Did I leave my ex in haste?

Illustration/Uday Mohite

I am a 27-year old and recently began dating a man I met online. He is kind, courteous, and it feels as if we are a great match because we like each other's company a lot. It has just been three months so I am optimistic but can't decide if this is working or not because it's too soon. The problem is my ex-boyfriend, whom I have begun to re-evaluate. Our relationship ended because we couldn't see eye to eye on a few things, and I have begun to wonder if our problems were easy to fix. I think we were hasty and didn't take the time to work on what we could. The more I think about it, the more I worry that I may have lost someone genuinely important to me. I am confused because these feelings clash with how I feel about the person I am currently dating. How do I resolve this?
You can't have it both ways, obviously, and you also have no idea if your ex feels the same way because your evaluation of what went wrong is purely one-sided. If you want to sort things out in your head, it should begin with honesty. If you need time to figure out where things stand with the person you're dating, he deserves to know this. Tell him why you're confused, and the way he reacts will also tell you a lot about the kind of person he is. It may also make sense to reach out to your ex and find out if he is still interested in having a conversation about why your relationship ended the way it did. If he refuses, it will tell you whether this line of inquiry is worth pursuing at all. Either way, clarity can only come with asking yourself some difficult questions and being open about them with both these people involved. Do take into consideration though, that the past can often be rewritten in one's mind because memory has a way of playing tricks.

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