Someone please help me

Four years ago I became involved with this guy who was almost four years younger then me. He was the love of my life, I knew it from the beginning. We dated for five months and then we had to end it because he started to be abusive mentally, emotionally and started to become physical. No matter what he said to or did to me I never wanted to leave him, I loved him. I moved on after 7 months to my boyfriend I am involved with now for 2.5 years. All the time I continue to think about my ex to this day. I just want to talk to him, see, him and hang out with him again. I miss him and still love him more than anyone in my entire life. My boyfriend and I know are also in love but there are days where I feel like I should just leave him because I can't figure out my own feelings. My current boyfriend hates my ex because he knows the crap that he put me through. Lately I've been seeing my ex everywhere!! I see him drive past me, at the gas station, at the deli near our old high school and I just get this crazy feelings through my body. After all these years and finding someone else and having them in my life I thought that these feelings would go away. I thought that I would be able to move on and forget about him. I love both of them and I have no idea what to do. I need advice and I need someone to help me through this. Can anyone give me advice and tell me what I should do? Someone people help!!!

yes - I agree with lec coaching - there is trauma bonding and also probably non-closure : but closure with an abusive "disordered" person is not possible - so forget it - you have to make closure for yourself - by asking yourself why you got into such a relationship - what your part was in this - what did it stir in you ? what where you expecting ? to what unconscious conditionings were you responding ? co-dependency ? too much empathy ? wanting to "save" him or the relationship ? and - yes - remember what you went through : the abuse - is this what you think you're worth ? - did you get addicted to the ups and downs in your abusive relationship and now with your new bf - you find it all maybe too "quiet" and ok ? those unhealthy relationships create addiction : you have to consciously break out of it and replace the "wanting because of lack" by things that will fulfill you and make you happy you may have loved this abusive person and maybe still do - but that doesn't take away the facts : he's unhealthy - keep your love for yourself and give it only to people who show you genuine appreciation and prove it in sustainable actions & durable deeds move on honey : you're worth better then that - if your new bf really loves you - love him back - and see where that takes you good luck :)

Yes. "So he loves me. But *what* loves me?" (and in your case, BB) "And loving him back comes at *what cost*? My happiness? And doesn't that defeat the whole object?" The truth of the matter, BOOSTEDBABE, I suspect (because it's too common, albeit not very self-flattering seeming thus not something readily admitted to) is either: [a] Your new boyfriend/your relationship with him (and 2.5 years is a good enough trial run on this score) isn't a 'perfect' enough match for one such as you to put your ex and everything that went on between you firmly into the shade - to where you'd say to anyone that asked, 'Sorry - which ex of mine are we talking about?' [b] (or like Dynamic suggests) you haven't yet given your new relationship a proper chance to take real flight, having had 'one eye' constantly on your ex-relationship the whole time (whether you've realised it or not) and thereby not suitably receptive nor being responsive enough as encourages the man to feel 'safe' enough to apply yet *more* meat and honey....up, up, up and away!). However, the fact that the prior relationship ran only for 7 short months, as opposed to this 2.5 year one, would/should suggest that it's not strictly closure you're after (in the normal sense), so much as revenge combined 50/50 (or thereabouts) with 'If only I'd known then what I know now'. Whilst you're constantly taking all that sh*t from them and feeling beaten down (perhaps already low for you back at the time you met, anyway, this maltreatment only compounding it), you're not capable of sticking up for yourself and giving as good as you get (or better) as self-impressively as you might ordinarily, whereby they find new respect and rightly start to tread more carefully around you. Once out of the battlefield, however, enough strength regained, 'Why did he dooo that to meeee, boo-hoo?', slowly but surely has become - pride having kicked back in - 'OMG, how DARE he have treated me like that, who does he think he IS!...and more to the point, who does he think *I* am?! OOOOH, why I oughda...!!!!' [insert fist-shaking emoticon], which includes you *really* wishing you'd said/done 'y' that time he'd nastily said/done 'x' to you, to put him in his place and shut him up....in your head going over all the old scenes wherein you constantly came out worse. In other words, you were bullied and secretly wish you could go 'back in time' and 'beat' the bully into (happy, loving) submission. And as he was a romantic bully, that means going back onto romantic ground with him first, through the romantic door, your only access. How to persuade him back on there in order to position him? Answer obvious. The other half of you wonders, maybe you won't *feel* like getting revenge once you've got him thus positioned? Wouldn't that be a happy outcome! Maybe, for all *you* know, this time round he'll surprise you by being NICE and end up completely cancelling out that urge of yours, that now-past need for vengeance? Win/win either way, you think. Tempting though it is, it would never work... because it too rarely does (so rarely as to be 'negligible'). The dynamic got set too hard and fast... bit like when you have a get-together with your parents and siblings: You're a grown, independent woman now with a mind of her own and possibly loads of people in your life who treat you with befitting respect and dignity...but do they know or accept it and operate according to this new you? Nope. You're immediately shunted back into the exact same pack position, still judged like you're the same, gangly, snotty-nosed kid and now unconsciously triggered into feeling and behaving to-suit... which is FINE if you liked how you were viewed and handled that whole time back then. But not if you didn't and they still insist on treating you as "the helpless one" or "slightly thick one" or "annoying and difficult one" or "the one who always clears away and washes-up" or whatever... This ex sounds like he has one dynamic on offer: Master (him), Slave (you/any female in that context). He made his mind up long before he even met you ("They're all the same, all complete biczes...no woman's EVER going to get the better of me again, no way Jose!"), despite you might feel like you quit that bit too soon. No, you didn't. You're not going to be able to change his attitude, no matter what you try or how cleverly you go about it. And I'll tell you why: If he'd even been *capable*, then the threat or even the IDEA of loss of you/the relationship would have brought him up sharp and seen him brushing up his act, or *certainly* trying his hardest to persuade you to get back with him....or, better yet, NOT DARING TO BEHAVE LIKE THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Yet it did not/he did not. He preferred to place the relationship on the edge of a cliff, then actually boot it off and over, then LEAVE it lying visibly on the rocks below to die, rather than rescue it and vow to try to change and better his ways. Or he just wasn't into you but managed to convince you he was (which is just another form of abuse). In fact, if he'd had better attitudes in him, then during what should have been Honeymoon Period - Best Foot Forward time - the sort of behaviour you describe wouldn't have featured, let alone that incredibly soon. Not even the Honeymoon High could get him grinning like an idiot and treating you like something worth cherishing, protecting and preserving (or, again, maybe, for him, there *wasn't* any high?) Now consider that he's since moved on...found himself someone who LIKES being dominated, etc. So there you are, on the phone to him (or, worse, stood in front of him), trying to gauge whether he's still into you, and all he says - coldly and hostilely, like you're a dog-poo-ridden Bluebottle buzzing around his face - is, 'I'm not interested, I'm with someone else now, why are you even bothering me?'. How are you going to feel? Answer: worse than ever before. He's humiliated you yet again and what's worse is, this time you actually went up to rejection's front door and deliberately knocked on it! You're going to be hurt and angry with him all over again and, what's more, even angrier and more frustrated with *yourself* for having basically lain down at his feet with 'Kick me!' writ large on your forehead. 'The first cut is the deepest'. If that whole package of what you at the time thought was Love has not been blown out of the water by your new relationship, whereby even after the first 6-9 months you'd begun *gratefully celebrating* the fact of your ex having been such a prize a-hole - for the likewise fact that it/he directly propelled you to "this" heavenly union - then, as I say (and Dynamic says), you either haven't dared get suitably embroiled and invested like you did dare with the ex, *or* Mr Better is not - now that you're readier for it - Mr Best Possible, meaning, you've outgrown him/the relationship, what was only ever supposed to be merely the next in line stepping-stone (rebound job) and should be moving on to find the partner that makes an utter mockery of what you back then thought you had or could have had...with *any* mere human male being. That's the best revenge and the *only* revenge worth having. There you are, x years on and happy and thriving without him (with tangible developments/products to show for it)-nay, happy BECAUSE you're with someone that isn't rotten him and *does* know how to treat the love of his life like the rare and precious thing/thing-bringer she is, and yet - where's he? Answer: STILL unable to get a relationship off the ground and onto the clouds, STILL machinating, bickering and fighting instead of making love, STILL rolling around in his own issues and forcing his partner to roll in that putrid sh*t with him (or bored rigid from trying to love himself through what is merely a *puppet*)...and headed for being alone on his deathbed. "Sorry - WHICH ex?" is your goal. Do it ('new' relationship) properly or move on to the next partner.