Welcome to PC serenityy. Ah, you have a lot of life ahead of you to learn lots more lessons from REAL LIFE.

Lol....at 63, I remember back to when I was a senior in high school & in a long distance relationship with a guy I had actually met on a train trip across the country several years before. We had written for years just as friends & the fall of my senior year he came to Calif playing guitar in a Christian Gospel group. We spent one day together, lol, I still remember that raining fall day I took off from school & went with him to Disneyland. Lol....the day was as magical as Disneyland & the connection felt so REAL. I fell for him & foolishly chose to have. Committed long distance relationship with him....wasted my whole senior year without connecting to anyone in my REAL life that I was really living. All my senior school activities were done with friends but no one special because I was committed to him who was also in his senior year of high school.

Then came graduation....& a dear John letter from my REAL dear John. (in the old days before internet or cell phone texting "dear John" letters were what the letters were called that said "sorry I don't want to be with you any more"). He graciously told me that he was getting married to a girl he met in high school that summer. Oh yes, I was angry at myself for wasting my time having tied myself to him & realizing that in long distance relationships (LDR'S) we really don't know the other person & therefore any feeling we thought MIGHT have been love couldn't possibly have been REAL love. REAL love is something that grows equally between 2 people as they grow together through REALLY KNOWING each other & TRULY having a REAL LIVE emotional connection by really knowing & spending REAL TIME together to REALLY KNOW the person....not just what they want us to know about them through what they tell us or what we IMAGINE them to be like by what we want to see them as being, creating in our own imagination the person we want them to be.

That was the point in my life I realized that it was most important to define who I was, not someone defined by who I was in relationship to someone else. I needed to define who I was, be strong to focus on what career I wanted & what college education I needed to accomplish that. That was the beginning of my independent thinking & really growing up to define who I was. Lol....I learned many MORE lessons after that & even was learning lessons up to a few years ago about mistakes I had made even in the marriage I did end up in & finally left after 33 bad years.

The thing is that it's important to learn in a positive light, even the things we did wrong....we learn NOT to do things again in the future, to be aware of certain RED FLAGS & pay attention to them in the future & NOT make the same mistakes again. Learning is a good thing. It's BAD if we don't learn something from experiences that we have been hurt by.

First off DATING is being together IRL & getting to know the other person & OBSERVING how they react in real live situations. watching body language & reactions to things that happen to them. Seeing them in real live situations so you get to KNOW what they are REALLY like.

I learned one important thing from my bad marriage is that when you fight with someone CONSTANTLY, you are NOT compatible & it's nap waste of time trying to MAKE the relationship work. It's NORMAL to disagree on things & have differences of opinions but when fighting is constant, it is NOT a healthy relationship & best to end it then keep trying to make the relationship into something it will never be.

Also, drinking, smoking & porn are NOT the way to take good care of yourself. Getting in touch with your REAL self is the best solution if you truly ever want to have a healthy relationship with a person who is daily IN YOUR LIFE because ONLY someone who is there for you & you are there for them can you ever truly have a REAL relationship with.

You will get through this. When we loose any relationship even if it's one we only imagined to be there, we go through a period of grieving what we feel like we have lost in our life. Grieving takes time....give yourself that time but don't get yourself STUCK there. You will get on with your life....you have plenty more years & lots more time to learn even more about yourself. You are young with lots more life & life experiences ahead of you. Be kind to yourself.