I (20F) can’t stop comparing myself to the guy who ghosted me’s new girlfriend and it’s messing with my self-esteem.
Freshman year of college I met this guy. We only talked for about 2.5 weeks, but he was my first kiss, first guy I held hands with, first guy I ever really hung out with romantically, etc. I wasn’t allowed to date in high school, so this was my first real romantic experience and I got attached pretty quickly.
The problem is the whole “relationship” was very one-sided. I was always asking personal questions to get to know him, planning hangouts, and asking for effort/communication. He never really initiated anything. He ghosted me three times.
The second time he ghosted me was especially painful because the next day I was supposed to lose my virginity to him. After two days of silence on his end, we talked and he called me “overbearing” and said we should go our separate ways.
After things ended, I spent months crying over him. My grades slipped, my self-esteem tanked, and I kept replaying everything wondering if I ruined it by being “too much.”
Eventually I moved on and deleted everything, but two nights ago I randomly checked his Instagram and saw he now has a girlfriend. They’ve been together for months and seeing all their pictures together (dates, trips, holidays, Yankees games, saying “I love you,” etc.) reopened the wound.
What hurts isn’t even that I want him back. I don’t. It’s more like seeing him give another girl the exact type of relationship I wanted from him made me question why I wasn’t “good enough” for that. Especially because I was miserable after the situation while he seemingly moved on easily and became a good boyfriend for someone else.
I keep wondering if I had acted differently or been less anxious/emotional, maybe I would’ve been in her position instead. At the same time, part of me knows I was mostly reacting to inconsistency and mixed signals.
Has anyone else experienced something like this? How do you stop tying your self-worth to how someone treated you in a short situationship?