I went through something very similar with my first "real" relationship. She was the world to me, and even a year later, while dating other people, I would still think about her because we remained in contact with each other. Sometimes the contact went well, other times it was disastrous. We eventually went without speaking for almost a year, and now we are casual acquaintances. At the time, I was devastated, but now I'm with the girl of my dreams and am glad that my past relationships didn't work out. I've learned a few things in my somewhat limited relationship experiences that have helped me work things out over the last few years.
1. There is a huge difference between being in love with someone and being in love with how they made you feel. After about a year of pining away and thinking about my ex constantly, I realized that I wasn't still in love with her, I just missed the good times we had and how those good times made me feel. Focusing on those feelings can make you feel good temporarily, but it can also hinder your ability to fully enjoy making new experiences and memories with other people.
2. On feelings and looking back at past relationships, I all too often look at past relationships in a onesided manner. Either I look back and think: "man, that was great"
or I think: "What was I thinking, they were horrible to me." Looking at the big picture of a past relationships is important. There are things that happen in every relationship that are "good" and "bad." Focusing merely on one or the other of these facets does not allow you to evaluate what happened, and usually leads to prolonged dwelling on how good you felt or how bad you felt.
3. Regardless of the outcome, you can learn something from every relationship (or interaction with another person for that matter). What you choose to do with this knowledge is completely up to you.
4. Time does heal all things. It won't happen overnight, it may not happen by the end of the week, or the end of the month, but eventually if this person is not meant to be a part of your life you will find yourself thinking about them less and less, and missing them less and less. Eventually they will become fleeting thoughts with little or no emotional attatchment.
5. (since all good lists should have five points) If they've left you out of interest for someone else, that's their choice. There's nothing that can be done about it, and it's not because of anything you did or didn't do. It's just their shit. If they ran out on you, they're not worth thinking about, not the other way around.
Good luck figuring everything out. Sorry if I've rambled on, I'm in the middle of a long distance relationship (several continents apart long distance), miss her terribly, and have been doing a lot of thinking about a lot of different things lately, including all of this stuff. Welcome to the TFP, you'll be hard pressed to find a community full of amazing, supportive, and knowledgeable folks anywhere.
