This was a recent experience of mine that I thought I might share to help any fellows going through something similar.

I am 18 years old. Since I was 15 uears old I had considered dating, love, etc. to be a farce and a lie, as I had been mildly studying neurochemistry and evolutionary psychology. At 16, I found MGTOW philosophy and delved deeper into evolutionary psychology, particularly the gendered psychology of attraction and relationships. I took AP Psychology for only this reason.

I was well entrenched and primed against the concepts of love and relationships, knowing that they only exist to compel breeding and the phenylethylamine wears off after 5 years. I knewthe statistics, I knew the error management theory, I knew Diogenes and Aurelius, etc. Then, as high school was coming to a close, I found myself feeling something uncharacteristic of myself towards some chick, and I started berating myself. I couldn't sleep, so I spent my nights running, thinking, and I contacted all of the people I knew who were educated on the subject - a few of them phd students. Eventually I came to the conclusion that if I just confessed everything to her, she would reject me because she was already in a relationship and it would be over. I felt I had a duty to do this because one of my key principles is frankness.

Well, I got a little unlucky with timing, or maybe she was orchestrating some shit, I don't know, but she didn't reject me. My plan fell apart and I was sucked in. I came to eventually embrace oneitis, because for the first time in my life the theory didn't seem to apply.

I wasn't entirely unlucky though - I had an ace in the hole. A plane ticket across the country, scheduled for 12 days later. I said my goodbye, but she insisted that we stay in contact. Alright, I was okay with that, because she was making me happy while I was with her.

So then I flew across the country, and I was in for a world of pain. Long distance sucks ass, because I knew she was just going to find someone else - the first and most important part of attraction formation is proximity. We kept in contact for a while, and I was dying inside not being with her. I was simping really hard, in short. I forced myself to say an early goodbye, earlier than she expected, because the knowledge that there would be one eventually was destroying me. I gave a last ditch "will you promise to wait for me" letter, and she said she couldn't make that promise. An expected answer, woman's love is less committal than man's love. I was ruined by saying goodbye, and I couldn't tell it was the right choice. I felt like there was a mistake somewhere, but I couldn't tell where. It especially sucked because (as expected) she was basically unphased.

Well, weeks later, I'm still in a pretty depressed mood and I was texting a friend who also happened to be my now-ex's best friend, and she offhandedly mentions that I, "...wasn't the only one being strung along." Click. That one piece of information, and all of the theory snapped into place. It made sense, and was one of the things that I had berated myself for before I got involved.

And so I became elated. I was right, you guys were right, Colttaine was right, the theory was right, and I figured out where the mistake was: I should've just listened to myself. She wasn't "the one," no such thing exists. Love is indeed a neurochemical lie. Evolution encourages cheating on the part of women because they are playing a resource game. And, of course...

AWALT.

EDIT: Thank you for silver!