Background

8 years ago after ending a dysfunctional relationship that lasted 1.5 years, I fell in love with another girl in university. She had the same tastes in music like me, felt like I was talking to a best friend I never had while we hanged out and I thought she was like the same as me. She rejected me because I was a year younger than her. Although I didn’t handle the rejection initially that bad, the fallout was terrible. I grew resentful of her, our friendship has broken and I treated her as a rival in my studies and future career. Since her presence gave me anxiety, I tried my best to avoid her and I also thought that she hated me. Most of my 20s was spent in misery and alcoholism. I had to endure her for 2 degree programs, a total of 5 years.

I haven’t been in contact with her for 2-3 years. I spent that time by unproductively watching anime, Netflix and Youtube videos and going drinking to pubs with friends. Last straw was a binge drinking with my coworkers before COVID-19 hit the world where I broke down crying and told them that I cannot forget her and that “she did this to me”.

I reached out to her after this and told everything, that I was sorry for hating her and the reason I was resentful and jealous of her successes is because I hated myself and viewed myself lesser than her. She told me that she never hated me, also talked about her own struggles with her unrequited love and bad relationships she was in and that she wishes me the best of luck. After that I felt guilt that I broke a friendship because of a misunderstanding and was sad that I could not rebuild my friendship with her. We are still friendly with each other, but talking with each other is not the same as before my confession to her years ago.

What I did to make myself better this year

• Read How to Fix a Broken Heart by Dr. Guy Winch and Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender by David R. Hawkins. Researched on Google how unrequited love works, that rejections are not my fault, but it just means that the other person has different preferences. How limerence and crushes work. Since reaching out to her and talking with her, I realized that we have different life philosophies and different mindsets (even though she says otherwise), so realistically a relationship wouldn’t have worked and that I was only in love with her idealized self.
• Started weightlifting again and following a healthy diet. I look more muscular, but I still have slight belly fat.
• Tried therapy, but left it after three sessions because I couldn’t trust my therapist and her skills in helping me.
• Researched dating advice on Google and Reddit in case I would start dating again. Realized that acting like a friend first while liking someone and then confessing my love does not work in real life and that I’m too old to have crushes anymore. Also once I like someone, I’ll have to know them and ask them out directly for a date within 1 month of time frame.
• Read No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert A. Glover, although I did identify being a Nice Guy back in 2017 while browsing r/niceguys and r/inceltears. I also plan to read Models: Attract Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson.
• Read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carneige, and I plan to read more books about social skills until the pandemic is over according to r/socialskills and this list. I started socializing back in January, but halted because of the pandemic. Although lockdown is being lifted in my country (Europe), I still have anxiety about leaving my house and unknowingly spreading the virus as an asymptomatic carrier.

Problem

A naive solution in my head and according to an online article to treat unrequited love was to start dating other people. Not to look for a rebound relationship or having expectations to look “for the One”, but just talking with others for fun and to just see how other people are like and ease the memory of the girl that rejected me.

What I realized is that damaged people are attracted to damaged people, but healthy people are not attracted to damaged people. And Nice Guys are attracted to damaged people, because they can’t believe that they can be loved by a healthy person. And here’s the problem: because of her rejection and being bullied in childhood, I feel myself in shame and I cannot believe that anybody would be attracted to me. Someone told me that it was a mistake to be heartbroken for 8 years because “who knows how many girls went you by”. I find that statement silly, because nobody was interested in me in all those years and I didn’t even look for anyone. And since I’m a Nice Guy, I can’t act near a woman in a flirty way that I spark attraction, because I feel ashamed for being attracted to someone. So the atmosphere would remain platonic and friend-like, which results in rejection. I can’t imagine myself in love, because shame creeps in and the feeling that I don’t deserve someone. And because of that, I wouldn’t be able to let anyone close to me. No matter how many self-help books and internet articles I read, I can’t help this. I feel myself in a deadlock.

I don’t have any value to offer to the other person, other than I have a unique music taste and I’m playing an instrument. I’m thinking about changing to a better paying job and joining a music band to boost my confidence, but I fear that these are just moving the goalposts like “if I do this and that, then I can be more loveable”. I also thought that because I’m inexperienced in relationships (only had one partner for 1.5 years back in senior high school and spent my whole 20s as single), a women my age could not afford any more fuckups in a relationship, and women my age would reject me anyway for someone older. So I thought maybe the best strategy is to date someone in their early 20s, even though I don’t really have preference for younger girls because I would feel like a creep and a loser that cannot date a women her age. I also miss the past from my university where we were good friends with my crush and I want to fix the past by meeting up with her one last time after lockdowns as friends (she also wants to meet).

How to heal from shame? How to heal from the past? What to fix in my mindset? I’m planning to try therapy again, what should I say and what should I work on?

EDIT: Additional info

• I have a hobby (playing an instrument for 12 years)
• Own my own apartment
• Have a comfortably paying job