Its been almost a year since I found RP after a shitty breakup.

In that last year I started working out more seriously, I started eating right and more, and I started cultivating a relationship with my spirituality (christianity). I had sex with 5 girls so n=8. I've made so many more friendships and I think I have increased the quality of many I already had. I earned a good sum of money to give myself more freedom. To top all of that off I traveled as much as I possibly could. This year alone I went to 4 states, 3 different countries and did what I love most in a good chunk of them, surfed or skated.

Then there are a bunch of things that I am not quite so proud of. I still live at home, I'm 22 and I really want to get the fuck out of the house. I got worse grades in school this year than normal (college), I didnt get into the classes I needed to this year to get into grad school, delaying my application another year in a college that I have been grinding at the last 4 years to keep above a 3.5 gpa. I still haven't found out if grad school is still something I definitely want to do, this doubt only came after not getting into classes. I stopped working out when I began traveling. I didn't hookup with as many girls as I wanted to, failing majorly sometimes. I generally feel as though I don't know how to "game" women even after devouring so much of the manosphere. My typical game is just being myself which is cocky, funny, crude, sexual all the while keeping in mind TRP to make small tweaks. Theres still something missing in that though, maybe more social proof is all I need.

Anyway lets get down to why Im even making this post in the first place. My birthday was a couple days ago. All I did was post the date filter thing on snapchat and real quick my ex (who I am not friended with on snapchat) snaps a pic of herself and her dog saying "happy birthday name, glad to see you've been doing so well. hope your day is great" I replied with a snap of myself smiling saying thanks name because I figure after a year its probably best to not still seem butthurt by not responding or replying short answers to all her other shit.

Anyway this was meaningless until it got me thinking why the fuck would she send this. I think I know exactly why, just to test the waters, maybe to shed some guilt, maybe to hopefully get some validation? She didnt respond to my thanks so who knows.

Then I fucked up, looked around and found out she's no longer with the dude she branch swung to, she's with another dude she branch swung to from the last guy. This fucked me up. I didnt realize I still felt feelings for her until I saw a pic of her with a dude 5 years older.

So heres my problem. My mind will start to wander off, Im pretty much reminded of her everyday by something. Then my mind will do the rose colored glasses thing Im sure you're all aware of and it will start to feel like it did originally, like I lost a fucking unicorn. Then I started to really feel bad, like its all my fault, like I'm not worthy of love if it doesn't come from the one I gave everything to. This comes from a sense of needing to feel validated, which Im struggling letting go of.

I mean who doesn't want to feel validated? How the fuck is someone supposed to let go of something that is so instinctually ingrained in us which is to be a valuable resource to the tribe?

I love validation, and so do you. But how do I let go of that? Theres so much talk about not needing anyones opinion of you to matter, go do whatever you want and fuck off whoever doesn't like it. Well guess what, thats bullshit. How do you have your jobs? How do you have your friends? Because you were fucking validated overall by them to be a good man for the role. Someone please explain to me how to lose this need for validation because I LOVE when I am validated by a friend, lover, parent, coworker. ESPECIALLY when its on something Im proud of myself or am really into.

I just want to let go of the need for validation, not only to relieve some anxiety but also to let go of needing it from the ex I dated for 4 years. Its been a year now and this relapse has felt like its set me back a lot.