Same here. I chased my ex for THREE years after we broke up because I was in a bad head space and he gave me just enough to make me think we were going to be together forever…this continued for a year even after he told me he was dating someone else. I look back on the Lianne of that time and want to tell her EVERYTHING we are all telling you. You will be ok after all of this is over…you just have to be kind to yourself.

I’ll echo what Wendy said about being in the right head space. I took a year and a half “break” from dating. I say “break” because 1. I just didn’t feel like putting in the effort to date and 2. I wasn’t in a place to handle rejection, I was afraid and 3. I wanted to focus on myself and building the life I wanted with people I enjoyed. Now, I’m dating a guy who I’m deeply interested in and vice versa. He both shows and tells me daily how much he likes me and I’ve opened up to him greatly. I attribute this to being in the right head space.

I truly believe that finding the right person has everything to do with timing and a little bit of luck.

I’m honesty not trying to be smug. It has taken a little of heart break and a lot of therapy and reading a lot of DW to get me here.

kare said “In the past I’d get hung up on “should I text him? Will he text me? What does this emoji mean?”. That’s gone. I feel confident that we enjoy our time together, there’s no underlying anxiety when we are together, and when we are apart I feel just as happy.” This is how I feel with my boyfriend, and believe me, I never thought I’d find a relationship that doesn’t give me anxiety. If I had been on DW a few years ago, I’m sure I would’ve been writing in about stupid things and you guys would’ve said “MOA” so often it would’ve made your head spin. We all learn from our experiences, and that’s what makes it even more apparent when you finally do meet someone you click with. It just becomes easy. I’m sure distance is playing a role here too, veritek, so if things end I doubt the only reason would be because you are “too crazy”. (Which you’re not!) Hang in there.

I know I’ve said it a million times, but the same thing happened to me. We all have work to do on ourselves, and it’s really important to know you’re ok on your own. You have to get to that point in order to have a healthy relationship. If you skip it, you’ll have a rough time in your relationships, in my opinion.

Let’s not turn this into a pity party. Get some confidence. If you strike out on a date, move on to the next one. Remember you were only “dating” It is not the end of the world.

Why did you need to know you had to date him exclusively? ok don’t answer that. Don’t even date him anymore.

Look veritek33 ( and others), just stop overthinking and dwelling on things. You need to play the field. Date several guys and go out a couple of times a week with different people. Date someone who chases you a bit. Date locally. Keep dating locally, stop all this driving. Stop the tinder, sure there may be a relationship on there for a very small percentage of people but it is a hook up tool. Thats how 99 percent of guys ( and some girls ) look at it.

Keep it simple.

I will say that reading “Why Men Love Bitches” helped boost my confidence. Some of it induces eye-rolling, but there’s a lot of stuff that helped me feel more confident overall. I tend to be a pushover, and it helped me feel comfortable vocalizing my objections to everyone – friends, family, etc that I would inconvenience myself for over and over. I constantly felt like I had zero time to myself because I felt bad saying no to anything. So I recommend reading it if you have a moment. I found a free ecopy online.