Why Can't I get over my first love (Sorry this is a long one)

In the eve of my 25th birthday, on the tails of a real rough year of tough lessons and emotions, I find myself in a real introspective place and it is difficult to sort through all of it. I wonder if anyone out there can relate or shine some light as I reflect on the negative patterns that have repeated and repeated in my adult life.

Since I was a little girl, I have always wanted to find that one soulmate of mine to share life with. My mantra throughout a childhood of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of my mother was essentially that I would find my soulmate someday. That someday, I would have that unconditional love that I always craved so desperately. The one who would never hurt me and would look out for me and be there for me no matter what life threw at us. I struggled with depression and anxiety for my entire life and I had such a negative view of myself and the world too because as I later figured out through years of therapy, I adopted my mother's negative comments and voice into my own psyche and I was the most self loathing child and teenager. I thought about suicide all the time and I desperately wanted someone to pull me out of the hole and just to provide me with this love and make me feel worthy of it. The only real positive thoughts I had of the future were my daydreams about this fantasy man who would make everything alright one day, who would really love me. I would lock myself in my bedroom away from the world and obsessively journal about this in my free time.

I was in so much pain and so desperate for affection and emotional safety. In my mind, it wasn't safe to be open and vulnerable at home. Nobody in my family could talk to each other in a positive manner about feelings. My mother used to hit me with the goal of trying to make me cry and, as she likes to joke, I never would crack. I was a brick wall at home until I was alone. That was when I could cry by myself.

When I was 11, I met a boy who made me feel like the most important girl in the world. He was crazy about me and we developed this pure, innocent kind of affection for each other over time as we became good friends. This was around the time when flip phones came onto the scene and you could message people on the computer through private chat windows. He would go out of his way to get ahold of me after school and he would send me pictures of the sunsets almost everyday. And most importantly to me, he listened compassionately. We supported each other and he promised that he would always protect me.

The years went by of this kind of innocent and shy affection for each other. In high school, after spending some time apart, we got together as a couple when we were 16. We were each other's first everything including first love. We dated for 4 wonderful years. I became best friends with his two best friends during our time together. We were made for each other. Then he grew distant, there was a communication breakdown. And when I moved in with his best friend sophomore year of college to get away from my mother's house, he decided to break things off. He said that he felt we were too codependent and he needed to experience life without me for a while because neither of us knew a life without the other.

I was devastated but I understood his concerns. We continued to see each other regularly and remained on okay terms with each other despite being apart. It was a really hard winter but life goes on. After about 8 months of being broken up, we started hooking up again. The weekend before I moved away to finish my degree, we spent 3 days and nights together. It was a sort of bittersweet reunion and tearful goodbye. We knew that things would be different once I moved away, and they were.

When I moved away, we would still see each other when I came around for holidays and breaks. I went to visit him a few times when he moved into the city with a bunch of our friends. But things got messy when he started dating some girl and I started dating someone too and we had some space for a few years. We were living 300 miles apart, myself in the mountain wilderness and him in the big city. I felt like if he didn't want to get back together, which I had been pushing for, then I was determined to get over him somehow. I dated a guy I went to school with who was a raging alcoholic and verbally abusive and manipulative to me for 2 years. After we broke up, I had a few months of being alone in which time my first love came to visit me and we shared a weekend reconnecting without sex but just sharing a long weekend in my quiet, humble life in the mountains. But he maintained that he didn't want to be together and I didn't push the issue. I tried and tried, as I had for the last 3 years, to convince myself that I was over him.

So I got into another tumultuous relationship with a guy for a year and a half with whom I moved 1000 miles away from home but it was turning toxic. I was depressed and I couldn't see the light or way out. Then my first love came to visit on his way back from working far away for the summer and we talked for hours into the late night. We reminisced lightly about some old times. And he noted that we were so lucky to have each other. That we wouldve been so lost without each other.

A few months later, I found out that my boyfriend had been regularly cheating on me with some girl from work since we had moved. He came clean a few months after he had stopped hooking up with her and I moved out. I took some time to process and found that I didn't really have any feelings for that guy, hadn't for a long time. We were more like roommates who had sex sometimes and coexisted. It was just further proof in my mind that I couldn't trust anyone. Except for my first love.

So a few months after my breakup with the cheating shit head, my first love came back on my radar. He was going to go to work far away again and stay out there this time. He wanted me to meet him and roadtrip with him out there to his new home. I agreed and we shared 2 weeks together living out of his converted camper van on the road. It was so intimate and feelings were stirred. It wasn't our intention but we had great sex and we talked about old times and about our relationship. He maintained still that he didn't want to get back together. But he was back and forth on the issue. Overall, we had an incredible and intimate once in a lifetime adventure together. But when I left, we stayed in touch for the summer although things kind of got messy emotionally.

I told him that I've never been able to get over him even after 5 years of dating other people. I told him that it just makes sense for us to be together. Neither of us has ever been fully able to get over the other and time keeps reconnecting us over and over. But he is determined to live out his own story and be independent of me. We get into heated arguments with one another. He can be cold to me and selfish at times. But when it comes down to it, we push each other to be the best version of ourselves. And to me, the fact that after 14 years we still have these feelings is worth exploring. He claims that I just want to settle down and he is just safe. But I have been in love with him for 14 years long enough to know that we just complement each other really well.

I feel like my inability to move on from my first love and my pattern of getting into these short term toxic relationships is absolutely mental. I will get into these relationships with men who treat me like garbage, who don't love me how I need to be loved, and I will stay in them for way past their expiration date. Even if I know deep down it isn't meant to be, which I always feel in every other relationship I've been in, I still stick it out. I can't tell if it's because I am bored or lonely or just feel the need to try to fix everybody all the time. Or if it is related to my childhood and I just don't feel worthy of love.

It is a work in progress. I am desperately trying to figure it all out and heal so I can live my best life and not accept less than I deserve ever again. I have been single for the last year almost because I feel that unless I get over my first love and really feel like I am ready to commit to someone else, I need to just be alone. But I still feel deep down like my first love and I belong together and that someday we will end up getting back together.