TL;DR Long time limerence

I (22F) have been in a very healthy AND happy relationship with my (22M) Boyfriend (I’ll call him 7) for about three years. I honestly think this issue has nothing to do with him or our relationship but bather a relationship that never had an opportunity to be explored…

About 5 years ago (start of 2021) I moved to a new city and school. I was 17 at the time and had never had any romantic experience at that point. Anyway, upon moving to the new school I’m obviously looking out for guys to obsess over and one stands out. I’ll call him K. He’s very different from the rest of the class. Not in an obnoxious way, just in a way that is authentic and actually very opposite to me.

Fast forward a month or so and we’re talking all the time over snapchat (ik cringe) but never really talk during school. This is partly because I’m extremely awkward and anxious but ALSO because I had started reconnecting with a guy (I’ll call him Q) from my hometown/old school. Fast forward a little more and I’m in my first relationship. I’m with finally with the guy I had been infatuated with since the age of 14 and life felt peak.

The only issue was, I was starting to develop feelings for K around the same time I started dating Q. l connected with K in a way that I couldn’t connect with Q. Looking back, I think it was because with K, I had never felt like second best, as I had with Q (We had known each other for years so bound to happen but teenage brains yk).

Mine and Q’s relationship ended up being really toxic and a lot of the time I turned to K for support. To be honest he wasn’t very helpful, I think I just relied of the validation he gave me. Q knew about K and I’ll admit that to my fault, there was emotional cheating. Trust was broken on both ends between Q and I so he ended the relationship after a year and a half.

Side note - during that time, K had also been in a relationship that lasted a few months. So throughout the year, we had been on and off messaging.

After my relationship ended with Q, I hung out with K for a day. Because of the fresh breakup, I ended up feeling really sad afterwards and cried all the way home. A month or so later I wanted to give it another go, but someway or another we stopped talking and it never ended up happening.

2023 rolls around and I’m in the talking stage with my now boyfriend, 7. Things are good, I’m head over heels and we start dating (around march). In late April, I very unexpectedly get a message from K. He was apologising for kind of ghosting me and confessed that the whole time (2021 when we first met - late 2022) he had feelings for me too. Which had been a bit of a guessing game for me up until this point.

I thanked him and apologised for leading him on while I was in my relationship with Q. Then told him I was seeing someone new. He said that he was too and we left it at that.

About a year ago, 7, and I moved in together. K and I started messaging each other a couple months after. It was all going fine until I got annoyed with something he said about spirituality which I didn’t agree with and we stopped speaking again. (Another side note, he’s always been a pretty pessimistic person so has no problem saying something negative to you)

Around July of this year…. we started messaging again. It was fine and I truely just enjoyed his friendship. A couple weeks in to talking he LITERALLY confessed his love for me and said that he had only wanted me all these years. He said he felt like he’d probably never get over it and felt guilty about it. During that time, I felt really conflicted about how to approach the situation because of my love for 7. I ended up telling K that we should leave it and that it’d be best to stop speaking to eachother.

This is only coming back up because he posted something the other day that concerned me about his wellbeing. I ended up asking if he was ok and we didn’t talk much at all.

I guess that this post is just a massive vent from the last few years but also an invitation for outside perspectives and advice. Obviously only helping to some degree due to lack of details.

During EVERY period of us not speaking, I would have dreams involving him. Honestly it was pretty upsetting. Limerence sucks balls.

Hoping there are psychologists that’ll give me some advice. Why do I keep going back we’ve only really hung out once. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MEEE.

Thanks for reading and what do I do?