Hey Great News!!! I saw your post and I LOVE telling the story of how my first love broke my heart and how I got over her!
I’ll keep it short and sweet, we only dated a year, we ended up in different colleges and she later started a secret correspondence with her old fling, they never met or had sex, but it was what you would call emotional cheating for a couple months. Anyways, after I found out the relationship was rocky for a few more months with breakups and get back togethers, and keep in mind this was my first love who I had put my self worth into. Finally we broke up, I became depressed, dropped out of my wonderful college, and went home. But there were a few things that really helped me. 1) I kept hearing so many stories about everyone else’s first love they broke up with and how they were so distraught when only a year or two later they met their future spouse who was (obviously) head and shoulders above their old fling.
2) I kept a blog, it was lame and probably arrogant to think that my old flame read it, but everyday I would write in it about how life was good, even if I didn’t feel so great that day, it was my way of telling her “I will survive, as long as I know how to live, I know…” I made sure that I never once lamented or pined for her in those posts.
3) I found me a rebound girl, now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying give your heart out to this person, but find someone cute, patient, and willing enough to casually date you that you can OCCASIONALLY rant to about your ex (keep in mind if you rant too much or right away, you’ll have more than one person to be pining for) Still though, just having that other person to help focus your feelings towards helps, at the same time BE CAREFUL, don’t go overboard and fall in love when you’re feeling that emotional, if you feel like you can control yourself, and just be a good girlfriend to this person without going crazy its a great option.
4) Daily Mass, Rosary and confession at least once a week! Remember idle hands are the work of the devil… or some such saying… so keep busy, a change of enviroment helps too. After I dropped out of college I moved from VA to NY to be a caretaker for my grandparents, (my grandpa had dymensia). Just keep busy, get involved in groups, I even joined some protestant group, just for the companionship, of course if you can’t hold your own with your faith, it might be best to stick only with Catholic groups, but if you know your faith, and the Catholic groups suck (like mine did) protestant is the next best thing, because for the most part they have the same values.
5) Finally and for me this was the SUPER secret nuclear weapon, pray a novena to Our Lady of Hope, I’ve only prayed it twice and precisely at the end of the nine days God gave me exactly what I needed to continue, for me it was such a blessing, and it was what really made the difference. In fact if you do nothing else except for the daily Mass part, you should definitely dedicate yourself to praying the novena for nine consecutive days with the intention for God to give you the hope and virtues that you need to continue on.
I’ll end with this, it did end up taking me really a year to get over my first love, to really not think about her, because even 8 months after I would want badly to reconnect with her and find out what she was doing, I think for me the worst part was that I would dream about her especially in the first month after the break up, and it would be dreams about us getting back together and such, it was miserable, but I’ll tell you I am damn happy that we broke up and I cringe at the idea of being married to her and her being the mother of my children, though at the time I could never see that. Now I am happily married and I love my wife with all my heart and she is far, far better than I ever imagined a wife could be. God will give you what you need, be patient and have faith, and don’t forget to exercise while listening to angry music to get all that angst and frustration out of you! I specifically recommend Ben Folds: Gone, and Everclear: Now that it’s over. I must have listened to those songs 40 times each, oh and if you like country you can’t forget Dierks Bently: Forget about you, and So so long. Anyways Good luck and God Bless, hope this helps!
…My advice for right now is twofold…a)take each day as it comes, if you feel like crying, cry…if you don’t, then don’t…know that any type of loss will illicit a response of grief. Allow yourself to mourn the loss of this relationship. Even if it is not meant to be–a loss is a loss, and you are hurting, so allow yourself to flow with the pain as it comes.
*
(I don’t have any Catholic friends, online or otherwise.)