Don’t Know What To Think… :(

I seem to have bad luck with men or something. When something good happens with me and a guy, things seem to backfire on me or turn for the worse.

And this time it ain’t so different from the previous times. It seems like I’m there again. All within one year. All within the time frame since I first posted in this forum.

So I have this good guy friend of mine (we’ll call him James to make it easier) whom I met/knew from a class this past Spring semester. We didn’t really hang out during the semester and got to know each other well until roughtly around April/May, towards the end of the semester. We worked as research assistants for the same professor and that’s how we got to know each other better. He’s a great guy, really smart and knows what he wants in life and what he’s doing. I got to know him over the past 6 months just hanging out as friends (though not as much as we both had hoped). He’s 5 years younger than me (I’m 27 and he’s 22 going on 23).

On Halloween, James sent me a long message on Facebook telling me that he likes me (he claimed that drinking Vodka helped him get his feelings out). It wasn’t a drunk message though (he never gets past the point of passing out). James having always been the friend but not the boyfriend kind of guy, he tells me he finds me attractive, intellegent and cute (and the most attractive and intelligent woman he has met in a while) and that he wants to give a relationship with me a chance as he likes me from the time we got to know each other and I’m worth investing his time and energy in. His reasoning for wanting a relatiosnhip that works out well are those that stem from good friendships. That, and the past failed relationship with girls whom he falls for quickly and didn’t get to know them well before going into a relationship. I’m attracted to him during the time we worked on research for the professor and for me dating a caucasian for me is a first (I’m Asian).

The next day we hung out and talked about it and we decided to give it a shot. Right from the start, he told me that if it doesn’t work out between us, he will always be my good friend and be part of my life, the friend that I can depend on when everyone else abandons me. This was a relief for me because it was one of the things that held me back. I hate losing friends. He’s the first guy friend I ever had that really understood me and things I/we talk about, unlike the past relationships I’ve had where it just seemed like the guy listens but doesn’t really understand. And he’s different from other guys in that he doesn’t care if I talk about past relationships in ex-boyfriends and things like that (which a woman shouldn’t do unless they want to drive the man away) and all things taboo. He doesn’t mind at all because he sees it as those things being a part of my life and it’s okay to talk. Anyhow, we talked about all the stuff we are both concerned about in getting together in a relationship and decided to give this whole relationship thing a shot.

We spent a week together. Almost right the next day (the Sunday after Halloween, after he told me he likes me), James told his mother, his friends and roommates that he’s dating me (he really jumped the gun on this one). We saw each other roughly 4 days out of the week (not including yesterday (Sunday)), even though some of the days were just for a few minutes. One of those days we spent an evening together and had gone a little fast than we agreed on – a make-out session on my living room couch in the heat of the moment, which I personally felt was a mistake afterwards (though he said he didn’t regret it). He was the sweetest guy I could ever imagine (kind of almost like the perfect boyfriend). But it’s too good to be true. Something didn’t felt quite right. When we talk on the phone, he sounds like he’s talking to me as a friend, but when we’re together, he sounds like the boyfriend. Towards the end of the week, after not seeing him for 2 days (we agreed to not take each other away from our friends too much), my instincts tell me something bad is gonna happen. And I was right.

Yesterday (Sunday), we saw each other again, gone for a walk in the cold fall night and that’s when it happened. He told me that he felt like things were going a bit fast and that he wants to go back to being friends for now. I think that we did went a little fast than we intended to. So I was like “okay. I’m fine with that”. He said he got so much going on in life and he’s really confused. He said he likes being with me but felt that right now at this point, he can’t be the boyfriend that I wanted, can’t always be there for me when I need him, while I was giving him what he wants (being the girlfriend). He said it’s not fair to me that he can’t return those feelings right now and that he fears if he kept this up (dating me and faking/pretending to be the boyfriend when he feels he couldn’t right now) he’ll end up breaking my heart and he doesn’t want to do that because he really cares about me. He also says he sees me in his future, but he doesn’t know whether it’s seeing me as being his girlfriend or just his friend. He tells me that he doesn’t want me to wait for him because, in his eyes, I’ve got a lot to offer and that someone else deserves that more than he does now (he made me sounded like I’m this perfect woman). He wants me to be happy. In the future he said we might or might not be together. In this short time together, I’ve grown to like him a lot, past the “attracted-to-him” stage. I really like him. He still wants to be good friends, hang out with me and get to know me on a deeper level. He says he did this because he was thinking about things in the long-run and wants me to be happy no matter what happens.

I talked to one of my best friends (we’ll call her Sara) about this. Sara interprets this as that after James and I being together, James finds that he only like me as a friend, and that yesterday night he didn’t want to hurt me so he said the things he said. In layman terms, he broke up with me. She said James probably didn’t felt the chemistry or the spark.

Another one of my good friends (we’ll call her Lauren) at work think that maybe James has committment issues and is not ready to commit to a relationship. That or James needs time.

I really don’t know what to think. I feel like a train wreck. I’m already having what felt like a semester from hell, first with my mother being sick and now going through chemotherapy, then stress from school and trying to get into graduate school next semester and trying to get an internship, and now this. Being with James had been the happiest week of my life in this semester from hell. It seems like everytime something good happens, it turns for the worse. I feel like I’m being punished by God for something I’ve done or something which I feel explains why my life feels like it sucks all the time.

I’m not exactly that bright when it comes to interpreting relationship stuff as evidenced by my previous posts. I need some advice and/or words of wisdom.