Was it ever really love, and therefore is any love lost?

The end of another relationship. One of the more tulmutuous ones. I think I had a lot to do with its tumultousness. I wanted particular kinds of love, particular kinds of future-orientation, particular kinds of...well, security (a false idea I know, but hey, I wanted it anyway). And there were moments when he seemed to promise this great love potential. The oddest part was that he would declare how wonderful I am to his geographically-distant family, but when it came to the everyday friends, I felt effaced. I could never figure out how truly serious he was about me. And in ending (again, and again, and again), he claimed I had only needed to ask for certain things, or to have asked him to wait while I figured out what I wanted. But I think I did -- as much as I could knowing that there were certain things that were non-negotiable. It seems like it was a bit of a double bind. I was supposed to ask, but for what? What was ever up for asking? I wasn't in love with him, and I'm not sure I ever could have been, but it seems, at the same time, that things were foreclosed before they could ever begin. As though we lived in a state of indeterminacy and paralysis before even knowing if something else were possible.

But even worse, I have a tendency to want to be really done with someone once I (or we or he) end the relationship. I don't want to stay friends, because I find it too painful a reminder. And I find the intimate knowledges uncomfortable after the intimacy is gone. But I wonder if that's just strange and neurotic. Why do I feel so unnerved by the fact that someone once had a particular kind of knowledge and access to me? What difference does it make? And I am so hurt if he does not seem to pine or think of me -- I want to be irreplaceable but also distant. And I think that distance only really ends up hurting me in the end. I end up feeling isolated and awkward and lonely and unmoored. Yet, is it not me who has set up the terms to be this way?