Its been almost 5 years....

Regret is such an awful emotion. It gnaws away at your well-being and keeps you from living in the present.

You cannot change the past. It's heartbreaking, but it's also liberating. You have to let go. And one way to do this is to act. You need to engage, have things you're working on (hobbies, projects, exercise, a course of study...), something to keep you from sitting alone in a vicious cycle of self-loathing and rehashing the past. Starting over again doesn't happen with a leap, it's with one small step, and then another... Someone who can feel as deeply as you do has a lot of worth, a lot to give to the world. Wishing you the strength to take those steps, man. Good luck.

 

I am going the same way, it has been 2 years for me. I hope you manage to get over it somehow.

 

There was a period of time where I was in a similar situation. It took me about 5 years to fully start letting go because I loved her, and will always love her, so much.
My father fell into this same mind state. Addiction began to run his life and he became a real ugly person to be around. When my mother finally left him he got completely stuck and spiraled In unacceptance. He never left that period of time, he was stuck in 1997 and still is all the way here in 2020. When I began seeing a similar thing happen to me started searching in myself to find answers because I didn’t want to end up like my father. My PMO addiction was ramping up big time as well as smoking weed and drinking all the time.
I was too prideful to go see a professional therapist I can honestly admit so I began therapy through meditation, reading, and building friendships with people who I didn’t have to bond through addiction with.
Here’s the truth that I came to.

The idea in our head, of who we are and what we have, is just a story.. Our lens on life is only our own and out of billions of people everyone has their own. When we become so wrapped up in who we were, what we had, how we did it, we stop living in the moments we have today. The opportunities in front of us, and we start immortalizing the past. We can’t forgive ourselves for what happened or how it happened and need to find a fault to make it fit our limited selfish view on it. Either with them, or with the world, or with us.

But that duality of the other and I is an illusion built off misunderstanding. It comes from an inability to see the bigger picture because we are so immersed in our view, in our own persona. The bigger picture here is that there may or may not have been an opportunity to be with this person for the rest of your life. But you have to see where you are right now. The fact that what happened to you needed to happen to you and it happened because of decisions you made. Those decisions set into effect a chain of events that steer your life path always in the course of growth and learning. Sometimes painful growth.. many times in ways we don’t want but often need.
The person who can come to this acceptance and conclusion gives themselves an open door through which to take life and love back into themselves. And they grow.
The one who refuses lives in a shadow of the past that never really was, but only in their mind. A fairy tale conjured up in their lens built in their own world of denial and inability or unwillingness to learn.
My father was never able to accept his participation in the unfolding of events. It was always something or someone else’s fault and he spiraled into addiction to the point of losing contact with everyone he once loved or cared about.
I’m sure she was and is a lovely woman and the way to honor both you and her in the best possibility is to grow from what you two had. Even if you wish it wasn’t, it is. And you have only two choices, grow or wilt from it. Become stronger and a better man or let this gift of love and heartbreak(yes a gift) become squandered and live in denial, guilt, and sadness. Take the experience to come into something so much more, despite any age. Maybe seek someone to talk to if you can. Whether you think it’s possible or not, you will be right.
I wish you well.

 

dude you fucked her for 13 years, dont be greedy. someone else needed her more