Not over him?

what ifs and if onlys are a waste of time and life.
tbh its sounds like you're better off without him.
decent people dont disappear for lengths of time like you describe regardless of their job.

grieve for what might have been if you like but then move on and get on with your life.

I think it sounds like he was in a relationship all along OP, while he was ‘with’ you. I’m sorry to be harsh, but was he ever really ‘with’ you. I’m afraid I get the feeling that he saw you during the down period of an up and down relationship. I don’t think it was ever a real relationship between you two.

I don’t say that to be cruel, but to say that I think you need to re-examine this ‘relationship’ that you’re pining over. I’m not sure it was ever real.

The biggest twist to me here is that you’re with someone...who wants you...and you’re still pining over a lad who clearly didn’t give a slithery **** about you...four years ago.

Something isn’t right there OP. There are issues jumping off the page here and tbh you sound like you could be a ticking timebomb to end up seriously hurting the guy you’re with, who barely gets a mention here, and then making the whole problem a million times worse. These issues going unchecked are how people end up becoming the bad guys themselves to other people and falling down a rabbit hole. Get yourself to a counsellor ASAP and figure this out. None of this is normal.

I definitely think it's fair to wonder why you'd wonder "what could've been" with this guy who didn't seem to care about you at all, to the point of needing to post and seek advice, when you have a partner now who presumably does. A counsellor would help you get to the bottom of these issues. Their job isn't to 'be honest' with you, their job is to help you figure it out for yourself. And pining after someone that doesn't seem that significant, wondering what could've been etc, when that person is almost definitely not thinking of you IS odd when you've got someone else now. It suggests something is up internally with your ability to receive love in a healthy manner, and that stuff can go back to childhood or bad relationships in your past.

I get the 'jolt' you get when you see an ex get married. That's natural. I got it myself when I saw a person I was in a serious relationship got married a while back. But yeah, I was in a serious relationship with that person, we had our future children's names picked like. They didn't treat me badly, disappear for 3 months then say I was only a 'call buddy'. If someone did that to me, it'd certainly sting if I had high hopes for sure, but I wouldn't be asking myself "what could've been" four years later when happy with someone else.

You can choose to try shrug that off and pretend that it means nothing if you like. But ignoring those issues instead of asking questions is exactly how people end up waking up beside someone else out of the blue, or mistreating a decent person who only committed the crime of liking them. You're asking questions now, that's good, and you're getting answers. But why are you so resistant to the idea of speaking to someone and getting to the bottom of these lingering feelings, again for someone who didn't like you that much, if this is significant enough for you to post here?

Ursus Horribilis wrote: »

And as you've found out, he didn't wait around too long when he did meet the woman he liked enough. I would bet every penny I have that once he met his now wife, his job didn't cause him to "disappear" or be too busy to text/call/meet up.

I wouldn't be surprised if he was with the woman he married in 2017 when he met the OP in 2014. When somebody is flaky like he was with the OP in 2014 there is a good chance that they are involved with somebody else and these people often don't stop cheating once they get married.

OP you are with someone now. Forget the past and focus on your current relationship. Consider it a lucky escape from the guy from 2014, he is probably not the faithful type.

If somebody turns up drunk or otherwise at an ungodly hour it's a booty call.

I'll go a different way so, OP.

I remember we were having a big get together with a group of mates one year. A girl I'd casually dated but finished with was due to come. I'd been told but it didn't bother me, it didn't bother me that much if she was there while we were dating if I'm perfectly honest (I hadn't mistreated her, I had tried, it just wasn't there and I perhaps kept it going on too long because I'd gotten on so well with her friends and the social setup around it...who ironically I kept in the divorce). She showed up, I could tell she'd made an effort to look ****hot, made a point of saying hello and do the whole "show him what he's missing girl" deal and made a few choice digs throughout the night. All of it bounced off me because I just didn't care about her, I never had that much. I felt more sad for her at the end because I could tell it just hit her there that I didn't care and that I never had. There wasn't a trick she could pull that'd make that happen, lord knows she tried them all.

Do you wanna be like that? The person who thinks of it as this big thing when the other person barely remembers it happening? Your thread title is "Not over him", then it comes out that it wasn't that serious, it happened four years ago, and you have a new boyfriend for over 3 years now!

It's seriously time to let go of this fantasy OP. People don't go missing for 3 months on people that matter to them. There is no "What could've been". It could never have been anything because, I'm sorry, you never were anything to him. But you ARE something to someone now yet are still posting and thinking, years later, about this guy. You absolutely should be over him by now and whatever is stopping you from doing so is entirely in your head and not grounded in the reality of the situation. That's why I think it's about something else that's worth exploring and that this forum cannot just snap you out of it with some snappy advice.

I think people are being a bit harsh on the OP. I don’t like when people say, you ‘should’ be this, you ‘should’ be that, you ‘should’ be over someone by now. We are all different, we all feel & process things differently. We have no idea what went on with this person and this guy.

Yes it’s probably healthier to do this or that, but most people have their own messed up ways of dealing with things. They should really teach people how to have (all types of) relationships in school and how to deal with feelings and messed up upbringings - but they don’t. We all bumble through these things and (hopefully) figure things out eventually.

But having said all that there is a reason why certain people stick out in our minds and in our love histories. Have a read of this article from Psychology Today about why we obsess over people who don’t want us - https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mysteries-love/201610/why-we-obsess-over-people-who-dont-want-us%3famp. So what the OP is feeling is not that strange after all.

Good to hear, OP. It’s not narcissistic to say that at all, I think Irishness makes us a bit bashful when saying positive things about ourselves (‘notions’ and all that), but it’s a good thing to know your value and make that high.

For what it’s worth, I find that rather comparing ex’s new partners to us, it’s a lot better to see things as a mutual ‘click’. If we say “There must be something wrong with me and better about them” when an ex rejects us and makes it work with someone else, it assumes that ex is perfect, which they’re not. Sometimes people just mess up and don’t realise what they had, often people have unhealthy attachment styles and are attracted to people that are bad for them and sometimes it’s two decent, healthy people who try but it just doesn’t work because they’re not compatible on complex levels they can’t control. It clicked for this guy and his partner when they met, same way it clicked for you and yours. There’s nothing necessarily ‘wrong’ with either of you. His judgement doesn’t define how valuable you are as a partner and it’s a choice to give him that mental power over you. So realise that, if that is so, it’s also a choice you can make to take that power away and choose to define yourself as something other than “the girl this guy didn’t want.”