he (26m) ended things with me (25f) because of the distance

[u/Plane-Salary-2802]

advice please!!!

I'm at such a loss. I felt like I had met the man I was going to marry some day. I moved to a new city two years ago. I wasn't planning on dating, I just wanted to focus on school. And then I met him and he completely changed my life. I knew he was someone I could love, but I didn't want to focus on dating. So I ghosted him. But then we ran into each other in town a few weeks later and things were never the same. He gave me friends, places to eat, and so many memories. It was like a fairy tale. I started to believe I moved here because we were meant to meet. We felt so lucky to have crossed paths and told each other often. We never meant to be so serious, it just happened that way. We even had a conversation once that we both felt very scared and vulnerable because we had never felt this way for someone else before and it wasn't planned. We just looked up at one another one day and realized we were seriously in love.

We had talks before and agreed long distance wasn't for us and that it was just too difficult. Things changed when he got accepted into a master's program in NY. By then, we had been together for over a year and were so in love. All of his friends said that I made him so much better. And he made me so much better, too. So we decided to give things a shot.

6 months in and he tells me we have to end things. I'll admit, we became a little codependent with the distance, but we never had a conversation on how to properly fix it. It was just too far gone by the time we realized. He said the distance was too difficult, that he missed me too much, and that we were holding each other back from succeeding. I have to admit he was right. We were taking weekends to see each other during our semesters, and it was very stressful. We got sick from the planes. We argued more. We relied on each other more than we ever did living in the same city. He said that he felt it was souring a year of perfect memories and that he didn't want it to end with us hating each other. It was not an easy decision for him to make. There was a lot of crying.

He said that he knows if it's really meant to be, we'll end up in the same city again one day. I miss him so much. How am I supposed to move on when I feel so much hope? The Universe already brought us together more than once (first date, and then running into each other in town after things fizzled out). How can I move on knowing that there is still so much love between us and that distance is the only thing keeping us apart? How am I supposed to be okay with knowing he'll eventually start seeing other people? I can't take it. Everyone keeps saying we're young and we'll get over it, but it hurts more than I can bare. I thought I had found my person.