Hello Esther. My question is centered on a previous friendship of mine with the best friend who is no longer in my life.

I fell in love with my best friend who shared unrequited feelings for me and our friendship became so intimate that I got to a point where it hurt too much to just be friends with him.

So I told him we needed to take an undetermined amount of time apart from seeing each other.

My question for you is twofold.

How do I navigate this heartbreak and confusion for someone who truly felt like calm to me and experienced a transcendent love with.

And secondly, how can I learn to let go and open myself up to new potential romantic partners?

I really struggle with comparing potential partners to him.

I was listening to you. I was listening to you and I thought I'm hearing this for the first time, but you're hearing yourself again.

What's it like?

I think one thing that might have shifted a little bit is maybe not necessarily navigating the heartbreak,

but just the confusion for how can I feel this way where someone feels like home to me and no moments with him can feel like touching the heavens.

How can this be unrefited?

But then most importantly, too, I've been trying to go dating and no one measures up and I know what love should feel like and I don't want a watered down version of it.

I hear two questions.

One is, tell me if I hear you well.

If I felt that we were touching the heavens together, how can it be that he didn't feel it, right?

Is that, yeah?

The second one is about how do I grieve the loss of my best friend?

And the third one is how do I allow myself to fall in love again when I have this sense

that I was so off and that I thought we had a shared reality and it doesn't seem like we did,

how would I trust myself now when I meet someone new?

Yeah, that speaks loud that last perspective.

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