Old girlfriends are the easiest thing to be nostalgic about. That's a universal truth. But always remember, there's a reason (probably many reasons) it didn't work out in the first place. I think it's better to look forward than backward. You'll end of frustrated all over again. Plus, religious crazy is one of the worst kinds, because it comes with all sorts of built in contradictions, guilt, disappointment in oneself, and boundary setting.

Ha. I say fuckit. Tap that ass.

I've dated three different women twice. Two of them were batshit insane. As in, "Romeo and Juliet by Blue Oyster Cult is our song." As in, "bisexual wiccan ex-stripper" batshit insane. One of them was quite nice.

You've done all the damage you can possibly do. You've both been around the bend. The worst thing that can happen is you end up in a relationship that ends badly. No, scratch that.

The worst thing that can happen is you can get into the nasty-ass habit of mourning what might have been.

Li'l story. I built a car in high school. Like, from the frame rails up. Long story short, 4x4 Triumph TR-7 with 31" mud tires and a 425HP Chevy 400 V8. And, as you might expect, cars built by 18-year-olds are kinda shakey. But it made it from New Mexico to Seattle… barely.

I was cruising through Utah, one of the two gas tanks leaking, the problematic overheating problems just starting to arise, but the piston rings breaking as I simultaneously crawled down out of the Mountain West so HOLY SHIT I HAD SOME POWER. And I crested a hill and there she was.

In all honesty, I saw her for maybe 5 seconds. Objectively speaking, I can say she was average height, average build, with long brown hair. Subjectively speaking, she was Cindy Crawford and Helen of Troy, the probably-black outfit she was wearing an indicator that she listened to all the same bands I did, not that she was a heroin-addicted runaway from Denver.

I passed her by because I was being chivalrous. After all, the car could break down, and then where would she be? ("stuck in the exact same goddamn desert she''s in now, dumbass, only a few miles down the road…") The thought in parentheses took me six months to wrap my head around, and the girl haunted me for a decade or more. It is only through the clear-eyed perspective of middle age that I have come to appreciate the fact that while hitch hikers can be awesome, sexy, intelligent, well-read, erudite, kinky and into you, they're far more likely to be… not.

Had I picked the chick up I coulda saved myself an easy 15 years of pie-eyed introspection.

Fucking tap that. Get sick of the chick. Don't just lay that notion to rest, wrestle it to the ground and skullfuck its corpse. 'cuz you never know.

I didn't date my wife in college 'cuz I was too busy fooling around with her best friend, but I sure tried. Our daughter turned one yesterday.

So, I saw my first real high school romance today for the first time in about a year.

I totally disagree with the wisdom of everyone so far. She still has an effect on you because the person you saw is the one in your memory, not the actual human that you saw. You're not 16 any more, but it is your 16-year-old self that is being tormented.

Call her, go for coffee, find out what she's been up to in the last three years. Nothing removes the burning of an old flame more than seeing them as the human being they actually are.

Also, thank her for the great summer. It was a stepping stone in moving you towards the person you want to be.

but I never ask her to be my girlfriend.

she looks and sounds like an angel

- Looks can be deceiving

- Don't judge a book by its cover

- and other platitudes, with your host, _refugee_

I agree with redsox44344. Remember all the things that got you to the point where you stopped speaking. I happen to be remarkably good at letting go of the past - I don't like revisting old significant others, at least. What's done is done and is done for a reason. (There! Another platitude for you!) What's more, I find even if you do try again with a given person, it is never as good as the first time around. You just get tired old iterations of the same problems popping up again sooner, or new, more interesting problems like insecurity or jealousy that arise as a result of the failure of the last iteration.

I would remind yourself of the bad things. Hell, I would say focus on the bad things about the relationship. What about her annoyed you? (If "nothing," that's probably a problem all on its own.) Remember, as b_b said, that religious-crazy is among the worst kinds of crazy. Not only does it come with all the problems he mentioned, but religious-crazy is one of those kinds of crazy that doesn't encourage an eventual cure. - if this is not clear, what I mean is, "someone with, say, depression or bi-polar disorder, hopefully eventually they will seek help to realign their viewpoint with a level of normalcy. someone who is religious-crazy is convinced of their own righteousness."

Moreover, man, plenty of fish in the sea. SO MANY fish in the sea, in fact. Don't you want to try some fun new experiments instead of going back to a dish you already tasted? Not trying to be vulgar here, just metaphorical. If you had a feast in front of you would you stick to the same thing you ate for a few months three or more years ago and enjoyed at the time? Or would you say "to hell with it" and try all the other dishes out there?

I mean, you're never going to know how bland rice tastes until you try the jerk chicken. Or something.

I've had/have a similar problem. Honestly, I still think about my ex that I really cared about even now. But I've found that if you let them, things go away by themselves, as long as they aren't around for a new surge of nostalgia.

For example, I used to still wear around a lot of things that my ex gave me, since they were nice. She gave me a watch, some random clothes, and a few other things. I used to think I would get over that stuff eventually, and just be able to wear the clothes. Never really got any better, and I just threw them out. I remember that they were there, but now I don't have to see them every time I open up my drawers. The more of her that I've "deleted" from my system, the less I remember about her or the relationship in general, since I'm not seeing it all of the time to remember it. Eventually, hopefully I'll forget about the whole thing and finally move on completely. At least that's the plan. Facebook is still a bit weird since I haven't deleted it and occasionally check up on her profile, but it's been less and less as I think about her less and less.

And for thinking "What might have been?" This one I find much easier than the random pangs of nostalgia from everything I see that has memories of her associated. Whenever I think about it, I think of why it didn't work out, why it wouldn't have worked out and remind myself that memories become fonder over time, and we tend to forget the bad things about the relationship as a whole. I tend to think about what the consequences of that action would be or would have been, and come to the conclusion that it's not going to happen, and fantasizing about it is useless. Busy myself up to forget about it. Dwelling on everything just makes it worse, if I find myself doing that, I try to do something productive.

What might have been? Divorce papers, lots of fights. She clearly has both issues and a desire to rebuild herself. Don't make these YOUR issues.

It's exceedingly important to free up your heart, mind, and schedule for the next few relationships (because there will be a few). There are some important steps to this:

1) Separate the following and track as if they were running daemons: your feelings for her, her feelings for you, your ability to stand back from your feelings;

2) Understand that you cannot guess someone's feelings. We aren't psychics.

3) See the cycles and which rewards lead to a loop. Some part of you is repeating an action willfully because it gets a reward from that process. The reward could be schadenfreude, self-harm, a comfortable guilt, even a cookie. See when you're in a rut and see what encourages you to stay in it versus a larger but less known reward outside of the rut.

4) The bus out of the swamp is leaving, so get on it. The only way to get over this is to see it as an infected wound. They only heal when treated, then otherwise left alone to heal. If you poke at the wound, it won't scab up and heal properly. Change towns, get new positive activities, branch out from the person you were when you met her. Be where you won't worry about that anymore by being involved in new things.

I speak from experience: get moving. Get a car and move to another state. You can't help her and probably don't want to be on her road: you want the comfort of a sweet heart from your memory. That memory is a photograph, not an actual person.

Oh, the old "What If?" game. That's a hard one to avoid, but one well worth avoiding. Hey, this might be a good time for you to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Great book about the divergent paths of life.