How long does it really take to forget about a love?

@QueenOfDessert I am sorry you are having to go through this. Not having experienced what you are speaking about, I cannot help you directly but please check back, there are several folks here that might have some great insight for you.

The pain lasts forever, but eventually it bites less. The love never goes, but it is possible for it to mellow, eventually. Ther are harsh realities to be found in life, and this is one of them.
The strange part is, you forget their face rather quickly.

How long will this last? Will it ever, finally, be over?
It will end when you wake up and realize the love you talk about is a shadow and a mirror that is not really real. When you figure out a love in human form like that doesn’t exist, you can move on because you know another is plausible in the next cafe or the next checkout line at the supermarket.

Well, yes it will all eventually be over, whether you wait for that to happen on it’s own or take matters into your hands, that is your choice, but ending your life is a poor decision.

Sounds normal to me. Yearning is a direct consequence of delight.
I’m happy for you. Someday one of you will be gone and the other one will be completely disoriented and dismembered and disheartened and will feel it is not really possible to continue. It’s true. It’s not possible to continue. It’s only possible to wait.

Never, you don’t forget stuff like that, no matter how your mind changes along the years.

Some take a lifetime.

I haven’t forgotten any of my loves, nor would I want to. I feel that I was fortunate to have had someone to love and that I learned much from the experiences – as challenging and painful as they might have been. They made me a better person, and prepared me for a better love. They taught me that pure, mature love is unconditional; and whether it was me or them who imposed expectations, doing so is not an act of loving.

I took time to grieve the loss of the relationship and the future I had been projecting for myself within that partnership. I then took time to consider what lessons I had to learn from those experiences, and in what ways I had contributed to the decline of the relationship (which always happens – even when one party has clearly wronged the other, there were mistakes made by both along the way). I then took my new lessons and redefined myself as an independent adult, and created new projections for my own future that did not hinge on being half of a couple. I found activities and interests and got busy living my life and enjoying it. In my case it was a process and I had a few loves lost along the way, so I couldn’t really state how long it took me to get to the point of being self-content. I was over 40 when I got there.

Eventually, someone entered my life and befriended the independent me. We fell in love with each independent other, and although our lives have been closely intertwined for over 4 years now and we share everything, we have not become codependent. Had I met him when we were younger or without having experienced my earlier heartaches, I would not have been able to experience the beauty of unconditional love – being with someone out of choice and not need.

I have had that kind of love, and it was ended through his death. The pain for acute for a long time, but the stretches of non-pain time got longer and longer. Then the pain would come back. The first year was so hard. Then gradually it was easier—but the pain,when it came back was the always the same. I learned how to be with the pain. The love is always there. It has been 14 years, and the pain is gone, and has been for quite a while.
I look back on that time, the grieving time, as a very special period and distinct time in my life. I was amazed that I was able to live through it, but I always had a strong impetus to live and realized that I did have to live my own life, not the life we would have had together.
All the best to you.

The pain never goes away, but it gets to be manageable after a while. Hey you had something special. Hold on to that and remember what made it special. Some peeps go through life never knowing what that is.

Maybe 10 years.

I remember my first love from over 30 years ago like it was yesterday. I don’t have the “love” feelings we share back then and even more recently (20 years ago) the same applies to my ex wife. I remember the love we once shared and also remember the pain of why we divorced even more. In time you will get over the loss of that love. For me it averaged about 2 months as I recall.

Forget? I don’t think it’s possible to forget a great love.

Depends on the circumstances surrounding the separation.
If it is a growing apart where one recognizes the need to free each party to move on, there might be some bittersweet longings, but, if it is a love gone bad, ending in a divorce or breakup due to unsavory conduct or any manner of abuse, well…to mourn some fantasy of a love that never really existed, except in your own mind and projections, is not healthy.
No- thing is forever, and even the greatest relationship will, eventually, be unraveled by the death of one person.

To remember a love with fondness is one thing, to canonize another to the extent that you can not move forward is entirely another.
Personalty and mental/emotional health play into things as well, I’m a mover on-er type, I feel my feelings but let go of the past pretty easily. All things must come to an end, such is the nature of life.

A love like the one you describe will be hard to forget. When you talked about A love that belongs in poetry, I was reminded of a song I hheard from long ago, called Some kind of Love by the late Kate Wolf.

I had several serious love relationships before I met my wife 27 years ago, and I have never forgotten any of them. One day my wife came across an old picture of me and a former lover. She asked me, kind of snarkily, if that was the love of my life. I replied that yes, at the time, that woman was the love of my life. But times change, and people change. Loves change.

The departing of a loved one, whether by death, geography, or any of a number of reasons, can be painful, and just like a physical wound, may take a long time to heal, and also may leave a lasting scar. But the good memories will last as well, and are a great balm and liniment to the wound. Remember, if you once loved deeply, you know that you can love deeply again, and because you were loved just as deeply, you deserve to be loved deeply once again.

The type of love relationship that you are describing would be very hard for me to forget about. I left a wonderful relationship like that because I was scared of getting hurt and thought I wasn’t getting what I needed. I had just gone through a divorce and I guess I wasn’t emotionally ready for a new relationship. After being away for 9 months, this man was still on my mind. I would go a few days without thoughts of him on my mind and then all of a sudden I would see or hear several things that reminded me of him. Then, I had to start all over again. What helped me during these difficult times was working on my personal growth. I read a lot of self help books and went to therapy to figure out what I needed for me. It helped lessen some of the pain. I moved to a new location for a fresh start, away from my ex-husband and this man popped up in my thoughts again. I made a decision to contact him and see how he was doing. In my situation, it worked out where we got back together again and its better than it was before! I learned how to take care of myself better, communicate and express my feelings. The best advice that I can offer to you is to take care of yourself. Get your mind healthy and find happiness in doing things that you enjoy doing.

Researchers say memory is reenforced by smell, touch, taste, feelings etc. My first girlfriend was all those and so everything everything reminds me of her even these many years later.

She left me.

Being single is shit, but I will never put myself in danger of feeling that kind of pain again.