I feel like such a fucking tool right now.

I have a female friend and back last year I met one of her friends out one night. We hit things off well and started talking. Turns out this girl was recently out of a relationship. The ex dumped her over something dumb and was cheating on her with another girl.

Me and new girl hang out a couple times and end up banging one night. I try to set up a date with her soon after but she gets weird then ghosts. I ask my friend and it turns out the ex got dumped by the new girl so he came crawling back and she took him back.

Fast forward about 4 months and they break up again.

After I hear they split I wait a month or 2 then start messaging her on facebook. We exchange numbers and soon after go out on a date and things went well and we start talking. She says she wont go back to him, he tried to come back and she turned him down. She told him to leave her alone and she needs time to heal. I try and hang out with her again and she gets flaky.

The other night her friend invites her to the hot tub and we're all hanging out in there. I start touching her and kissing her. She gets weird and says she is talking to someone and can't kiss me. I say I'll do what I want and she says wow I kind of want to kiss you now. We start kissing for a bit and she says she is talking with the ex again. That they decided to just talk for a month then see what happens. That we shouldn't date or kiss right now because she doesn't want to hurt me or lead me on. We kiss some more and she says she has to go she has to work in the morning.

I walk her to her car and she says she cares about me and will always be my friend. We end up going back to her place. We get there and we end up making out a bunch on her bed, I go down to the goods below and she says stop, we can't, I'm talking with my ex. With that we go to bed. The next morning she says we can't hang out, she's talking with her ex. We have some small talk then when I'm about to leave she kisses me.

I feel like an idiot. This exact same thing has happened twice now. This girl will not move on from her ex. I think she is attracted to me, but this ex of years has a huge emotional pull on her. I did fall for her pretty quickly. It sucks because I feel if the timing was different and she actually emotionally healed then we would be great together, we click so well.

But I don't see how I could ever date this girl seriously now. She will probably just up and leave again. And I feel like if I give her another chance then I'm just going to look desperate at that point and that I will take her back no matter what. Deep down I know I just need to ghost and hard next as much as I can via social circle. But if I'm honest I feel extremely hurt and played. I thought the second time would be different. Maybe I'm just blue pilled or "beta" but the whole thing has me so down because I had a thing for this girl.