I’m going to try and be coherent and to the point as possible since I’m feeling very confused.

TLDR: I need help finding the strength not to look around social media on an ex when I know it’s going to hurt me and leave me in bed crying and also knowing if he wasn’t a good man to be with. ——

My relationship that was traumatic to me ended in 2016. That’s along time ago. I broke down after it and got into therapy and still go (took a break in there for a bit but back). While it was always still sad if I thought about it I was getting over it but it’s reared it’s head with a vengeance.

I cannot stop thinking about it and I have been crying for daysssss. I’m stuck on if he was not a good person truly or if I just made him that way or if that wasn’t happening at all and it was the two of us together that was bad. He found his next relationship and lined it up before we totally broke up and they’ve been together since and have bought a house and moved in together (he also lined me up exiting his relationship before but I didn’t know that at the time). I bet they are engaged or married and I know if I check social media by looking for it I will make myself feel worse. I don’t know where this is coming from. Please remind me not to do this.

It’s bothering me that he’s killing it in his career and has a full rich life and I can’t seem to get there. At that time I was a pickme without knowing but now I’m focusing on myself etc. But I lost a lot of friends bc I had to clean house. I work and live on my own but that’s all that’s going ‘right’. If he was truly a LVM why would he be doing so so well?

He lied a lot and I was always confused and felt bad but I think I deserved it probably because I wasn’t an innocent saint and he was just like that with me and someone else is getting him as a good person.

I guess despite my best efforts I can’t make a good life for myself and I had an abusive upbringing. This is mainly what I’m in trauma therapy for. I’ll never fully recover so it’s like I have to sit here in the shame of that while being jealous of him as a person. It’s a mess. I also feel ashamed of how I acted when we were together and that time of my life. I acted reactively a lot bc of my past. I take responsibility, hence the therapy.

Some of the things he did were lie to me, talk to other girls, we were on and off and he would sleep with other girls, did party drugs, got me a gift but then wouldn’t give it to me because I didn’t deserve it cause how I was acting. But the thing that stands out to me is when we first starting talking he was in the states for a business trip. He met up with a girl he had broken up with maybe a month before to have a conversation. When we chatted on the phone he said “do you believe me when I say nothing happened between us today?” I said no. He said “that’s a bigger problem then, nothing did”. My gut told me differently and he convinced me out of my feelings point blank on purpose. He clung to that story for 1.5 years until one day in a fight I dragged it out of him and he admitted he lied. Does this count as gaslighting? Does it matter if we were just “taking”?

Despite all this, feeling that it’s my fault somehow is back and it’s really taking me down. I thought I moved forward I don’t know what’s going on. If anything from that time in my life went right I think I would be able to move on but nothing did. I got fired, lost friends, apartment, you name it. So I feel ashamed and I have nothing to show for it.

Sorry this isn’t very clear. I hope I get some replies even if it’s to just talk it out.