eh, maybe there's kernels of wisdom y'all can take from my story
february of my first year of college my long-distance high school sweetheart (read: we were long-distance before college, we weren't high school classmates who became long-distance from college) broke up with me a week after we finally met in person. very amicable, no arguments, she just felt the spark was gone. even though it was probably one of the 'best' kinds of breakup you could have, second only to mutual feelings of the spark being gone, it took months (and even worse things happening in my life) to really move on from the heartbreak. like, y'all, i had plans of proposing to this woman after college, and the only reason i was waiting that long was because a previous relationship made me uneasy about moving too fast
i think what made it harder to deal with though was that i felt i couldn't bring it up with some of my closest friends, because we were in a small discord server with one member who... always kinda had it out for my ex. for no good reason. for context, these friends, my ex, and i (and a bunch of other folks i knew online at the time) were the people i knew through blogging about the sims. and the friend in question was always critical of everything my ex posted to her blog. it was weird. actually, this person was like that about a lot of other users my age, too (as someone... several years older than us). except for me. mostly. anyway, i didn't bring up the breakup with that friend group for a veeery long time because i really wasn't interested in what that friend would have to say about it.
(said 'friend' is an ex-friend now, don't worry)
so i mostly brought it up with people completely removed from the situation, when i brought it up at all, that is. and i feel like a lot of people just, like... can't wrap their heads around somebody not hating their ex. like, there were times i had to, mid-heartbreak, defend her against people who didn't know her because the assumption was always that it was a conflict they had to pick a side in, and it really wasn't that at all! and sometimes people straight up wouldn't believe me when i said that that wasn't the case!
but that was almost 6 years ago at this point (...how has it been that long). i've moved on, and honestly, reflecting on it, we probably wouldn't have lasted long as an adult couple regardless. my only regret, really, is that i got too deep into my feelings to maintain a friendship with her. anyway, now i'm chasing after one of my friends from college, but my hopeless romantic antics keep getting intercepted by boring adult things...