Being single/my ex

You haven't been properly single at all. You've been in constant contact with your ex who you've been in love with the whole time. As an aside, if he knows you still love him, he's an absolute bastard for continuing to string you along. "Best friends" my arse. If you have such good potential to be friends, leaving it for 6 months/a year before resuming contact is not going to hurt. I doubt you just want to be friends any way.

It'd be wrong to get into a relationship with this new guy while you're still pining for you ex, and you're smart enough to realise this. I'd suggest being on your own for a while.

Again, you acknowledge that you should make your own happiness. So many people place all their worth in what one person thinks of them - it's wrong. Nobody "needs" a relationship to be happy, they need to be happy with themselves. Being in relationships since you were young is irrelevent, really.

I don't think you'll ever be happy while you have this unresolved issue with your ex, though. You have to cut him off, if you ask me.

Okay so the problem is, I can't cut him off.
If it wasn't bad enough that he lives a few doors away from me currently, we've signed a contract to live together next year (BEFORE we got together). We were both in a desperate housing situation and had no one to live with where we want to live (it's actually how we met). So yeah, we're meant to be living together in October, just the two of us. I'm willing to try it out, not that I have much choice.If it's going to be me having my ex in my face all the time and desperately wanting to be with him, I know I'm not going to be able to live with that. But if living together and spending all that time together (and it being really easy to see me alongside doing his studies) brings him back to me...then that's another story.
So you can see why I'm reluctant to let go, because living with my ex next year would suck but living with my boyfriend would be great.
Yeah I know, it's a stupid situation. But before he asked me out we reasoned that we get along so great, there would never be hard feelings, which is kind of true. I feel no anger or resenment towards him. Just love him unfortunately.

Christ, what a pile of ****e that situation is going to be!

I know it's kind of redundant, but it was rather silly to fall in love with someone you'd agreed to live with That's like, uni 101. Be friendly and courteous, nothing more!

I don't really know what to say to be honest. It's pretty brutal. You aren't "together" at the moment because he doesn't want to be with you.. and you hope that just being around each other is going to make him realise what he's missing..?

Knowing that you're going to be living together has changed my opinion from my first post. He might not be stringing you along, he needs to keep your relationship friendly because you're going to be with each other so much and he has no choice in it. I don't know if that's better or worse for you.
What happens if he gets together with another girl when you're living together..?

You have my complete sympathy. It sounds like its going to completely drain you emotionally. Probably him too. If you can find any way to get out of it.. x

So the ex situation is crappy and I can't see any good way out of it...

Does anyone have any general tips about learning to be single and happy?
I know how pathetic that sounds, don't worry. Maybe independent is the right word.

He's either an EXTREMELY sefless guy or just someone who's trying to create as little awkwardness as possible. That's a pretty terrible situation you have.

It's getting warmer, go find an outdoor sport you would enjoy playing and immerse yourself in it. You will be able to take out any emotional frustration on the sport while keeping yourself busy.

Embrace being single. You're a fresher at uni, you'll have plenty of time to settle down for a relationship. Have some promiscuous fun; given your background, you sound like you need it.

(Your username is ironic considering!)
You say that, and yeah I could go and do that, but the rest of TSR would just say I was a slut. Screw TSR, all my friends would think so too. I'm sure if you're a guy it's great being single. But when you're a girl (at least in my experience) you feel awfully guilty for sleeping with someone who you're not going out with, or flirting with numerous guys at the same time, etc etc. And a problem with living in a house rather than halls is I can't have anyone over without my whole household knowing about it, so yeah they'd know. I saw different guys during the first term at uni, ridiculously naively thinking they were actually interested in me as a person. It's a nice esteem boost at the time but afterwards you just feel awful.

Why should you feel awful? You have every right to enjoy yourself first and foremost and to take care of your needs before even beginning to give a damn about what society thinks. As for the gender-related double standard, here's what I've always found- if you maintain a level of class and sophistication when choosing your partners, and don't let your standards decay simply because it's "just sex" (why sex itself should be diminished like that, I will never understand. It's a perfectly valid reason unto itself), you won't come across as a slut, but as a liberated, self-confident libertine.
One other important thing: always put the cards on the table before anything happens. People need to know what they're getting into, even if it may seem unromantic.

Erm, how is he being selfless? He broke up with me when we had a near-perfect relationship just because he isn't mature enough for a relationship yet. I think being nice to me is the very least he could do...he is in fact being incredibly selfish considering I did nothing wrong and was a good girlfriend to him after he asked me out. He even says so himself.

You need to love yourself before you can love someone else

What you're describing is dependency

Do you think someone can sleep with 'too many' people?
I have this thing about not wanting to go over 10, especially when I'm not even in my twenties quite yet- although it's currently under 10. But I know a girl who's a year younger than me and has been with 20 or more guys, and she thinks nothing of it! It's something that really bothers me though and I don't really know why- it's stupid if you think about it. I was trying to save myself for sex only within relationships, but then I'm going to want to get into relationships for the wrong reasons maybe