Recent break up & in love

Hi guys. I'm new on this forum. I really need to get the whole story out since I haven't found anyone who I want to share all the details with. I'm sorry about the long story, but I feel like you need to know everything to really grasp it all.

I was with my ex for 6 years. Let's call him Harry. We started dating when I was only 14, and now I'm 20. We started living together about 1,5 ago and during that time I also moved abroad for about 3 months. We were always close and had similar interests. The thing is, that he's really bad at making friends, and virtually everyone he knows he knows through me, and I was basically his only close friend he could speak to.

Also 1,5 ago I met someone new, let's call him Mark. It was in the introduction week of my study program, I was a volunteer and he was a freshman. There were hundreds of new people, but for some reason we started talking for a long time by the end of that day, something about him interested me. Then we didn't speak for several months, and got in touch again when we both joined the university's brand new theatre club. We started to become close friends, the weeks up to the performances the club meets about 3 hours a day so the contact is quite intensive. He gave a concert with his choir, I went to see it, met his parents, just as friends etc. I didn't have any feelings for him at all. Then when they were singing 'every little thing she does is magic' he just looked straight at me for most of the song and I was a bit confused about that. Months past, I went to live abroad, and during the week that I was back in town, the three of us (me, him and my then boyfriend) went to a bar and the subject fell on his ex girlfriend. With no particular reason in mind, I started teasing him a bit if there was anyone he was interested in now. He said, 'Well, there's this girl I really like but she's in a relationship I don't think she'll ever get out of, so..' while looking straight at me without blinking. My suspicions were becoming stronger. When I came back to the country, we started talking more again, he started texting me with the blush smileys and stuff, although he did keep his distance, he wasn't really pushy or anything. We worked on another performance recently, and I noticed I would constantly speak to him rather than the rest of our theatre group, and at one point the teacher even noticed I had a tendency to play with my ring (which I got from my boyfriend) and said jokingly 'Well you know what they say about people who play with their rings right? That they're insecure about their relationship. So you've been with Harry for quite a while now, maybe you should give Mark his shot!' And I didn't even respond at all, nor did Mark. We just kind of kept it hanging there. Why wasn't I denying it?

I started noticing that every time I considered breaking up with Harry over the years, my excuses were really bad. 'We're living together now and have pets together, it would be so inconvenient', 'I really care about him, maybe it's just normal that you stop feeling anything after a while', 'we're so invested in each other's lives and families by now, I couldn't miss them'. Also I noticed recently that maybe I was more in love with our story (first love, first kiss, surviving the distance etc.) than actually with him. I mean, it's normal that 'in love' shifts to 'loving' over the years, but it's not normal that you consider your significant other more like a brother than a lover.

I started to realise that I had feelings for Mark. And the minute I allowed myself to admit that, it overwhelmed me. I got the whole 'butterflies in my stomach, not being able to sleep or eat' experience that comes with falling in love, and I can't remember that I ever really had that feeling with anyone else. I admitted it to Harry on Wednesday, and we said we'd work through it. That night we had the performance, and during the after party I felt the constant need to talk to Mark, we said next to eachother, not even talking, and our upper legs touched and it just kind of gave me the shivers. By then I knew I wasn't able to just put my feelings away. They were too strong. The next day I talked to my best female friend about it for the whole day, and by the end of it I had determined it would be the best decision to break up my relationship of 6 years. I had plans to meet with Mark on the Sunday, and I was so scared it would go too far, and I was already feeling like I was cheating emotionally. I mean, I could've waited 'till Sunday and tell him my feelings and then when he'd say out loud he felt the same way, then break it up, but that wouldn't have been fair for any of us, really.

I broke up with him on Thursday night and he just took an hour or so for himself in the bedroom and then came out again and we just ate something and watched a show and it seemed kind of okay. The next day he became really angry, I went to sleep at my friend's house (the one who I talked to before breaking up) and even then he sent me some passive agressive messages. I kind of got where he was coming from, but I was also really angry because it didn't seem like he cared about my feelings at all. He was constantly trying to guilt trip me into getting back together with him, and got angry everytime I had told anyone about it, like if you just don't tell anyone it didn't happen.

The day after, we could kind of talk again, but he was really sad. I can understand that, of course. It's not like it's nothing. I slept in the living room. The next day I went to the event I was going to with Mark, like we had planned beforehand. We just had a casual day, nothing specific happened, we just had fun like we always do. I mean, I'm not going to kiss another guy even though I just broke up less than a week ago, even though I wanted to. I went back home, and now it's the day after. Harry is an absolute mess. He's sighing, saying depressed things to the cat and he knows I can hear him you know, it's pretty pathetic. I try talking to him, he just doesn't want to accept that it happened. He still hasn't told anyone, not even his parents. I want to give him some time, but I also want to move on, and I think that's best for him too. We are still living together and one of us needs to get another place, and I don't know how this works in your countries but over here, all the rental contracts start at the first of the month and that's in a few days. He doesn't want to talk about any of the practicalities, like who lives where, if we'll see eachother's pets. He thinks that he can just pretend it didn't happen, and he's lying in bed all day being a total trainwreck, even though he knows one of the reasons I think I stopped loving him was because he had been standing still for years (no hobbies, no friends, he should've graduated years ago but is still working on his thesis) and I'm having a fulfulling live. And we just didn't have anything to talk about for years you know, the most interesting thing he'd done all day was the laundry.

I care about him a lot, I'd like to keep in touch. All my friends consider him their friend too, and I'd like to keep seeing the cat as well. But right now we just need to take some action, and I don't know how I can make that clear to him. I'm in a really confused place right now, I want to move on and I'd like to be with the guy I'm in love with in the future, but my ex just doesn't allow me because he's so emotionally clingy. I constantly try to talk about it and then he just pulls the blanket over his head. I mean we're adults, he's in fact much older than me but I still feel like I'm the mature one. Like I said, he has absolutely no one next to me but I can't be held personally responsible for his happiness.

Thanks for reading my story. Please share me some of your advice or support if you want to :)

Hi there. The problem whit Harry is also your fault cause if i can see correctly you guys din`t spoke so much about the problems in your relation ship. Now of course and is normal that you got in love whit some one new, who has something new to offer. But be careful not to become an exact relation ship you had whit Harry. Now the part that your ex is depressed,, well what do you expect after all this time how can he tacking this news good... Just saying, not to mention that right now the only good friend that he has is the cat. Now that you guys broke up the best move was that you should leave the apartment cause if i was Harry i will have the same feelings of sadness. Just imagine that the girl you love for this long to go on a other date whit a other guy and then to come home. You want him to move one? Move from there. Give him some space. Good luck :) My best regards, Leo.