I think you need to educate yourself about narcissists because I think you need to understand the difference between someone actually loving and caring about you verses just using you. These kind of people genuinely DO NOT have the capacity to care about anyone but themselves and that can leave a person genuinely feeling extremely low self worth and low self esteem when in REALITY, you actually are worth being appreciated and you need guidance towards building a stronger sense of self esteem.

It also sounds like you develop a love for "your dream of" rather than the reality of what is actually "there" too. What you have been grieving the most is the loss of "that dream of" and you know what, a lot of people make that mistake, not just you.

The human mind is designed to "dream of and imagine" and the truth is often human beings get to a point where they can actually end up creating the things they imagine like the cell phone which originally was just a thought up device used on Star Trek, well, we now actually have these devices that actually do work. So, not all of our dreams are a waste, yet often "can" be a waste when it comes to imagining a relationship when the individual in "reality" could never really fulfill that imagined "love of one's life" the way it's so desired.

You know, a lot of movie stars who seem to have it all end up with broken hearts and being cheated on or divorced, even though they are really beautiful and even very talented human beings. Actually, one of the things that can prove very helpful is learning about the actual lives of a lot of successful human beings that you would think found it all and yet they did not but they still managed to move forward despite some significant disappointments. It can help you realize you are actually not as alone as you think.