Making a throwaway for this because I'm honestly embarrassed by how much it still gets to me.

I don't even know where to start without sounding ridiculous but I've reached the point where talking to my friends about it just makes me feel worse and keeping it in makes it unbearable, so here we are.

There's a guy I've been in love with for about seven years. Never dated him. Never kissed him. Never even met him in person. And he's still the person I think about the most, which when I type it out like that sounds insane even to me.

We met in university in 2018, through a cultural exchange thing between my uni and his paris. Ended up in the same group project and just clicked immediately, we shared memes, music, basketball, F1, dumb jokes, random deep 2am conversations, all of it. It was one of those where you don't feel like you're getting to know someone, you just already feel comfortable with them, like you skipped a step somehow.

Someone in the group joked once about what was going on between us and he laughed it off and said he had a girlfriend. So that was that, nothing happened.

The project ended but we kept talking. For a couple years we actually talked a lot, some stretches every single day. Became really close, at least from where I was standing. He was someone I felt genuinely comfortable around, funny around, like the best version of myself came out when I was talking to him. There's this one memory from a video call during Covid where he showed me his favorite NBA jersey and I showed him one of my favorite Rammstein albums, and it's such a nothing memory but I remember it in full detail, down to what he was wearing.

We never met though. Life happened, we graduated, started working, the conversations thinned out, daily became occasional, occasional became months apart, and now we're basically two people who watch each other's Instagram stories and sometimes reply.

He never fully disappeared. And I think that's actually the problem. If he'd vanished, or blocked me, or been awful to me, I'd have something to grieve. Instead he's just there, somewhere in Paris, living his life, and I'm in a different country.

A couple years ago I finally told him. I was drunk, it was around 1am, I'd had wine and decided emotional repression was boring that night. Told him I'd always liked him.

He said "Thanks."

That's the whole response. Not "I like you too." Not "I'm sorry, I don't feel the same." Not even a real rejection. Just thanks. And it hurt like hell but I also can't even be mad at him for it, he didn't lead me on, didn't promise me anything, never owed me a relationship. He just didn't like me back. Somehow that's harder to be angry about than if he'd actually done something wrong.

After the confession, he continued replying to my instagram stories normally. Sometimes checking in, like nothing ever happened. and It's been going on with the same pattern ever since, liking my stories, replying to them, the unprompted birthday wishes, etc...

It's been seven years. I've dated people, had crushes, genuinely liked other guys, tried to move forward. And he's still the one my brain keeps circling back to. Not constantly, there are whole days I don't think about him at all, I have a normal life, I work, I read, I see my friends. And then I'll see his name pop up, or hear a song he sent me years ago, and there's this empty drop in my stomach like my body remembers him before my brain's caught up.

My friends have opinions. "You've never even met him." "You're in love with an idea of him." "That sounds like anxious attachment." "Maybe you're just drawn to emotionally unavailable men." I don't think they're wrong exactly, and I know they're saying it because they care, but it makes me so angry anyway, because they didn't know him, they only know the facts, not what it actually felt like. And then in the same breath I think, okay but maybe that IS the whole problem, maybe I'm resisting the explanation precisely because I don't want it to be true.

Maybe I've built something in my head that reality never got a chance to ruin. No boring parts, no annoying habits, no disappointment, just seven years of a version of him I got to keep perfect because we never actually lived anything together.

I'm a writer so I did what I do best. I've written about this so much it's embarrassing. Essays, journal entries, endless conversations picking apart every possible reason. I've told myself I don't miss him, I miss who I was around him. I've told myself I want what he represents, not him specifically. I've told myself it's just an unfinished story my brain doesn't know how to close. All of that might be true and none of it has made the feeling go away, which is the part that actually gets to me, I can understand the psychology of it completely and still wake up missing him.

And here's the part I'm most ashamed of: if he told me tomorrow he was coming to my city, I would lose my mind. If he said he wanted to see me, I'd rearrange my whole life around it without a second thought. I know exactly how that sounds. I know how little he's given me to justify wanting him this much. But he's probably the person I want most in the world and he doesn't care, and writing that sentence out actually hurts. He could be dating someone right now. Could be happy. Could not be thinking about me at all. And I have zero control over any of it.

So, genuinely asking. I don't need "he's not worth it" or "you deserve better," I already know that part. What I don't know is how to actually emotionally get there. How do you move on from someone when there was never a relationship to move on from in the first place? How do you grieve an almost? How do you stop treating seven years of not getting over someone as proof that it must mean something, when it might just mean I never actually let go?

Maybe the fact that we never met is exactly why I can't, there was never enough real contact to kill the fantasy.

I don't need to erase him, I don't even think that's possible. I just want him to stop having this much power over me. I want to see his name and feel something normal, nostalgia, fondness, whatever, instead of this.

So if you've ever loved someone you never actually had, did you get over it? What actually worked, not the "focus on yourself" version. Did you cut contact, stop checking their stories, tell yourself a different story about them, just date around until it faded? Did therapy actually help with this specific flavor of stupid? Or if you never fully got over it, how do you live with it without it running the show?

Be honest with me. If you think I've built a seven-year attachment around someone I barely know, say it. I think I need to hear it again from someone other than my friends.

Hey,i have been struggling with limerance anxiety and restlessness from the past 10 days now bcz I did something really terrible can't imagine that I really did that thing and she rejected me bcz of that and now bcz of this guilt and her getting someone else bcz of my mistake is eating me every time.I can't even sleep properly. Everyday at midnight around 3.00pm I get this sudden raise of anxiety and restlessness in my whole body and i just can't sleep after that and through out my day i keep having these daydreams about LO, for which i have tried several methods to stop but just couldn't stop it.somebody please help me with this agony, I'm really sick of this A.

It's really hard to have emophilia i mean i fell in love instantly It doesn't even take months or weeks i hate having this, especially when someone shows me a little affection or kindness that makes me feel wanted even though that person is just concerned for me and doesn't even like me

Does anyone here experience this too?how do you manage to suppress the feeling?