Really confused!!!!!

[munchymonster]

I have been with my current boyfriend for 5 years now. The first three years were really rocky. We argued all the time and broke up a lot but now we are living together and we are getting on really well and I am enjoying being with him.

However, I keep having an issue with my first love which is annoying the hell out of me. I went out with this guy for 15 months when I was 16. At the time, he made it VERY clear I was his world and that I was his ONE. He used to write me love poems and gave me an eternity ring. However, being only 16, I found it all a bit too much and broke up with him.

After we broke up, I was depressed for a year. I missed him so much and wanted him back. I couldn't believe I had let this amazing thing we had get thrown away.

After we broke up, he was never the same with me and dispite my numerous attempts to give it another go, he didn't speak to me properly for two years afterwards.

After this, we started chatting again, and we met up a couple of times and had sex and I really wanted him back. He was going out with someone else at the time and I was so shocked that he didn't break up with her for me after so many times he had said to me that I was his "ONE".

EIGHT YEARS ON!!! and we are still in a really unhealthy cycle. It goes in a number of phases. We won't talk for ages. He gets in contact with me and flirts loads and says how much I mean to him and how he will never love someone as much as me. I start to get feelings back and start enjoying talking to him. He eases off and I am left feeling like I really miss him again and just want to be able to be in contact with him. I give up, get over it, and we don't talk again for ages and then THE SAME CYCLE HAPPENS ALL OVER AGAIN!!!

I feel like a complete idiot really that I am still falling for this cycle with him even after eight years.

I can't work out whether it is him I love, the old him that I love (that 16 year old girl who misses him - pineing for him) or whether its the IDEA of him that I love.

The bloke I am with at the moment is amazing but he has NEVER shown me the extent of his love that my first boyfriend did. Plus, my new boyfriend and I live 4 hours away from my parents which I would eventually like to move closer to and sometimes I think that my current boyfriend does not love me enough to do that for me. Sometimes, no matter how much we get on and have a laugh, there is this voice at the back of my head telling me, I am not his one.

Sometimes I think I fantasise about the possibility of my first boyfriend coming back and "saving me" as in we fall deeply in love and I can move back down to my family and I won't need to worry about my insecurity with my current boyfriend anymore.

A lot is going on there....

Can anyone understand what is going on here and what I should do?

[Gigabitch]

You will probably never find the same intensity of that first love, that puppy love where neither of you have ever been hurt before so you act like absolute fools. That's probably a good thing. In my opinion, any guy out of high school who acts like that is mentally unbalanced.

You want a fairy tale. Don't give up a perfectly good thing for a fairy tale, munchy, because what you're missing isn't something that's meant to last into adulthood.

[xxazurexx]

Yeah I agree ^
You likely won't ever find what you had with the first love with anyone else....I never did anyway.

Hell, I always thought of mine and still do on occasion and like in your instance, my first love was in the picture and for a few years after it ended... but it didn't stop me from forming other relationships, going on to get married, have a child and all the other stuff.

Why give something up, on the offchance you will get back with him?

Life moves on.

[angel2002]

If you dont love this current boyfriend break up. If you feel those things for your first love, its not worth being with a man that cant make u forget it. I went through the same thing. I ended up getting pregnant of a boyfriend loving other guy, And i never ever could love my kid's father the same way, with same intensity as my first love.
Today I am not with my kids father, neither love my first love anymore, I realized its all a fantasizing that i made in my mind. I ended up with a child of a man i never loved, raising the kid by myself.
Not saying you will be dumb enough to make the same mistake as i did.
Just be alone, to think bout what you really want. You need it. You actually need to understand what are these mixed feelings you have.
Good luck

[munchymonster]

hey thanks for your responses everyone
i ended up speakin to my ex about everything because i was feeling really confused and we have always had a very open relationship. and it made it clear in my head why we have never managed to get back together.
he knows he absolutely loves me and cant see me unless he knows he can kiss and hug me and stuff coz otherwise its too hard for him.
on the other hand, i cant really be like that with someone i have not been with for 8 years and would need to take things slower so until a compromise is made on this front, it dont look like nething will happen in the near future.
i do love my current boyfriend but sometimes i do wish he was a bit more romantic. i have suggested "date nite" to him where we can both dress up for eachother and spend quality time with eachother to try and keep that flame going between us. i hope it works coz i cant imagine not being with him to be with my ex sometimes. i think my ex just gives me that romance that i crave sometimes and also coz he lives near my family, it makes me feel like that would solve that whole issue as well!! lol. sounds a bit wrong.
my ex said he would wait for me forever (!!!!!) which is really sweet but.... i think ill give this date nite a go with my man at the moment and see if we can rekindle the romance.
thanks guys!