I'll call him "P". I doted on him. His absence for even a little while was just intolerable for me. He told me no one understood him like I did. He told me we'd always be friends. Then he told me we couldn't be together because society was more likely to accept him with a woman than with a man.
I decided I required a man who could stand up to the world and be his own man. I didn't fight for him, though I desperately wanted to. Why should I? He wasn't willing to fight for me. I asked him to leave. It nearly destroyed me for a while. But I still remember the evening, several months later driving home from work, when I realized I hadn't thought about him at all that whole day. It was a start
He was married in less than a year, and 2 kids later, divorced. Then he started trying to start something up again. I rejected him.
20 years later, I still miss him sometimes. But I don't regret how it all turned out. If I'd still been with him, the next chapter of my life may never even have happened.