The Year of Heartbreak: How My First Love Broke My Heart and How My Break Up Cost Me All My Friends

Hi, I rarely post, but I just need a place to release and tell my story. I apologize for the length of this saga, and if you read to the very end I dearly appreciate your time.

Summer of 2016, I met a guy through mutual friends and we hit it off strong. It wasn’t long before we became a couple. We lived in different cities an hour drive apart. We were long distance for a year, and in August 2017 I moved to his city to be with him. I got my own apartment and new job. He was my first love and my first in everything. Life was good.

Until March 2018. He broke up with me, and it shattered me. I had to take off work for the remainder of that week, and I just cried. Since the break up, we’ve rarely talked, and most of our messages had been about picking our items up at each other’s places. I’ve also kept my feelings about the break up and my ex very private, and the people I had talked about my break up with are not mutual friends or have never met him.

Since my break up, my romance life has been… weird. I had 15 guys hit me up, tried flirting with me, or asked me out (and these aren’t random guys. These are guys who are friends or friends of friends. I’m not including random guys who hit on me at the bars). I don’t consider myself sexy or hot. Sometimes I think I can be cute, though I’m not flirty. In high school and college, I wasn’t the girl guys were falling for. Maybe it’s because my friends and I are all anime/fantasy/gaming nerds, and I’m approachable, so these nerd guys are hyping me up because they know they can easily talk to me? Anyway, from June to September, I had a fling with one of these guys, though it didn’t work out due to different work schedules and both of us having health problems at the time.

While all the guys from my group of friends were trying to hit me up, a weird shift happened with my female friends. My friends (who are also friends with my ex) live in the city I moved from, and I haven’t really made any friends in this new city. Normally we would all get together at least once a month, but a few months past my break up I noticed I was being invited less and less. I was getting a bad feeling. I’ve heard rumors that some of the girls are crushing on my ex, and yea I’d understand girls liking him, but I wouldn’t have ever thought it would mean I would be excluded from the whole group.

Mid September, my friends were invited to a wedding held in the city I reside in. After the reception, one of my guy friends (who yes had tried asking me out) invited me to join them at the bars. When I showed up, most of my friends left shortly after I’d arrived, some seemed uncomfortable talking to me, and my ex and his best friend were there too. I told the few (male) friends remaining that I wanted to leave and get away from my ex. We ended up going to a different bar. Later that night, when I was drunk, I ran into my ex’s best friend who was also drunk and alone. Oh boy…

My ex’s best friend is currently married and just had his first kid back in the summer. He got with his now wife the day before my ex and I got together. Before he got with his wife, he'd told me he liked me, but I didn’t feel the same for him. So that night when we were both drunk, he told me that sometimes he wishes he had tried to pursue me more instead of ending up with his now wife. No, nothing sexual happened, and I was appalled by what he said. I mean, who says that to someone?! (His wife hates me btw. I kinda knew that when she complained to my then boyfriend that she didn't want me alone with her husband. I also found out after my break up that she told my ex multiple times to break up with me when we were together. I never pursued her husband and never had any feelings for him.) I stupidly told my ex what his friend said to me, and he didn’t really respond. Yea, that was probably a mistake to tell him that.

So, life went on and continued to be shitty. Was laid off at my job, and I’ve been dealing with apartment problems. In November, I made another mistake. I texted my ex that I missed him. It was a bad conversation:

Me: Hey

Him: Hello

Me: How are you?

Him: Fine, how are you?

Me: I miss you

Him: I’m aware of that

(Here, I was like “… what?”)

Me: How?

Him: From what I’ve been told you talk about it a lot of the people we both know.

(I was really confused here because I never told anybody about my ex)

Me: But I don’t talk to anyone but [Friend 1] and [Friend 2]

Him: You had at the bars after [groom’s] wedding. A bunch people told me it’s all you’d talk about that night.

Me: Uh…no. I was with [Friend 3], [his brother], and [his friend] the whole night. Everyone else I just said hi and nothing else.

Him: Well what’s it fucking matter. I’m aware you miss me and I don’t care. I don’t miss you.

Honestly, I didn't know what hurt more: what he said or finding out what people were saying about me. Like I wrote earlier, I’ve never discussed my feelings about my ex with anyone he knows or our mutual friends. I don’t remember everything I said to his best friend the night of the wedding, and maybe it’s possible I said I missed him while I was drunk. But I did NOT go around telling everyone that night I missed him. So this whole time my “friends” have been making up things about me and telling said lies to my ex. It’s heartbreaking, especially since I tried burying my feelings about my ex so much, and instead of reaching out to me about it, my “friends” told my buried feelings to my ex without even knowing how I felt.

This story is about to come to an end. After losing my female friends, the male guys slowly went away. During Thanksgiving week, I went back home and saw a few of my guy friends. All of them tried to hit on me, and I finally came to the conclusion that these guys were only talking to me in hopes for some action instead of caring about our friendship. So now I’m talking to them less and less each day. As a result now… I have no real friends.

In the end, I’m not seeking advice how to fix things. I know this is the end for my ex and my friends. I’m just in mourning. I think I need to mourn before I can really move on. I know I need to make a new start and make new friends. It just… sucks. Right now, I’m not ready to date, and I need to focus on myself and be selfish for a while. I’m not moving back home, since there’s nothing to move back to. I just really hope 2019 is a better year. Thank you for reading.