The Love Of My Life And I Broke Up Two Months Ago, He Says He Loves Me And Wants To Be With Me In The Future, But Is Sleeping With Somebody Else Right Now. Am I Stupid To Wait For Him?’

I’VE never posted on any of these kinds of websites or dailies, I’ve just been trawling through them for advice but my situation is probably quite specific and I just need the viewpoint from someone who isn’t inside my head.

   To give some background on the relationship, I first saw him at the airport in Berlin. We had both been on a trip there and were getting the same flight home. I saw him sitting with his friends and I had a conversation in my head about how he could be my soul mate but you never know unless you talk to them, unless you do something about it. He was so interesting to me and I was incredibly attracted to him. But he was too cool and I was hung over so I put the thought out of my head, content just to catch his eye a bunch of times on the flight. 

   A few months later, I got talking to someone I had friends in common with. We hit it off and decided to see each other. It was a little while after that we realized that he was the person I’d seen at the airport, he had noticed me and been fascinated by me too. We spent a lot of time together then and a few weeks later decided to make our relationship ‘official’. It didn’t take us long to say ‘I love you’; the sex was incredible but the time we spent just hanging out together was even better. 

    At the time I met him we were both 19, I had been through a lot in my life by that point. From anorexia to clinical depression and alcohol addiction. My parents had thrown me out when I was 17 and I had moved around a lot. I had very little confidence in myself, exactly no prospects and no money. Over the next two and a half, years he taught me to believe in myself, to be confident and I started to become a positive person. I started to drink a lot less, I forgave my parents for all of the wrongs they had done to me and even managed to enroll at a college and begin working to apply to study a degree course. 

   I know it was me who did those things, but it is thanks to him that I could. I also was there for him when his family had problems and taught him to be glued to his phone less (he couldn’t even leave it on the other side of the room when we first started seeing each other). I taught him to believe in his own ability, reassured him when he wanted to apply for his dream job as a makeup artist. I supported him doing drag at nightclubs with all our ***** friends. People only ever thought of him as gay and I helped him to be ok with being ‘bisexual’. I helped him to deal with problems he faced rather than just ignoring them and sweeping things under the carpet. For most of our two and a half year relationship we lived together, we shared every part of our lives and really built a life together. 

    One year ago we were having a bit of a bad time and we broke up. We had a fight and I told him I didn’t love him. I think I said it to hurt him but there was a part of me that thought for a moment that I didn’t. Two days later after seeing each other each night in clubs with our shared friends, I had realized that of course I love him, that I just didn’t like him very much at the time we had had the argument. We got back together on the basis that we would sort out our issues. And we did.

       From then on our relationship was much better. I continued to become a more positive person and we were happier than ever. I was studying an Access to University course and he had his makeup artist job that he loved. We had discussed that I was going to move away for university, I wouldn’t be that far away (we were in Manchester and I would be moving to London). He didn’t want me to but said he knew it was right for me, that I needed to go and do it. We eventually planned that he would work at his job and after a year apply for a transfer to London and we could live together again.

    Two months ago I moved to London and I guess I got caught up in the ’student life’. I began drinking more again and going out. But for the first time I had my own life and was making my own friends. I really missed him though and when he tried to text and call me, I struggled to speak to him because it just reminded me of how much I missed him, that he wasn’t there to see every day and to wake up next to every morning. Our relationship became quite strained and after a night out with one of my friends from back home, he is gay and basically in a very drunk state, we decided I would use clippers to trim his pubes (manscaping!). 

    The next morning my friend thought that something really sexual had happened, that we had hooked up and told one of his friends who was also a friend of my boyfriend and mine. That person went straight around to tell my boyfriend that I had cheated on him. I still think his intentions were malicious or at least self-serving, but I also believe that my friend wanted to break my boyfriend and I up.

   That night my boyfriend was calling me and we got into a fight. I said that I just wanted to talk to him about it tomorrow. I was tired, hung over and very busy and not thinking with a clear head. I just wanted to address the issue when I could be rational and honest. He couldn’t let it go and we had an argument and I basically told him that our relationship wasn’t working. Basically, I needed some space, I needed the first few weeks in London to make new friends and to get to grips with studying a degree. He pleaded with me not to do it but I always thought that if we had the time apart, I could settle in to my new surroundings and I’d be able to commit more fully to the relationship. 

    He was heartbroken but he didn’t really show it. We continued texting and talking and keeping in contact for a few weeks then suddenly he stopped contacting me. I sent him a message one night to tell him I was missing the cute silly drunk texts he would always send me and got no reply. After looking on his Face book I realized he was seeing someone, someone who used to go in to his work and he would come home and say that he thought this person had a crush on him, that they were weird and he used to laugh to me about them.

    I confronted him about it and said that he was seeing this person, and that they had had sex. This was only six weeks after we ‘broke up’. I was devastated, not least for the fact that after such a long and monumental relationship that he had gotten over it so quickly. I broke down and told him over the phone how much I still loved him, how much I always will but he just kept saying that I broke his heart that he wouldn’t try and work at it while I was in London and that he didn’t want to anyway. 

    A few days later I was back home in Manchester because I wasn’t coping well and I had the flu and just needed to be at home. We decided that after two and a half years we owed it to each other to see each other face to face. He suggested a coffee shop as he wanted to do it somewhere public so reluctantly I accepted. I went to go and meet him and we talked for two hours. I told him everything that I had just needed space that I love him and always will. 

     He told me that he was with this person because he couldn’t be alone right now and that I broke his heart. I always felt that we were supposed to be together, especially considering he is the boy I saw in Berlin. The universe had brought us together. He told me that he still loves me, that he wants us to be together, just not now. But at the same time he said he was going to stay with this person, that this person is helping him to mend his heart. He told me he wouldn’t want to even try while I was in London and him in Manchester.

    I’m very confused about the whole thing. The last couple of days I have woken up pretty much every other day to a notification to say he has followed me on twitter. He is obviously looking at my Twitter a lot and keeping tabs on me. He says he will always care but if he cares, why is he sleeping with someone else, someone he is lying to about me saying that I am attention seeking and saying things that I am not saying? I think he really likes this other person but I know what he is like and he has just swept his feelings for me under the carpet.

The thing is after everything I’ve been through in my life, after everything we have been through together, I feel that he is the love of my life. Not just in a naive 21-year-old way, but with a mature head on my shoulders. I genuinely do not want to be a part of this world without him. 

     There is such a huge part of me that just wants to wait, even if it means that we will meet again and work out in a year, or five or 10 or 20 years. I want to wait for him because he is the love of my life and I don’t want to just get over him. It’s not just because this is all so fresh that I am feeling like that, I know what I am like and I know I will always love him. Am I stupid to wait for him on the chance that he will want to be with me in the future? I don’t know if he is just saying things like that to let me down gently. I am so in love with him and always have been. Everything I have now, university, London, my whole life here and everything in it is down to our relationship and he will always be the one who got me here.

   Am I stupid to wait for him and believe that he loves me and will want to be with maybe when I finish my degree like he says? At one point he asked if I would move back to Manchester to work at the relationship but at another point, said he wouldn’t let me because I need to get my degree and get a career. I just don’t really know what to do because it is all so complicated and there is another person involved that I’m not sure how strong his feelings for are. Is he really with this person just because he can’t be alone? Does he really still love me or is he going to just stay seeing and sleeping with this person?

Advice, PLEASE?!