselves all the time, Sometimes we just lack the knowledge to do what is best for us. All we can do is try to learn from our mistakes and try to improve in the future. But I know it can be hard, I am currently also at a point where I am deeply regretting some seemingly unimportant choices I made that caused me to blow a simple cold into a prolonged health problem.
I'm in my late 30s.

 

[otomedissection]

Reading this honestly hit EXTREMELY close to home. I'm 29 F and also had very similar experiences. I've had problems with mental illness since at least middle school and had a complete mental breakdown at 24 due to burnout and going into grad school with undiagnosed ADHD. I had to take a medical leave of absence and a year away from my program to get stabilized. Before then, I had been talking to a guy who I was very interested in constantly. He was the first guy that I think truly showed genuine interest in me and who I felt comfortable talking to. We never actually dated due to distance, but we were very close and flirty. When my mental health went downhill even more, he stopped talking to me completely. Years later, we still message each other once in a blue moon, but it's very platonic and he's married now. It was honestly devastating. I felt selfish for thinking that maybe he'd just put his life on hold for me, but I was also hurt to know that I wasn't someone worth waiting for. And you know what? In a way, I'm honestly glad with how things turned out looking back. I wouldn't want to be with someone who didn't feel comfortable with me at my lowest times, even though it's completely understandable and I wouldn't think of someone as a bad person if they didn't want to be involved. It just wouldn't be fair to either of us.

It sounds like your situation is similar. It sucks that you weren't getting the care you needed at the time and you drifted apart because of it. But it's also good to consider whether this person would still support you if you went through rough times in the future. It sounds like you've made some wonderful progress and now have the opportunity to make a great future for yourself. I know it's extremely difficult, but looking at his photos and social media is only hurting you. (I admit, I still do the same sometimes). There's a ton of important people in your life who you haven't even met yet. I wish you the absolute best of luck and I'm proud of you for taking steps toward taking care of your mental health!