How to stop obsessively thinking about someone?

TLDR: I (27M) dated a girl (24F) I liked a lot (more than anyone I’ve ever dated before), made a mistake and messed it up, and now I can’t stop thinking about her and have trouble sleeping. I feel extreme regret and sometimes wish I could go back to my normal happy self before I met her. I’m definitely planning to reach back out to her and give it another chance, but I’m unsure how to do that.

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I went on a couple dates with a girl and I felt we were super compatible. After the 2nd date I was so sure I would marry this girl one day. I feel like all my life I’ve always been very skilled at understanding people really fast, so that’s why I had that thought after just 2 dates.

We would text/call every day for a few weeks and I felt super comfortable sharing every aspect of my life with her and it seemed like she did too. I was very into her and she was very into me.

Basically one day I sent her a distasteful joke (it’s kind of a long story but it was basically “roasting” humor and she was the target). I thought she would find it funny bc I felt like we were so compatible and thought so similarly. Bad read on my part: she immediately replied that it was a huge red flag and hurt her and that she had a judgmental/toxic ex in the past and that she felt like she can’t trust me anymore and that we’re done.

This tone super starkly contrasted everything we’ve ever said to each other as we were super comfortable and into each other before this. I thought she was joking but she was serious and a few texts later asked me to stop texting her. I did, and couldn’t sleep that night (she said she also couldn’t sleep and was super sad bc she liked me a lot and felt betrayed).

A week later I wrote her a poem and asked for her forgiveness but she wouldn’t budge and that’s the last we spoke (3 months ago).

The last few months I’ve been thinking about her constantly and feeling extreme regret. The only times where I felt I was ok was when I was sufficiently distracted by being drunk or out dancing or on a camping trip with friends, etc. I dated a girl semi-seriously last month but I couldn’t stop thinking about the original girl and kinda made me really regret asking this new girl out and I’m glad we ended this new relationship amicably.

I’ve done a lot of dating and am usually pretty mature if something I wanted doesn’t workout, but, in my head, the original girl was the most compatible girl I feel like I’ve ever dated, despite what happened. I think I was mature about giving her space and not begging or being weird about it, and I see a potential in asking to date her again if I wait 6 months or a year and reach back out to her again; but it’s very painful waiting. I check her ig and sometimes even see when she updates her dating profile on the app we met on, and I feel like a stalker, so I’ve been actively trying to avoid doing those. It really really hurts me imagining her with another guy.

I think about her every day the past 3 months and have trouble sleeping, and have trouble being the happy self I was before I met her. I think about texting her again all the time maybe just a funny meme from an inside joke or something to get back to the friends level, but in my head I feel like the highest probability of us reuniting would be if I give a year or 6-months time for her to thoroughly be over the incident before reaching out.

Friends I talk to about this tell me I’m being irrational and need to move on and a few of them say reach back out. I definitely want to eventually reach back out to her. In my mind, there are 100 different ways I could reach back out and re-apologize to her, and only 1 of them would result in her giving me another chance; it’d have to be super understanding and kind and selfless, and idk I feel like I’ve done a lot of personal journaling to figure out what specifically that 1 is. But also ik this is not the correct angle to look at this, I think a lot about why I think of it this way; it feels like a very self-centered perspective. I feel like I’m usually a very selfless, loving person who puts others interests over mine, and idk why I view this in such a selfish way, why I just want her back so badly, it feels irrational/wrong and idk why. Could be that I just want something simply bc I can’t have it. Kind of like how ppl want rare gear in video games just bc it’s hard to get.

I wanted to post this here and I’ll probably try therapy in the next couple weeks.

Also, thank you for reading all this. What do you recommend are next steps?