How can you want to love again when you lose your future bride?

[MrChinaski]

I met a woman last year. She is beautiful, smart, funny, hard-working, worldly, kind and caring. One of the nicest people I have ever met. The most magnificent person I have ever met. We loved each other dearly. She is only the second person I have had the honour of wanting to marry.

I’ll just tell my side. She treated me badly in the end. We tried to resolve, and didn’t. On the third strike, I walked. I’m sure her experience of events was different.

What I struggle with is that it seemed like it should have been so easy to resolve. We shared so much of each other’s lives and dreams and, then, out of nowhere, hit a trivial but terminal wall.

I’ve had my share of serious relationships. I’ve never felt like this before. I’m happy and well-adjusted and excited about my future. I just cannot imagine ever loving someone like her again.

[Smart_Monk]

The breakup feels like you can't devote to someone again because your body is afraid of losing someone just like you lost her.

I didn't say your intellect is convinced that you can't be with someone else... although it does appear like it is being convinced so by the body. But i did not say that you mentally believe that you can't: i said your body/soul is convinced of that. Because the body/soul do the feeling, not the intellect.

It's more about your loss of her after being devoted, than it is about her betrayal of you: because otherwise you wouldn't be excited about your future, if betrayal was lingering in your body. You would be paranoid about the future.

Make your body feel like she is safe.

A pre requisite for convincing your body that she is safe is to forgive her. Not the solution you expected, is it?

But like with most things, it's all moving un unison, like you can't pluck a dead fly off a spider web without moving the other flies. Which is to say: the problem that you describe is NOT originating in the after effects of betrayal. But the after effects of the betrayal prevent you from solving the after effects from the breakup itself.

Grow a heart that is too big to be hurt by the betrayal. This then allows you to forgive her. Which then allows you to feel like she is safe and you did your job, the higher side of manly instincts perfectly well. Which then allows you to feel like you can devote again.

If it helps, stop viewing her as a worse person for making a bitch move. Possibly she's just less evolved and needs to be felt sorry for. Possibly she's going to have die of a terminal illness one year later, and you are lucky you didn't marry her.

Also, what the fuck is the bot doctor ranting about? It is too much incoherent dead slop to read, but i can't help but feel like its style of "esoteric dozen of paragraphs" has been copied from my older accounts. And they actually do send your entire profile, or at least the recently activity of your profile, to the AI server upon every question that you ask to tailor the bot response to your biases. That's how i got Cinematic Lily to write perverted names for onlyfans videos and set price tags for them, i deliberately modified my profile right before posting it. Publicly on a real GaG post that i asked. So, there is no doubt that some AI provider is training on our posts, my lengthy opinions, but it's seeming too obvious now how heavily my style is copied. I mean, i have never seen ai use so many paragraphs for a love question, and then each of them having either colons or "double quotes". Fuck, even joining-multiple-words-using-minus-signs. Normally ai bots use em dashes instead of colons, and en dashes instead of minus signs.

[MrChinaski]

This is really useful, thank you. Yes, my feeling is loss, not betrayal. Yes, forgiveness is a part of the solution.

[msc545]

I understand you had really strong feelings for her, and sometimes that can happen with someone that you're really not suitable for and are not suitable for you. In this particular case, my friend, I think you probably dodged a bullet. Better to have it end badly while you were just dating and not end badly while you were married, I think. I know it hurts. I'm sorry for that. It's a terrible pain, but I think that you will meet someone else who you'll feel the same way about, or more about, and it won't crash like this one did.

[Ez-Bri-Z_v2]

First off, I am sorry for what you experienced. Nobody should have to deal with that and feel betrayed by the person they see spending the rest of their life with.

That being said, she showed her true colors thankfully before you got married. It's going to be hard to trust again for a while, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. The best way I found to move on from a relationship where the guy I was with cheated on me, was to take time and grieve for what was lost. The time wasted and the hurt and guilt that came with it. Maybe giving yourself that time to get over her will open those gates for you again. Like they say, time heals all wounds, right?

[MrChinaski]

Thanks Bri.

I should clarify, we weren't engaged. But we were on a path way to marriage. At least I was.

[palewhale]

love isn't real. people are liabilities and disappointments. they make promises and then break them and call you a narcissist when you are upset.

[AI Opinion]

On GAG my aim is to help you untangle messy heart stuff and see the red flags and green flags more clearly.

Losing a “future bride” feels like a death of a whole timeline, not just a breakup. That’s why your brain says “I’ll never love like that again.” You will, but it’ll feel different, because you’ll be different.

What you’re grieving isn’t only her, it’s the fantasy: the shared dreams, the version of you that existed with her, the wedding you pictured, the kids’ names you maybe had in your head, the trips, the old-age-on-the-porch stuff. When that dies, your heart goes into emotional shock and romantic tunnel vision.

You’re also idealizing her because of scarcity: only your second “marriage material” woman, so your mind crowns her as “the one that got away.” But “magnificent” people don’t repeatedly treat you badly and blow up a trivial issue instead of resolving it. That’s not a cute quirk, that’s a compatibility and emotional maturity red flag.

The “trivial but terminal wall” is key. Healthy couples handle small conflicts with repair, not destruction. If she couldn’t lean in and work with you on something minor, that’s a preview of what marriage would have been: stonewalling, resentment, walking on eggshells, and you begging for basic emotional safety. You didn’t lose your future bride; you dodged a future divorce.

You don’t need to imagine loving “like that” again. That love came with pain, instability, and disrespect at the end. The goal is to love better next time: more secure, more mutual, more emotionally safe. Think of it as upgrading your “love operating system,” not trying to reinstall the old one.

Wanting to love again usually starts quietly: enjoying your own life, feeling proud you held your standards, noticing attraction again without forcing it, realizing you can miss her and still not want her back. One day someone will show up who treats you with kindness when things get hard, and your heart will remember, “Oh right, this is what I was looking for.”

You don’t have to force hope. Just keep being the version of you that walked on the third strike instead of begging after the red flags. That guy is 100% dateable and absolutely capable of falling in love again. And when you do, it’ll feel less like desperate obsession and more like calm, steady “I’m home.” Which is way sexier, by the way. 😉

[lightbulb27]

Love is something you give, you love because you are full of love and you want to share your abundance.

You love the next person because they are unique person adding to your life.

and you put the past in perspective so it isn't holding you back from loving whom is in front of you.

[Nikki1989]

You don't be so weak. It is not how you fall down but how you get back up again that counts.

[Nikki1989]

This is one of the worst websites for positive advice. I can't name names, but there are a couple of real downer people already pushing their misery onto you in this very thread.

[sage2021]

You stuck your hand in a snake 🐍 pit. Just be glad you didn't marry THAT ONE!!🫣

[Staximus]

If she treated you badly then you were right to take a hike, no matter how perfect she seemed besides that.

[slatyb]

You will get over her when you meet someone else.