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She does truly love and care for me and knows that her friends have been saying jerky things to me, unbidden.
I don't understand this instinct since, while close to not perfect, you were a pretty good boyfriend. You adored her, you were faithful, you respected her. You had relaxed your protectiveness of her in the eight months before she left you. You liked her friends, but that is what they felt they had to do. They had become her friends exclusively, if they had ever been anything else. You were a complication they delighted in no longer having to treat with deference.
It is not something you would ever do to someone else. When your friends break up with someone, you mostly feel compassion for the newly dumped and tried to treat them with kindness. You would not ever have thought to call them to gloat.
Basically, how she feels about me as a person has not changed. I asked her if she didn't feel "it" for me. She responded, and I quote, "I do not NOT feel it for you. Both nots are intended."
Maybe she did feel this for you, but she had made her decision to end your relationship. It was not easy for her and, having finally executed it after what was sure to be a lot of mental strain, you were not going to convince her to change her mind simply because she loved you and you asked the right question.
In her head, she needs space from the binds of a relationship. Not so that she can get wild and party.
Hey, guess why college women don't want to be in relationships?
She told me that she does not wish to drink beer and if she wanted to be with a guy, she would not have left me.
Yeah, not a guy. It isn't a matter of her having fallen in love with some other man. She just wanted to experience something different than romantic commitment.
And, after an explanation on my part that I did not wish to be with anyone else and I was perfectly happy being single and still fawning on her, she pretty much has no problem with my behaving toward her, verbally and emotionally, as I always have.
I have problems with that, not that you are asking. You are compromising yourself. You deserve better, even if you love the girl. You both would have been better served if you would have backed off for at least a month. She never got to experience what it was to not have you at her beck and call.
It is disrespectful on almost every level.
Also, not that you knew the young woman when you wrote this, you will kiss someone else within a week or so of this. Surprise! Kate will not be thrilled with this development.
This woman never becomes a romantic prospect (you get maybe two or three other kisses), but is someone you love to this day. So, double surprise!
Today someone asked me how I was and I replied without thinking, "Drinking deep the cup of life." That's how I feel. Kate is not with me, yet the world is still shockingly beautiful and I enjoy my life.
I'm glad that you are trying to recover. I believe you here. You had been broken up with before and to a degree appreciated your life alone. Kate liberated herself to have other experiences, but you were also freed from having to worry about her. It was a relief to not have to be someone's boyfriend, particularly the boyfriend of someone who felt you were holding her back.
I wish you would have been bolder and less puritanical in discovering what this freedom meant, but there isn't much I can do to convince you, I know.
Which isn't to say that I do not want her back and would not cross mountains just to hold her next to me all night. I am very happy with myself and it does give me pleasure to be filled with love for someone who loves me back, even if I cannot be with her at the moment.
Other people will love you. You will take more delight in waking beside them than you did with Kate -- because of how young and inexperienced you both were rather than that Kate was lacking. She wasn't. Kate was sweet and I am glad you had your relationship with her. I have regretted other people and contact, but I don't regret having loved Kate. I do wish that your relationship ended more decisively and the moment she was no longer invested in it, but never having been with Kate at all.
And, I am sorry to say, you will wake beside some and wish you could be anywhere else, where you wish you could be alone. You will wake in a bed and hate yourself and them for putting you there. I cannot lie to you and say you life will be perfect, that it gets consistently better.
Overall, it is worth it. On balance, it is better.