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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1717031" data-attributes="member: 259">Ankh, I'm not gonna call her names or condemn her: she's in the same boat you're in.  That is, she's trying to figure out the nature of love and relationships.  And while I in no way belittle the love that teenagers feel, there's one aspect that it simply can't contain: Experience, and the wisdom that attains thereby. I learned a lot from my first relationship, to a great woman that I dated for two years, for whom I put off college for a couple of years so she could join me, whom I was certain I would marry, who ended up leaving me for an older woman after semicheating on me several times.   It took us a little over five years to get to the point where we're email friends, and I still think she's a great person, but looking back on that relationship through the lens of years, I shudder at how awful we were for one another.  We were both trying to figure out relationships, and we were both, necessarily, experimenting on one another (because how else to learn?), and we both hurt each other terribly, almost always without meaning to. So you're learning some lessons here.  One lesson to learn is--well, have you ever had a cut in a prominent place, and you couldn't stop yourself from picking at the scab?  The more you pick, the more infected that wound gets.  Though the temptation to tear the scab away, to worry it, to examine it is overwhelming, you gotta leave it be.   That doesn't mean don't think about it:  I may as well tell you not to blink.  That does mean trying to remove yourself from the situation, so that the wound isn't constantly reopened, so that your psyche has time to heal. Moving out is gonna be difficult.  Please, do it as soon as you can manage it.  You'll find yourself breathing fresh air that you'd forgotten existed. You don't need to write her off forever (though you may eventually decide to do that).  You really should consider at least a two-month period of silence, however.  Be aware that she may want it to be longer; she may need it to be years.  Respect that, much as it may hurt. I was convinced, when my first girlfriend broke up with me, that I would never love anyone else.  I thought it all through very carefully, and knew that that was the case, that it was darn near a mathematical impossibility for me to love anyone else. I was, thankfully, inexperienced in the ways of adult love.  I was wrong.  And my vast wrongness is the closest I can come to offering you comfort. Daniel</blockquote>

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