He left the church because his girlfriend of that time wanted him to leave. I know, I know...I was infatuated with someone who had a girlfriend (they are not together anymore)...how pathetic can I get?
And like I said, the worst part is that I still think about him, dream about him, and I've talked to him a few times on the phone or through facebook.
Don't use words like pathetic when describing yourself. I've read enough of your posts to say definitively you're not pathetic.
If you want to find someone, you certainly can - I just recommend you don't go after this particular gentleman unless he's now single. If it makes you feel any better, I ended my one and only other serious dating relationship when I was 20 and through a series of circumstances ended up not dating
anyone until I hit nearly 30. I don't have an exact number but it was between 9 and 9.5 years. I even (and this is truly bizarre) ended up getting phone numbers of two women I was interested in during that time period but the one I lost (man that was stupid) and the other I didn't call because the entire situation was just bizarre (and this is me we're talking about, so it was truly bizarre).
I didn't end up worse for wear. I actually ended up engaged. And I wasn't being facetious with my first post. I knew things with my fiance could actually go somewhere when I realized that my [now] fiance wasn't perfect - she was a flawed human being that I still didn't want to live without. Anything else that came up after that point was just a line item to be worked out, because I wanted her and that was final. Compare that to my previous relationship where there were flaws, and they weren't worth working out (not that I didn't think about it all the time).
So, IDK, I'm rambling. Get out there and start talking to strangers. Just do it in a well lit place. Or talk to people who aren't entirely strangers. It'll happen.