They don't tend to work. If you really want to be with someone, you have to move (or the other person has to move). You can't expect to have a real relationship for seven years with a person who is on the other side of the world.

The LW sounds as if he wanted something safe, hence the long distance relationship. Clearly the LW's ex likes safe things, too, that don't require any commitment -- she's hooking up with her *married* advisor. Watch her get knocked up by the advisor. That'll be a mess....

After reading that, I think I'm going to get right to work writing an hour-long diatribe about how much I hate Cary. KIDDING! I love Cary. Just making fun of the haters in advance.

I think you are feeling overwhelmed and sad, LW, and that you are trying to 'think' your way around these feelings. I, also, am a bit thinker, and a big worrier, and, in the face of big scary emotions like the ones I think I would be having if I were in your situation, these tendencies would go into overdrive - as it seems they are with you.

I think it's time to sack your brain - or send it to a nice spa somewhere for some R&R. Just say, when it starts freaking out and trying to analyse things and Make A Plan, 'there there brainy, dear, go have another nap.'

In the meantime I think you should embark on a punishing fitness regime. Somehow that really helps with the OverActive Brain.

And may I just add that your girlfriend sounds like she has gotten embroiled in a really bad scene that is going to eat up what is left of her youth and that you are very well out of it?

He never felt anything that he didn't analyze to death.

Delayed emotional reaction isn't a bad thing. It protects you from overreaction, and gives you time to analyze deeply. The short answer, though, is to move on with confidence in yourself, and to hell with the others. Don't worry about your reaction. It's normal. Violent overreaction, no matter how dramatic, is not. We don't live in a movie.

Dear LW, the world is full of people who have experienced loss and you are among them. That makes you not alone.

I understand exactly where you're coming from when you say you're feeling your feelings long after the fact. I know from personal experience that the lag time can get better with practice. Learn to be attentive to the small stirrings in your gut, and pretty soon they'll start coming in stronger and clearer, like a radio getting in tune.

Cary really nailed this one about highly analytical people in academic professions. I'm one of those. I would also not be too surprised if the LW is (in the Myers-Briggs lingo) an NJ, Intuitive Thinking.

I am a recovering borderline analytical person, and I can't tell you how long it has taken me to acknowledge feelings for what they are...and that it's OK to feel and let them stay in the room, as Cary notes. When you are so used to thinking and rationalizing, you can't communicate at all what you are feeling -- if you are happy, sad, somewhere in between -- and why you are feeling that way.

So, LW? Just go with it and take this one as an excellent learning experience. I also agree with those who have mentioned that the long-distance relationship (plus her involvement with the married advisor) are ways to stay on the surface without true intimacy. Good luck to you.

LW, she was never there. She was a hologram floating through your life and bedroom until something else came along. If you thought you could see her in your home, you could have taken a tire iron and waved it through her image with no effects. You were her staging area, offstage till something else caught her attention. There are lots of men and women like that. Like butterflies, they flit from one source of pollen to the next, never settling for what is right there beside them. What's up with all these "advisors" anyway? I seem to remember other advisors whisking away someone elses'love. Must be a cushy job if an advisee will just roll on over for them so easily.

You are hurting and you need time to let it go. I wish you luck. One day you will fing another person to love. It's a big world.

It seems like you and your ex did everything right but out of order.

Breaking up seems reasonable, your ex moving on seems reasonable. Being emotionally traumatized seems reasonable.

However, in this case, all these things happened but in the wrong order.

DABDA -- Denial, Anger, Bargining, Depression, Acceptance. You seem to have started out with acceptance and are working your way back to anger/bargaining. Maybe you needed to do all the steps and had to work through them on your own schedule.

However, I would try to just get through them and not punish yourself by getting too involved in trying to see if you can work something out with the ex. Or anger over the betrayal.

Maybe your ex also got things out of order. She moved on before she broke up with you.

The reason I think it is important to think about timing is that a lot of your feelings are due to the timing of your ex's behavior. If she had been fully committed prior to the breakup, then it seems to me that you would feel much better about things. However, the relationship is realistically over. She messed up on timing. However, to the extent that the relationship is over, then is it really worth it to expend so much energy on the details of how it happened.

Try to look at it this way. You broke up with her. You then found out that your decision was not only correct but also even more appropriate then you knew.

It is a little like someone quitting after they are fired. You fired the ex. She then said, I was going to quit anyway. I have been sending out my resume.

That's how I would look at it.