Basic question here: how can I tell when I'm over someone and ready to be with someone else?

- C.G., Boston, MA

That is a basic question, but not a simple one. I'm not sure I can even answer it.

Sometimes hearing someone else's experiences put things in perspective. Here is a situation concerning a person I dated, how I personally view it, and how I make it work for me. Maybe this example will help clear things up a little bit for you too.

In my life, I've seen a lot of relationships and been envious of very few. I see a lot of phoniness, relationships of convenience, and people together for all the wrong reasons.

But I knew that my relationship with her was something incredibly, incredibly special. I'd never felt anything like that; it was something totally different than all the rest I'd ever been in. It was comparing apples to oranges, as the saying goes.

In every way, I found her to be the most beautiful thing that I'd ever seen. We showed each other our best and our worst and remained together because we believed in each other as individuals and believed in us as a couple.

It's interesting to think of all the things we are taught and all we are not. People are taught a million things growing up: how to read, how to use a stove without burning their hands, how to fold a towel, how to drive, and so on.

But we're never taught some of the things that are imperative in relationships; we're somehow expected to learn them as we go and by trial and error. I, like many others, never learned how to trust someone to give them all of my feelings, so I'd always held something back, which isn't fair.

I also never learned how to forgive someone that I loved when they hurt me. And I certainly never learned what to do when you find someone who is perfect for you. It sounds like such a great thing, but it can be one of the most overwhelming feelings you ever experience because you want it to work out more than you want anything else in your life.

And sometimes, by the time you start to realize these things, it's too late to make everything right.

Making her cry was the worst thing I've ever done and just thinking about it hurts me more than anything I've ever lost, never achieved, failed at, or I could really explain here.

And now she's gone. We had talked about "forever" but this isn't the kind of "forever" I thought we meant.

Who we were at the time we made our memories, we'll always be - that man will always love that woman and that woman will always love him just as much. I still miss so many things about her, namely counting on - and believing in - us.

I still think about her every day and wonder, wonder, and wonder. I made her an enormous part of my life and now that she's gone, that life as I knew it is too.

The pain is normal. But don't think that because you feel pain you can't move on. What happened between the two of you obviously affected you, so the hurting is expected. Truthfully, and unfortunately, it may be felt for a long, long time.

If you think about it, you probably still don't feel great about the moment you found out you didn't get that job you really wanted or a pet that died when you were a kid. You may never feel perfectly fine about this situation either.

What I realized, and what you must too, is that you have to move on. They have. They have their own life going, and whether it's them being alone or them being with someone else - it's still them being without you.

There is no other option; you can't stay closed off and emotionally unavailable forever in hopes they will change their mind about you or that it will work out somehow. Knowing when to let go and move forward it is the hard part.

You don't want to do it when you're emotionally unavailable, angry at life, or will be anything but the best person you can be to whomever it is you end up with next. I don't know if you're there. Maybe you don't even know if you're there.

There's only one way to find out, though.