How do you get over someone you still love?

How do you get over someone you still love

When they no longer love you ?

This may not help much, but ...

Love is necessarily mutual.

It begins when both people agree that they love one another, and it ends when they disagree (and it can be hard to believe that it can end at all).

It's not possible to 'love' someone who doesn't love you.

It is of course possible, even so, to still hold a very, very strong affection for that person, but that's not love--that's just one (or several mixed together) of a variety of other feelings--longing, admiration, loneliness, intrigue, melancholia, hope, etc.--but it's not the same as love.

(Now, of course, I'm the first person to realise that 'love' is used for pretty much any interpersonal affection these days, e.g. friendship, so I'm definitely trying to set it apart from other feelings. Others may well prefer to use these words with different meanings, or disagree that love is separate in this way.)

As I say, I'm not sure this helps, but I think it may make it easier to realise that she bears just as much responsibility for it being love as you do.

I make this point partly because you can see that in her note she accepts just as much responsibility as you. However, at the same time as she attempts to absolve you of blame, she also implicitly attempts to absolve herself of blame. I don't think that is necessarily a healthy thing to try to do--as all that comes across to you in this is her seemingly being quite cool and rational about it, while you probably feel that you'll continue to blame yourself. The more likely truth is that you're probably both still blaming yourselves.

You make the clear distinction in the OP between you being friends and then being lovers, and what's happened now is that it seems you're not even friends any longer, despite having been friends for so long. That must be truly hard to bear, but there's more to it.

Have you answered her note?

You can either try to do as she is trying to come across (being cool and rational) or you can realise that while she's probably putting a brave face on it, and trying to do you good by telling you that she's not blaming you, it is at the very least unlikely that this is quite all that there is to how she feels. The former, being cool and rational, can mean that you (or she) deny your (her) own feelings (you give up hope of getting back together), and the latter (not quite believing her) can prevent a clean break (you remain undecided as to whether you might get back together), but there's no easy alternative. The actual course of events is probably going to be somewhere in between these two.

Have you tried telling her what you now really feel? It may be something you need to do before you can move on, or it may make her realise that there is hope yet.

In either case, something about that drinks thing: If you're an impulsive person who has in the past been likely to seek short-term relief in drink, then you definitely need to do something impulsive and fun and 'equivalent' to drink but less harmful. (You don't sound as if you're really thinking of doing that, but impulses can be strong. Hope your AA experience wins through!) Doing something that makes you feel alive is of course important regardless of whether or not you're getting back together.

And any fun and impulsive thing will do--it doesn't have to be a direct counter-act like sleeping around (especially not while you can't get a clean break, and you come across as sincere and dedicated, anyway). Such advice is often given just to stress that there may be more open possibilities again. (If you hadn't flagged up that you've had past alcohol problems, I'm sure some people would have suggested getting smashed off your face in order to forget.)

I hope these don't come across as abstract and pedantic points. It always has to be a bit in the abstract if you don't know the people involved.

Best of luck, even in case you won't need it!