I feel like I have handled it pretty much as best I could. I say this being someone who made every possible mistake in the past though, years ago I"d have probably let her walk all over me.
Having been through it and seen (and read about!) others going through it, I tried to think how I would tell someone else to act and just act that way. She said that she doesn"t know if and when she"ll be ready for a "proper" relationship, so waiting around would be idiotic and almost certainly end up with me regretting it down the line.
And I don"t think there is anyone else, but then everyone says that don"t they? So who knows. Well, apart from her.
In brief (as possible...)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
I suppose I mirror a few people on here in that I was an idiotic teenager, about 18 I fell really hard for a girl who then proceeded to string me along, treat me like shit and show complete disregard for my feelings. Being young, stupid and in love I made every excuse for her because she couldn"t possibly be the massive bitch she clearly was. Lesson learned I suppose.
When she ultimately and predictably left me completely crushed, I shut down emotionally for a while without ever really being completely aware of it. Over the next 8ish years I was involved in a couple of 18 month - 2 year relationships, but I was never able to view things long term, and was never prepared to make plans for more than a couple of months ahead because in my head I was very aware that, in all likelihood, this was going to blow up so making plans and getting emotionally invested was a bad idea.
My last long term (2 year) relationship ended about 2 years ago, and over the following 18 months I saw a few girls, never for more than a few weeks, but none of them were anything special and I was just passing the time as much as anything. About 6 months ago, with me being 28 and my close friends hitting the age they were settling down and in long term relationships, I started to look seriously at why I hadn"t been with anyone I could see myself being with long term for 10 years.
When I really thought about it, it become pretty obvious that I"d avoiding relationships by avoiding getting close to anyone that there was the remotest chance I could actually fall for. Looking back over the last 10 years, I"ve actually met some pretty great girls, and each of them I kept at arms length and made no effort to pursue, instead ending up with girls who I found attractive physically, but offered no challenge mentally and who would pretty much worship me. Girls I was certain wouldn"t end up leaving me and by extension avoiding the possibility that I"d ever be hurt in any real way again.
I"d maybe been aware of it on some level, but it wasn"t really obvious to me until I sat and thought about it. Big difference at this stage though, was when I thought about it, I was really ready to take the risk. 10 years has dulled the ache enough that I can"t really remember how badly it hurt and am willing to try it again.
So, early March this year I meet a girl. She"s attractive, funny, has a really similar sense of humour, make me laugh, isn"t a push over but doesn"t force her opinion, all the "right" things. The first date we had I hadn"t laughed as much in years.
We talked early on about not rushing things. I"m 28, so still relatively young for a guy, but she"s 29, no kids, never married and talked about needing to be sure before she got serious with anyone. Which is fine, I understood that and honestly I feel the same while being aware that as a woman it"s probably a lot worse. There were red flags here and there, but nothing outrageous. Part of me at this point was half expecting to end up where I am a few months down the line, with her using the "it"s all got too serious" excuse, but I told myself that I"d spent too long bailing on anything promising because I was too worried about those kinds of possibilities, so I would stick around. I mean, she"s almost 30, I can imagine that every guy she dates now in her head has to get the "is this something I can see going long term" pretty early on if she wants kids while she"s still a relatively sensible age to have them.
Over the last 3 months we"ve seen each other a couple of times a week, sometimes for weekends, and the subject of not getting carried away had come up before. Again, it made me think she might be laying the foundations for an out (and I"m sure some here are thinking she was just sleeping around), but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt because honestly I felt the same way. I don"t want to be in relationship with anyone unless I"m sure it"s going somewhere. I wasn"t even ready to be in a full blow relationship with this girl, but I did really like her and if I"m honest I let me mind start to wonder.
It wasn"t all "Let"s not get serious...", we"d make plans for things in a few weeks, and her birthday is in a few months and she"d already asked if I thought I"d be able to get time off. There were enough things she said and did that made me think she was just worried, had been hurt before, and didn"t want to get heavily involved with someone who was wrong for her at this stage in her life. Which seemed reasonable enough...
For the first time I can remember I was thinking about the possibility of this being something that could really go somewhere. I"m not stupid enough to verbalise any of this, but I could really see her being someone I could marry, impregnate and all that.
Anyway, we went away for a couple of days last week - nothing serious, just both had time off so stayed at a hotel in a nice part of the country. We came back at the weekend and I wasn"t due to see her again until the end of this week.
Yesterday she text me saying that I didn"t need to worry, but she wanted to talk about something when we saw each other next. Which pissed me off to start with, because telling me there is nothing to worry about just makes me think it"s even more serious, and if she really wanted to wait until then she"d have just waiting. Her excuse later was she didn"t want to spring it on me. Which is obviously rubbish and I told her as much.
Anyway, she basically ended up telling me that she isn"t ready for a relationship and doesn"t know when she will be. Her mother had called me her boyfriend and been asking if we were going to move in together, talking about grandkids. So rather than just telling her that she was way ahead of herself, she started freaking out.
She was surprised when I told her that I wasn"t interested in still seeing her if that was the case. She seemed to think I"d just say it"s fine, we can keep just seeing each other and see if she changed her mind down the road, and I"d just have to accept that she might not and that she couldn"t give me a time frame on when she would.
The thing is, I wasn"t ready to call it a proper relationship at it stood, I was still happy seeing how it went. What she can"t understand is there is a massive difference between seeing how it goes while being open to it becoming a serious relationship, and seeing where it goes without. I"ve explained as best I can, but she won"t or can"t accept it.
The "your my ideal man" bit has been another sticking point. She said that the frame of mind she is in it doesn"t matter, because she wouldn"t be be open to the possibility of a relationship with anyone, ideal man or not. This is obviously bullshit. When people meet the ideal person they want a relationship whether they think they did before hand or not. I"ve made that point to her more than once now (there has been some back and forth today, but honestly it"s just us repeating ourselves), but she says it"s just not true. Clearly not something we"re going to agree on, but I am putting that down to her being an irrational woman who cannot see reason.
She has told me she really doesn"t want to stop seeing me, and that she doesn"t want to "give me up". I just replied that she must understand that she can"t have me but not be open to the possibility that we could actually be together.
It"s like she doesn"t even realise what she is asking. I am just grateful I"m old enough and have been through enough that I am able to call her on it. Years ago it would probably have seemed perfectly reasonable to me.
The strange thing is that I really wasn"t about to try to "define the relationship". I"d mentioned that I wasn"t sleeping with anyone else, and that if she intended to it was best she told me then because I wasn"t interested in seeing her any more if she was, so we were (or at least we"d agreed to be) exclusive, and were just seeing how things went without labels or rushing or pressure. Honestly I"m at the age where I feel like, provided there is an understand that it"s exclusive, having a label for it doesn"t matter. Call it what you want and it"s still the same thing. She has now said she regrets saying anything and wishing we were still just like that. It"s not easy, but I have to tell myself that doing this now is the best thing for me in the long run. Carrying on as we are now is just letting her string me along without having any commitment from her at all.
Long and dull story. Sorry there are no tits. Feel free to neg for it.
