Does he like me or the game (not what you think :D )? Are we just - gasp - friends?

[Aimée]

For those who don't like long posts -- this is one. Thank you and good-bye.

 

I have this friend that I dated a long long time ago. He broke up with me because we had a bad communication and because he had problems with my temper. We met each other abroad and I had to leave and go home and communication was just very difficult as we're also from different countries. I've been in touch with him for a while now via emails and mostly messenger as right we're also a large distance apart. I think when we were together he had a lot of feelings for me but I was inexperienced and impatient and didn't realize how jaded he was from his past relationships, so things went down the gutter. I know he considered me quite attractive, also smart and nice.

 

He's single now and I can conclude from our conversations that he still considers me attractive, smart, fun, kind, caring, etc. it's just, I'm missing the spark. I don't get the right kind of vibes from him, the ones that make the difference between a friend and a lover. When I asked him before why he didn't want to give it another try he said it's because we always argue so much. Well, we did, for certain reasons, we have talked about it extensively though and I think we have managed to settle things, we made peace and we're at zero right now. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend because she was too demanding (his words), he's right now working on his master thesis and she had wanted him to spend more time with her (they were in a long-distance relationship - he's in Europe right now and she's in the States - and also depending on phone calls or messenger for communication) which he thought he couldn't afford. If I tell you that he has started on his thesis two months before the deadline you will understand maybe what I mean with stress (I think he had done most of his research before, but still...). He had intented of finishing his draft at the end of last month and now he intends to finish it till the middle of this month. At the end of August he has to hand in his paper and I know he's quite anxious about this.

 

I assume that what he had said about his ex-girlfriend were also kind of warnings for me not to make the same mistake as her. One of his main issues was/is his inability to deal with girlfriends who didn't respect his limits. He's a very sweet nice person and he has trouble with saying no to people. He knows this is his weakness and he tries to change it but often he just ends up with blocking off and running away from things.

 

I try my best not to put any pressure on him and honestly I would feel horribly bad for distracting him right now with all the stress he has. We haven't agreed on anything and of course I would like to know where we're heading but it seems this is a bad moment and I thought it would be better to wait till he has handed in his thesis. I'd prefer though to have some idea where we're heading right now. I simply don't like bad surprises.

 

I'll try to lay out the current situation:

 

About a month ago we made peace, the talk lasted for about four hours and might have continued for longer if I hadn't had to leave. Yes, that's the same guy who didn't want to continue the relationship with his girlfriend because she wanted to talk with him not only once a day but preferably more and didn't seem to understand he was busy (According to him she didn't understand that he didn't have so much time for her. I explained to him him that you should never tell a woman that you're too busy because she'll freak out. That's our standard excuse when a guy asks out for a date and we don't want to go out with him. We know what this means. ).

 

A week passed and I contacted him again as I was feeling kind of low and I wanted someone to talk with me. He did take the time and talked with me even though it was quite late and he had planned to do some work for his thesis (yeah, I know, it was a bad moment, I should have waited till the next day instead of having a talk so late but I did feel quite anxious that day. ).

 

Anyway, after that I didn't hear anything from him for nearly 3 weeks and I was worried. So I contacted him. We talked a bit, it was a bit awkward, he told me he had been very busy and confirmed my assumption that he didn't chat a lot anymore as he had been busy with this thesis. During our talk I asked him if he wanted to play scrabble with me. He said yes, maybe for 15 minutes and then he wanted to continue working. Well, we played one game which lasted an hour, when it was over it was past twelve here and I wanted to go to bed and he asked me for another game?! We had a lot of fun during the game and it was amusing to lay out, um, interesting words but still...

 

A couple of days went by without him contacting me, so I do. I asked him if he wanted to take a break and play a game, but he was offline. The next day he contacted me and we talked. We started playing another game. I won and I asked for another game. We started but didn't finish as he lost his connection and the game froze. As I started to feel guilty for keeping him away from his work, I told him we should stop now. A while later I realized we had been chatting and playing for four hours! I knew that we had been online for quite a while but I hadn't realized that it had been for such a long time.

 

I'm not sure what I should think now. He never initiates any conversation with me. But when we talk it's me who ends it, my impression is that he enjoys it and wouldn't mind continuing but there's nothing really active coming from him.

 

Also now I'm wondering if he is not hooked on the game and only likes spending time and playing with me because he hasn't won as far as now especially since I'm not even a native English speaker and he is (no, he's not losing because he's a dummy, he's a quite educated person, but I think I'm better in playing strategically). Or maybe he's just trying to avoid his work and procrastinating because he's having self-doubts (he's got lots of them)?

 

Does him spending so much time with me not mean anything real and am I sliding into the friends category? I worry about this. I know women can spend a considerable amount of time with men without having any romantic interest in them. If a woman never initiates any kind of contact with you you can be sure that's she's not interested in you. What about the other way round? Is it possible for a woman to be trapped in the friends category as well?

 

I honestly think if there was no distance between us he would be all over me, but now I wonder if I'm not slowly turning into his - gasp - friend? Is it possible that a guy will put a girl that he considers nice, smart, attractive and that he once had a real crush on into the friends category because she's too far away? I may add after his thesis he will leave the place where he is right now and spend nine months in another European country to continue his studies and then I think he will return to where he is (not home). Myself, I'm not sure where I will be in the next future.

 

Our talks in general are not as distanced as the talks I have with my male friends, I'm way nicer to him than to my other male friends, I let him know that I still like him. When I tell him he's a cutie he will say thank you and tell me I'm a cutie, too. Hell, this is not the kind of talk I have with my male friends and I doubt that's the kind of talk he has with his other female friends and yet, the spark is missing. My feeling tells me we're not getting anywhere unless we meet again, but I've told myself I'm not going to visit him unless he invites me, but there's just nothing coming from him.

 

Sometimes I wonder if he knows I can hurt him, more than his other girlfriend was able to and that's why he's so skittish about investing emotions in me again (I had said things that hurt him because I wasn't aware that they would mean so much to him. ).

 

If you made it through this post -- thanks for reading it. Honestly, I don't think anything good will come out of this situation, but I really needed to get things off my chest, this is really bugging me.

 

Please feel free to post any comments and opinions. Thank you.

[Merin]

IMO this Guy see's you as a Friend.

 

It seems he is a very busy Guy and not only doesn't have the time for a relationship right now, he also doesn't appear interested (to me) in a relationship other than something casual (such as some chat and games online)

 

He has already told you a great deal regarding his relationship with his EXGF and IME Regardless of gender when interested in someone romantically people will NOT tell thier crush about another person..

 

You are the one always making the contact with him, even if he is good to go with you doing so and chatting with you or playing games.. again IMO IF he was interested in you as more than whats going on right now, he would be the one initiating contact with you.

 

He may also have come to the conclusion that he isn't all about LD relationships as the experience he just recently had with his now EXGF wasn't a good one.

 

My 2 cent's

[Aimée]

Damn it, Merin, you get to the point. I appreciate it a lot, thanks.

 

He had been involved with this girl in a long-distance relationship a year before but she broke it off because she wasn't happy with the communication, it seems he didn't communicate enough with her. Now they met again and she initiated the relationship a second time, but this time it was him who broke it off.

 

I asked him about his ex-girlfriend, he's not the kind of person who talks about other people.

 

I had the feeling we were not going anywhere...

[Merin]

Originally posted by Aimée

Damn it, Merin, you get to the point. I appreciate it a lot, thanks.

 

He had been involved with this girl in a long-distance relationship a year before but she broke it off because she wasn't happy with the communication, it seems he didn't communicate enough with her. Now they met again and she initiated the relationship a second time, but this time it was him who broke it off.

 

I asked him about his ex-girlfriend, he's not the kind of person who talks about other people.

 

I had the feeling we were not going anywhere...

 

I'm sorry Aimee...

 

Seems you've got a lot to offer to someone, so make certain he's worth all the effort

 

Good Luck Girl

[Aimée]

Originally posted by Merin

I'm sorry Aimee...

 

Seems you've got a lot to offer to someone, so make certain he's worth all the effort

 

Good Luck Girl

Thanks.

[Aimée]

Would it be a good idea to ask him now if I can visit him?

[Merin]

Originally posted by Aimée

.

 

I've told myself I'm not going to visit him unless he invites me, but there's just nothing coming from him.

 

 

 

Originally posted by Aimée

Would it be a good idea to ask him now if I can visit him?

 

You already know the answer to this one.... You've answered that million dollar question yourself already

[Aimée]

Honestly, I think he's cute, but a little dummy... I know he did things that were just plain stupid even though he had a serious crush on me at that time. We have a history of bad communication and misunderstandings because frankly we both have/had bad communication skills. I think I will have a talk with him just in order to not step into the same trap of assumptions and misunderstandings again, there's a slim chance that things might be different than how I feel or you predict, but I'm prepared to expect the worst.

[Aimée]

After going through another one of these phases where he didn't reply for unknown reasons I've decided to quit contact. I have enough of this passive-aggressive silence that leaves you wondering what you did wrong again and life is indeed too short to wait for people who don't know what they want and don't even care for your attempts to make peace and leave in a nice way.

[tonyp56]

He has already told you a great deal regarding his relationship with his EXGF and IME Regardless of gender when interested in someone romantically people will NOT tell thier crush about another person.

 

 

I don't want to disagree with you Merin, but I have done this to get the girl I was telling to "feel sorry" for me, because I did like her. It isn't out of the question in other words. However, I agree with you overall, this guy sounds like he just wants to be buds.

 

Sorry to the OP,

[Aimée]

Another update.

 

I reconsidered our situation a while ago and decided to write him an email. I always had tremendous feelings of guilt for things I had done or said, during the relationship and during the breakup, so I decided to wipe the slate clean. I wrote a very nice email and apologized for everything. Sure, I believe he also did a lot of things wrong, but two wrongs don't make things better and no matter what I did, I always continued to feel guilty and that made it hard to let go. I thought I had messed up, it was may fault that everything went so bad, etc. I had tried making the first step to ease the tension and clear the mess between us, I had apologized, but always with the expectation that he would apologize, too, in short, I was trying to manipulate him. Anyway, I felt extremely relieved after I sent my apology. I made mistakes, I apologized and if he doesn't want me back it's his decision.

 

A couple of days later, he contacted me on the messenger and called me. We started having contact again, my hopes went up and predictably my nervousness... After trying to reach him for a couple of days, I finally got a hold on him and we talked about the upcoming tension between us. It was a nice talk and he said he might be a bit anxious as he wasn't sure if I understood that he didn't want a relationship...

 

So, after thinking about it for a couple of days, I decided to reduce contact to a minimum. I fessed up and said I had been hoping to bond with him emotionally by talking with him on the phone, by chatting with him or by playing games on the messenger and that's why I started to be nervous. I also said I would back off and concentrate on my application for grad school. I think he's too much in defensive mode now to get anywhere with him.

 

He is nice and trying to make me happy, but I have only limited allowance to express my needs, there's this constant underlying fear and thread that he will retreat if I do something that he doesn't like. And even when I successfully explained to him what my need was and he tried to meet it, I think even doing small things when you're in defensive mode just reinforce the negativity and the defensiveness, so it's better to let things go back to a normal level first. I hope with this move I've also managed to move myself out of the position as his backburner girl. I showed him I'm able to let go and not need him and I gave him what he as much space as he wanted. And I stayed very nice all the time.

 

We're still in contact as he had offered me to help me with my application. He's such a smart cutie. I'm not sure if there is not some guilt involved in his offer to help me, but for the moment I just take it as it is. I'm glad that he's helping me and he in return seems to be happy about it, too.