About six months ago, I came across someone incredibly wonderful on Instagram. She followed me as we had a mutual follower and I followed back thinking she was cool and not thinking much of it within that moment. A few days later, I replied to her story as I saw that she went to see a band in her hometown that I was supposed to be seeing that evening. We started a conversation from there and quickly discovered we had an awful lot in common. After a couple of weeks of talking, I realised that I had pretty strong feelings for her, and then after a month of talking we both confessed our feelings to each other. Following a few 5-6 hour video calls over the next few months, I went to visit her for a weekend in January where we became a couple.
Then cut to yesterday. Following an incredibly lovely five days together, we have an incredibly tearful phone call together which effectively ended the relationship. She felt because we were long distance, things got way more intense and passionate than she was expecting to and she wasn't ready for that due to lingering baggage from her emotional abusive ex of 9 years who she broke up with about a year ago after finding out he cheated on her.
She made it incredibly clear her decision was nothing to do with me and that I don't need to change anything about myself and that she did love and care about me a lot, and that she does want to be friends once we're both ready for it. However, she doesn't want that friendship to have the expectation of getting back into a relationship hanging over it.
This is such a bittersweet experience. I've never had a relationship that was this loving and nurturing where I've loved someone so honestly and purely and received the same love in return, so I'm glad that I got to have this relationship as we both would have regretted not giving things a go. However, I'm pretty sad that things had to end as I do care about her a lot and really imagined us having a future together.
It feels like I came across the right person at the wrong time - she embodied everything I want from a relationship. We vibed really well together, she was understanding of the difficulties I have due to being autistic, we have similar values/ethics, and she's accepting of the fact that I'm vegetarian and don't drink (the latter being something she also didn't partake in).
Obviously I'm not in a state to date anyone at the moment - I need to find the time to work through this pain as much as it hurts and it wouldn't be fair to drag another person into this. However, I've been thinking about how long it took me to find someone I felt that drawn to and am already dreading having to wade through endless conversations on dating apps that just go nowhere like I did before we met.
I feel like I've lost my third love (if we go by the three loves theory) and that I'm not going to find anyone who I love as much as her and need to settle for "second best".
Is there hope for me to find the happiness I seek?