I feel like I've been run over by a bus and I've never been so confused. HELP :(

[CandyAppleRed]

This is going to be crazy long....fair waning! Please bear with me. Some heartfelt advice would mean the world.

 

My ex and I dated for over 3.5 years, beginning when we were juniors in high school and ending earlier this fall (barely 2 months ago). We were a great couple...like, storybook high school sweethearts. He was a varsity athlete and I was in the stands for every game wearing his number on the back of my t-shirt. I was the quiet, nerdy girl who ended up graduating valedictorian of our class, and he quizzed me with flashcards over lunch in the cafeteria when I needed it. He first told me he loved me during our special dance at the prom right after it was announced that he had been voted prom king. Corny, I know....

 

We always swore that we would make our college decisions for ourselves alone and that if our relationship was meant to be, we'd find a way to make it work regardless of where we ended up. Well, we picked schools that were over 1000 miles apart, and so we entered our freshman years determined to make long-distance work.

 

And we did, for over two years (we're college juniors now). We wrote letters, sent gifts, counted down the minutes until our weekly Skype dates, and even flew accross the country to visit each other a few times. Our time spent at home with our families (for holidays, Spring Break, and such) was made even better by the fact that we were sharing a zip code again, and our dates back in our hometown become that much more special.

 

Last spring, however, some problems started surfacing. I could go on and on about what was wrong and pick the problems apart, but I think these are the three biggest ones:

 

1) A close friend of mine died tragically in the spring, and when I got back to my dorm from her memorial service, I was devastated and immediately picked up the phone to call the boyfriend. I had told him the service was that day, but he later swore he forgot. He picked up the phone, said something along the lines of "Hey, I'll call you back, one of my friends is on my couch crying and I really need to be there for her right now," and hung up. Needless to say, I was livid. When he finally did call me back and realized what he'd done, I almost broke up with him on the spot. Thankfully, we worked through it and stayed together (I was able to confirm through multiple sources that the girl really was just a close friend, not that that excuses the behavior.) However, the incident kind of drove a wedge between us as it caused me to exclude him from my grieving process, something that has played a monumental role in the last several months of my life. It put some emotional distance between us, to say the least.

 

2) His grades started dipping dangerously low beginning in the spring. It wasn't that his study habits changed at all, just that his natural intelligence was no longer enough to slide by, and his slight laziness began catching up with him. Being as academically-oriented as I am, this really upset me, and I was always begging him to get off his butt and turn his GPA around. But it wasn't happening.

 

3) This one is the biggie....Around the same time my girlfriend passed away, he came clean to me about his porn addiction. I know that may not be a huge deal to some people, but for us it really was. We were both strong in our faith and trying to build a God-centered relationship, and this was a really tough blow. He was extremely repentant and swore time and time again he would beat the addiction (and was even able to abstain for a few weeks a couple of times), but kept relapsing and falling back into old habits of indulging every single day, often multiple times a day.

 

I spent about half a year begging him repeatedly to change these things. This fall, before we broke up, all three of these things would sometimes combine to assault me in one fell swoop - I would have a bad day at school and really need to talk to him, but he would be "too busy studying," and I would paste on a smile and try to be supportive while knowing deep down that he was making time for the girls in the porn but not for me. Every time we talked about this stuff, I tried to convey how miserable it was making me and make him understand that these were things that could drive me to walk away, but he never really "got it."

 

Until I took the plunge and called him long-distance to break up. And it was then that I think he finally understood how serious I was about those three things. It was difficult to gauge his reaction over the phone, especially because he hung up on me mid-conversation and hurled his phone at the wall, breaking it. That brought the conversation to an abrupt halt before I had even made it through everything I wanted to say....and we were through.

 

But the thing is....and this is the part that might make me sound ridiculous.....I didn't REALLY want to break up. I wanted to finally get through to him that I wanted those three things to be different, because I had been repeatedly trying to do so and nothing I'd tried had worked. Whether I admitted it to myself and my friends or not, deep down I hoped his reaction to the split would be to change what needed to be changed and try to win me back. I know, horrible logic. I spent the rest of the semester hardly even phased by the break-up because in my mind, we were going to get back together as soon as he came around and repented of his sins.

 

Anyway, we spent the rest of the semester basically incommunicado until right before winter break when he Facebook messaged me asking if I wanted to get coffee once we were both back in our hometown. I was relieved - could this finally be the "I've changed and I want you back" conversation I had been dying to have? So I agreed to have coffee (this was a few days ago).

 

The coffee get-together took a whopping ten minutes. He had a rather memorized-sounding speech that he gave me, basically thanking me for a good time and saying goodbye. I was shocked and couldn't find anything intelligent to say in return. I had thought that I would get to finish my reasons for breaking up, or that he was going to beg for me to reconsider. I thanked him too, feeling my heart shatter inside me, and cried as I drove away. I finally understood that he and I were over when I didn't want us to be.

 

Then, as if it couldn't have gotten any worse, the day after the coffee talk I saw his changed relationship status pop up on my Facebook news feed. He had gotten a new girlfriend....almost two weeks prior. I was just now seeing it. It had been hidden from me and my friends (using custom privacy settings) until after our coffee date.

 

So basically, I feel like I've been run over by a bus. I threw away what was, at one time, the best relationship I can imagine, all because I wanted him to "fix himself" and then come crawling back to me. But now the guy I still love is with someone else barely two months after the end of our 3.5+ year relationship. And he has no idea that I still want to be with him. So, so badly.

 

But only if the things that were wrong were to be changed. But is that even fair? To want someone back on the condition that they change?

 

I'm heartbroken and beyond confused. I don't even know where to begin. Please help...

[Romeo November]

He should have told you about his porn addiction. No one changes unless they change them self. Long distance relationships do not work because of the stress it puts on the people of the relationship. You do not want things to be over but what you feel is that you do not want to stop loving someone or stop being loved by someone. You don't miss him, you miss love.

 

Start getting over the relationship. It is a slow process. Start to think of things you can do for yourself and avoid anything that reminds you of the relationship. Stay busy. Find things that help you that take up your time. Idleness is not a good thing. In my situation, I started by thinking what I want to be. I wanted to look better physically so I started exercising and taking time to plan my meals and eat the right foods. I wanted to follow my career path so I started going back to school. I wanted more income so I got a job I would enjoy. I want to plan my future so I started to researching on what paths I could be on and it started making me thinking of the military. There is so much you can do.