Did I make a huge mistake?

[mockeryjones]

i would council the exact opposite of apparently most posters on this thread. it appears the fashion to wield NC like a club. NC is a last resort.

 

for now i council patience. actually considering your plans i double that, patience in the relationship (I saw that you have known him for 13 years but how long have you been involved with him? Since November right? that's 4 months, 4 months is a blink of the eye in the overall length of your common existence terms) and patience at the poker table. those are both rules that have served me well.

 

i think about your first post in this thread. and it seems to me you are really just trying to rush something that shouldn't be rushed. let's look at where you really are right now. you have a man that called you every day until you broke up with him because you thought he might be interested in his ex despite the fact that he told you he wasn't , and despite the fact that in front of his friends, and in private, she basically gave you her blessing by saying how good you are for and to him. even after that fiasco he still sees you, makes plans with you, and appears genuinely threatened by the fact that you went out with your ex. (I am a man and I know I never fish like that when I am feeling secure. I would say if he was fishing he was feeling something more than just NSA)

 

let me ask you something, if you entered a no strings attached relationship and the other person fell for you, then told you that they couldn't see you any more becuase it was getting to complicated for them, and then changed their mind, would you still involve yourself romantically and make dates with them if your weren't at the very least interested in exploring the possibility a bit further? would you drunk dial them and tell them you loved them just for kicks? from what you have described, he sounds like a pretty stand up guy, so i have to wonder, do you honestly believe a stand up guy would take all the information you have given him about where things stand for you and keep you on the hook if he wasn't sincerely interested in seeing where it was going?

 

patience kid, just give it time to develop and see where it goes. it's scarey as hell, and there may come a time when you have to go all in and put the NC in place, I just don't see that you have reached it yet. I do think that you two need might need to have a face to face no holds barred state of the relationship kinda talk. you know the completely open, honest, and direct kinda talk that is sometimes but almost never as bad as you think it's going to be and once in a blue moon is a million times better than you hoped?

 

have that talk if you must, but until you do, stop rehashing conversations without his input. that's not fair. your conclusions evolve from your understanding of the conversation, replaying it changes your understanding. Without his input to balance your own internal commentary you are bound to draw invalid conclusions if from nothing other than the usual male female information proccessing and interpretation differences.

[Star Gazer]

IMO, that's unlikely. Guys don't generally worry about that. I would go so far as to say that men typically assume a woman would be willing to commit (unless she explicitly says so otherwise) just because the stereotypical norm tends to be men avoiding commitment and women striving for it.

 

I also think that when a man says he doesn't want a relationship, women think there's more hope of changing his mind than there really is. I think that might be the case because when women hear that they think he just isn't ready for a relationship in general and needs more time whereas in reality most of the time he means "I don't want a relationship with you." Now, that may not necessarily be the case here since this guy has had a lot of loss recently, but it can't be discounted as a possibility.

 

That's why I think she should take a step back. If she continues to see him and make herself available around his schedule and timeline, he really has no real motivation to change anything. Why would he? He gets to see (and sleep with?) her, plus he gets to hang out with his ex and her daughter. There's no problem for him in that situation, so there's nothing to fix.

 

If she were to back off, on the other hand, it will force him to see what life would be like without her. If it's the case that he doesn't want a relationship with her, then that will simply be the end of it and at least she won't continue to torture herself. But if that's not the case then he might rethink things and realize something has to change if he wants her in his life. Backing off increases the likelihood of forcing his hand.

 

The bottom line is if somebody genuinely wants to be with you, they'll find a way to make it happen.

 

Tanbark's real name should be Greg Behrendt.

 

Everything Tanny said is sooooooooooo true. So true.

[soft heart]

Hello there,

 

I have just your story and I am sorry what you are feeling right now.

 

Please RELAX! You are obssesing over this guy and he is probably sitting at home comfortably on his coach, watching TV.. He spends half of the energy you spend worrying about this.

 

I am not blaming you though because I can recognise myself in you. I worry about everything, about each step I take, I regrer, I analyse, I question, I want to have control over everything but trust me it does not work like this!

 

I am not quite sure what do you expect him to say about the letter? I don't know what answers you are looking for? You did not say anything specific. You did not ask him any specific questions. Remember men are not like us women. They see facts. The letter was nice I am not saying it wasn't but there was nothing mentioned about the REAL problem you are having. You were typically female and completely avoided the subject. You were going around the topic and now you expect him to read your mind, to understand you and to react to it? He will not as he does not know what is that you want out of him? You should have been more specific, you did not have to write a long letter like this. If I were him, I would think " oh, that's a nice letter, very touchy, she thinks I am a great man, wonderful and she feels guilty and sorry, maybe a little confused. Well, I think I will be nice to her back" But you spend half of your time being bothered by his ex but you did not mention anything about it really. A man needs a direct sentence so he can solve the problem. So if I were you, I would tell him that you would appreciate if you guys can talk to each other and then be honest. Tell him how it makes you feel that she is always around him, tell him that it makes you feel unimportant, unapprecaited, worried that he may still want to be with her and tell him that this is the reason why you have been acting the way you have. Tell him that you want to be with him but the fact that he spends so much of his time with his ex worries you and makes you feel uncomfortable and makes you question if he can ever truly be only yours. Tell him that you would appreciate if you two could have private time together without her interfering into the time constantly. Tell him that you have understanding of his family situation but YOU also need to think of YOU and what you need in order to feel happy and relaxed and comfortable. You honestly need to let him know what you need and then ask him for his opinion and if he could tell you what he can do to make you feel reassured. It's direct, it raises the real question in your head, it makes him understand why you worry so much and act in a unsure way and it gives him the opportunity to reflect and react to it. If he wants you and cares for you, he will do his best to accommodate your needs and he might find a solution to it so you all are happy. Remember men are solution-orientated, they don't necessarily talk about feelings and situations like us. Don't expect him to sit down with you and analayse the whole letter with you. You need to talk to him like to a MAN!

 

And one more thing. You seem to be questioning everything about all his moves, whether he will call you or should you call him and so on. It is only going to exhaust you and make him feel uncomfortable. What you should do in my opinion: you should talk to him about in an honest way, tell him that you want to be with him and do things together and then LET HIM show you how much he wants you, how much he misses you, how much he is interested in spending time with you. At the moment, he is not really showing you much intereste because you are the one, who seems to be confused and confusing him in return. Make sure he knows you want to be with him and leave it at that. And then you must be patient and wait. Go out with your friends, concentrate on your work or studies, try to be less available, be interesting for him. Don't make the mistake by chasing him all the time. It seems to me that right now, you are the one making a lof efforts!

 

And if you are worried about the status of the relationship. You might need to be honest with him. Tell him that you want to be in a relationship with him. Don't sleep with him if he is not making the efforts to see you. He needs to make the efforts. We all are "broken", everyone in this world have problems, painful experiences from the past so don't make excuses for him being "broken" or for yourself.

 

Remember if you love someone and you want to be with them, you will do anything to make it happen but you need to let it grow naturally! and at the moment the energy between you seems kind of unnatural. Let it go for a bit, let it breathe, don't force anything.. leave it to the life. Enjoy life, don't spend days worrying about it as you cannot control it anyway. You cannot control his actions, his thoughts, his feelings, his responses. The only thing you can do is to act in a way so he has the time and space to show you what he wants.

 

So have a small talk with him, let him know what you want so he has the opportunity to know how to please you and then let it grow. Men want to please us but they are not mind-readers. They need to know what is it that make us happy! So give him the opportunity but be direct and clear. He will appreciate you more for your honesty. and if expressing your concerns to him about his ex and her very strange behaviour towards you should bring any problems between you then you might need to accept that he is not willing to sacrifice her for you.

 

But don't let him think that it's normal. Everyone in this world would feel strange. I would not like it as well but I would talk to him about it. A relationship is between two people, not a triangle like this especially with ex.

 

Good luck and let us know how it goes!!

[Arianna72]

Well he called me and we went out for an early dinner. We talked round and round for a long time. He said the reason he hadn’t responded to my email was that he didn’t know how to respond or what to say. He said he wasn’t ready for a relationship right now but that he didn’t want to lose me either.

 

We hadn’t even come close to a resolution when it was time for the poker tournament to start so I headed there with him had a couple drinks and decided not to actually play in the tournament. Instead I walked down the street and met up with some friends to play pool. I went back to the tournament a later and talked with friends till he was done and then walked to his place to continue the conversation. Yeah I know bad idea. I want to be strong and not accept less than what I want but clearly my feelings for him are getting in the way. We were kissing and things were starting to progress when he asked me if it was “the right thing to do”. I asked him if he really wanted me to answer that and he said “your answer would be no wouldn’t it”. We sat for a few moments and just held each other. I asked him what he wanted and he said “I want you to be here with me but I don’t want to hurt you anymore”. We laid on his floor for a bit longer then I kissed him again. I probably should have left but I didn’t and we had sex and he asked me to stay there last night. He said he was scared/worried about what it would mean in the morning. We continued our “talk” this morning. Unfortunately we had to end it abruptly because he was late for a Super Bowl party he had already bought a ticket for, so no actual resolution/answer was reached.

 

I did tell him that he couldn’t have me in his life in this way and still spend so much time and emotional energy on his ex. He told me that he does care for me a great deal and wants to continue things with me. He apparently believes that if he agrees to what I want that would mean we were “in a relationship” and he still does not feel ready for that. He says he doesn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s feelings/happiness nor does he want someone else to be responsible for his. Then he asked me “if I decide to be in a relationship with you can you promise me that you will never go away”. How can I even answer a hypothetical question like that? I told him how I felt about him in my email and he has basically danced around things and maintained the whole “I don’t know what I want” stance. It seems to me what he is basically wanting (without saying) is for me to continue to be in-love with him and to continue to keep myself open to him and continue to allow my feelings to grow, while he figures out what he is doing and what he wants. He wants me to just be happy with whatever he feels he can give me at the time.

 

I re-read your last post tanbark and I worry that you are right, that I am allowing myself to be dangled at his whim. If I go NC and try to move forward to be honest I worry that I will do the same thing I have always done in the past. I will end up with someone who is no better for me than this (and likely far worse) and I will have lost the first guy I have ever really felt things could be great with. I tend to move forward quickly once I have made the decision to do so. Don’t get me wrong I have done the single thing for a long time as well but frankly I am kinda done with it and I don’t see myself remaining single for long if I decide to let go of things with him. Then of course as tends to also happen for me he will turn around and decide he is ready to be with me (isn’t it funny how as soon as you move on they are ready) and I won’t be available anymore.

 

mockery –

 

Thank you for your post I really appreciate the different perspective. Even given how long my post was and how much I have added there is obviously always more to the story. I agree that 4 months is nothing in the big scheme of things and I am really trying to be as patient as I can. I didn’t want to rush things with him and I was actually fine with the way things were going until New Years. I posted about that here http://www.loveshack.org/forums/t108450/ .

 

The thing is he has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be “in a relationship” with his ex. She however has made it equally clear that she does want to be back together with him. Even her daughter has written him letters asking him to stop seeing me and going on and on about how much her mom loves him and how they should be together. So while the ex is extremely friendly with me it is coming more from a place of desperation than her actually giving me her blessing. She is clearly willing to do anything to get him to see “the error” he has made in leaving her and that apparently includes bringing me coffee in the morning while I am in his bed with him and washing my underwear for me when I leave them at his house. How exactly can I compete with that? I am not willing to do anything to keep him and at this point I end up looking like the “bad person” because I don’t want to hang out and chat with her while I am naked in bed with him.

 

I know he is interested in exploring a future “at some point” and I know he doesn’t mean to be keeping me “on the hook” right now; he is definitely a stand up/great guy. But that is what is happening right now. He has said he knows he should probably end things with me until he knows what he is doing but the next sentence out of his mouth is about how much he loves being with me. He is struggling a lot and I really do feel bad for him, I know things are hard for him right now. I am struggling, I want to be with him but I don’t want to be with his ex. I am trying my best to be patient but

 

soft heart –

 

You are so right, I totally feel myself obsessing over this. The funny thing is I think he is actually doing a lot of the same thing. He said he has done nothing but thought about all of this for the whole week. The email I wrote him may not have had any direct questions in it but he does understand what I was looking for. He just doesn’t know what to do about it. He knows what my problem is and we did talk about it at length before I tried to “end things” and before I wrote the email. I have already decided not to initiate contact with him and though I did fail once I have for the most part been really good about it. He has shown me how much he “wants” me, the problem is he wants me on his terms. I have been doing my own thing and hanging out with my friends. He actually was making a lot of refrences to that last night. About how “popular” I was and how it seemed everyone wanted to spend time with me and he hoped I could “fit him into my busy schedule”.

 

As to his views on the whole ex thing; I think he does see it as normal. He thinks she is trying to be nice to me. He has acknowledged that she isn’t moving on and he doesn’t think she is going to but he somehow believes that his allowing her to do things like this is not a part of why she is still holding on. He apparently really does believe it is the “right thing to do”. This is a big part of why he is struggling so much with the idea of needing to “sacrifice” whatever is going on there in order to be with me.

 

 

Anyhow... I am going to meet up with some friends for a bit. He left his place before I did so I left him a note asking him to call me tongiht so we could finish our conversation. Hopefully he will. If not I may actually call him as I now feel like things are even more up in the air than they were before.

[dropdeadlegs]

Arianna,

Well, my friend, I have to back up Tanbark's advice at this point. You need something from him that he is consistently stating he is not able to give at this time. As long as he "has" you, he has no reason to change. I'm thinking it may be time to have one more convo stating that as much as you enjoy his company, that you simply cannot live with the circumstances as they are. If you are as important to him as he says, he will have to make some choices in order to have you in his life.

 

I totally understand feeling like he is better than nothing, and better than what you see as your future options. However, this situation is not working for you and he has no reason to make important decisions as long as you are as available to him as you have been. He's nice and you like what you see, but you will continue to agonize if you remain in place. He may not make any efforts towards you, and he may simply not be able to at this time. That's what he keeps saying. If he can't, well, you need to move on. Not necessarily move on to someone else as much as move on past him. It's become stagnant. It's time to muck up the water. It's time to draw the line.

[guin_girl]

Arianna,

I am so sorry to read your internal struggle on this and that you aren't getting the answers/resolution that you want and need from him. As hard as it is, he is being as honest as he can with you as he can be. I know it hurts to know that he doesn't want a relationship, but it's not you, you know that. But nothing can be worse than to "force" him into a relationship that he's not ready for. And I know you aren't doing that, but he may feel backed into a corner and go along with something just to make you happy, but not be happy himself. I'm not saying that it's not going to happen in the future, but it's definitely not in either of your best interests to happen now. You want him to be happy as well. He needs the time to heal to get to the same point as you about being in a relationship.

 

The other thing that I see in your posts, you are giving him your power. You took a stand for yourself, but then have backed down and are now putting your heart in his hands. It's too much for him right now, he's had so much loss in his life recently that I don't think he wants or can handle the responsibility of your happiness in his hands. I just wish my guy had been as honest and caring for my feelings as he is for you. I do think you need to back away and let him heal before you continue down this road. If it's meant to be, it will happen and it shouldn't be this hard.

 

We are hear for you... hang in there.

[tanbark813]

Tanbark's real name should be Greg Behrendt.

 

Then I'd have cool hair too.

[Star Gazer]

Then I'd have cool hair too.

 

And you'd age well too!!!

 

I love him. :love:

[Arianna72]

btw.. Thank you all for continuing to read my ramblings; I really appreciate it. I know I have been going on and on for quite a while now. I have found that if I just write a little bit everyday or so it keeps me from spending my whole day thinking about things. It seems I can just write little updates here and then let it go for the rest of the day and that really helps a lot.

 

He called me last night at around 11:30 on his way home (so hadn’t seen my note yet). I told him I was playing pool with friends and he was welcome to stop by and say hello. He showed up about 5 minutes later. We talked for a bit and he kept asking me what I was doing with him when I could have anyone I wanted. He stayed for about an hour and then said he really needed to go home and sleep, I asked him if I should come with him and he said, “yes please do”. I was more than willing to just go to sleep but he seemed to really want to talk with me more so we ended up not getting to sleep till 5 am. We talked a lot and he again told me he loved me. Then later he said he should have been hiding his feelings for me better than he had and then things wouldn’t be so complicated; I told him that I thought the complications came more from my feelings than they did from his and he replied that he wished I could see into him more and then I would know he shared my feelings. He said he would talk to his ex and reiterate for her that it was over if that would make me feel better but that he didn’t think it would make a difference in how she was behaving. Nothing was said about moving things forward with our relationship but for the first time I can recall we talked for quite a while and he didn’t even say once that he “wasn’t ready” etc etc. Of course that could simply be because he has said it 1,000 times before. I am really beginning to wonder how much of him holding back is about “not being ready” (which I know is true to an extent) and how much of it is him being convinced that I don’t really want him or will get bored or will leave. Some of the things he says are just so odd and it seems no amount of me telling him how I feel is convincing him that it is true. He also said some strange thing about how he thought the feelings I was having were more about me finally being open to a relationship after my ex than they were about him and he was sure I would recognize that soon enough and find someone better than him.

 

Believe me I do hear the advice from everyone and there is a piece of me that agrees. I know I have told him how I feel and that should be enough but I still worry that at this point he seems so unsure of everything that if I actually take a step back he will manage to convince himself that he was right about me not really wanting to be with him.

 

guin_girl

 

I totally know what you are saying about not wanting him to feel backed into a corner. That is the last thing I want to end up happening and that is the other side of my worries. Basically laying things out and giving him the choice between me walking away or him stepping up can end in only one of two ways. He will either recognize he really can’t do it and things will end between us; or he will as you said go along with something he isn’t ready for because he doesn’t want to lose me. Neither of these choices really give either of us what we want and he has pointed this out to me as well thus he is stuck and unwilling to make a move in either direction. Bahhhh… maybe it is all just another case of really bad timing. I seem to be particularly skilled in starting things up at the wrong times. you are right it shouldn’t be this hard.

 

I also hear what you are saying about me putting my heart in his hands. He has already told me it is too much for him right now. That he doesn’t feel capable of being responsible for them. I want there to be a way for me to back away and let him heal without making him feel like he has lost me. I want there to be a way that would allow us to still spend time together. I want to figure out some way to be more “casual” about things right now and just enjoy his company and not worry about all of this other crap.

I am just not sure that way exists.