Hi, Carolyn: Earlier this year, I had a short but intense relationship with a guy who was a great catch. Good-looking, smart, well-read, liked his family, etc., and in our late 20s/flirting with 30, that seems harder and harder to find. He wasn’t a “words of affirmation” person, which I very much am, and he had several close female friends — four — whom he had varying degrees of intimate relationships with in the past, which I had a hard time with.

I wasn’t quite ready for a relationship and was still working on self-esteem and insecurities, which really came to the surface with this person.
My question is — how do I move on from a relationship that had great trappings that I wasn’t ready for? I know he wasn’t perfect, but it seems that it was my insecurities and neediness that really drove us apart, and I’m finding it hard to forgive myself and come to terms with that.