Forcing yourself to fall out of love with someone you live with who now loves someone else

[Lone_rider]

Hello everyone. I'm 21 and I'll be honest I never thought I would ever suffer from Depression. I'm normally so laid back and relaxed about everything, always seeing the bright side of any situation. Since the start of the year however I have been in such a bad place and am scared that I will never again be truly happy.

At the start of January my fiancée of over 2 years told me she was no longer happy in our relationship. We had slowly been growing apart since Nov 2015 due to long work hours & family conflicts and I'll admit that I thought some time out of a relationship was needed. We mutually agreed to end our engagement but knew we would always remain as close friends. She had been living with me since mid 2015 in a shared house and we both agreed that she should stay but live in a different room. We were both very keen to remain as best friends and house mates.

However things started to take a turn for the worse when, later that week, she told me she was seeing somebody else. During the time when we had been drifting apart she had started to become closer to her Ex (in our friendship circle we always stay close to our Ex's) and at a NY party had been chatting to him and decided that her feelings for him were now stronger than for me. This is what led to her saying she wanted to split. Since that time he now sleeps round every night and they are in a fully committed relationship with each other and I have tried so hard to be as accepting as possible. I realised soon after that I was still madly in love with her but would never bring myself to do anything to break them up. I saw how happy she had become with him, sides of her personality that a relationship with me had snubbed out, I felt so guilty and hurt that I had done that to her. I wanted to give her every opportunity to be happy in her new relationship as I thought I owed that to her. I decided to try and suppress how I was feeling.

They were very careful for the first few weeks to not upset me, he would constantly ask me if I was okay with him being round the house and they would never kiss in front of me. They were both so respectful of me and because of this I wanted to put my feelings aside and try to power through it. To begin with I was okay with him sleeping round as my mind was focused on the mistakes I had made in the relationship and the regrets from these are what started my depression. As the weeks passed these regrets faded and all I could think about was the person I love being intimate with somebody else in the room next to me. I have heard them sleeping together on a couple of occasions and it has completely killed all the joy from my life. Whilst we were in our relationship our sex life was not great as I suffer from PE and it took away all the confidence that I was good enough for her. Picturing her having sex with a new partner only lowers my confidence further.

I work alone in a retail environment and every day I have hours where I am left with only my thoughts for company. This has made things far worse as nothing seems to distract me from how I am feeling. I then have to find things to do at home to distract myself from not being able to be close to her. I miss the feeling of cuddling up next to someone you love and falling asleep with them in your arms. Needless to say I hardly sleep anymore because of how lonely I feel knowing that physically she is so close but would now never take me back. I would move out if I could but have nowhere to go and would never ask her to move as there is only one place she could go and it would ruin their relationship. I feel such a need to do right by them but at the same time I am dying inside.

I finally decided to tell them how I felt because it was destroying me as a person. This unfortunately backfired and now they are angry with me for hiding things from them. I had asked them to see each other less often at the house to give me some space but they have grown so used to seeing each other so often that it would put stress on their relationship. They said that they would then likely argue and they would become angry at me for causing that. This is all because if I had spoken up in the first place they would never have started seeing each other so often. They are both now annoyed with me and I have decided the only option I have left is to temporarily distance myself from them both by not speaking at all. I am hoping this will start to put me on the road to moving on but I can't see an end to how I feel.

I am trying to force myself to fall out of love with somebody who I see & hear every day and I feel so alone everywhere I go. Meeting friends only provides a temporary break from the pain. I fear that I will never move on until I find someone new, but who would want to start dating somebody who is friends or still lives with their Ex fiancée?! I have so little confidence and now fear that she may never want to be my close friend again. I am going to be booking an appointment for the doctors soon to begin depression treatment as I think I need help. Has anyone else gone through anything like this?

[Iluvhorses]

Hi there! I'm in a similar situation although I like a guy, but he's dating my friend. Like you, I'm distancing myself too but it's easier for me because I'm not living with either of them. I would strongly suggest moving out because your feelings for your ex will never cease as long as you continue to see her everyday. But if course that is up to you. Take care!