[Anonymous]

i’ll do my best to keep this as brief as possible. I am in law school and I am have been seeing a girl in my section (basically we have every single class together). I am 25 and she is 23. I consider myself pretty good looking, smart, and fun to be around, and im used to girls falling for me after about 6 months of dating, but that is not the case here. We started dating about 7 months ago, and everything was great at first. (except that she told me that she didnt want to be involved with anyone during law school, but a couple months after that she told me that she was glad she decided to start seeing me) she took me around her friends and her family, she stayed over a lot, and we went out a lot together. During this time I could sort of sense some distance from us, like she didnt want to get too involved and was trying to keep space between us but she still showed signs of interest so I just kept things going with her. After we had been dating for a few months I sort of initiated a relationship talk with her. This seemed to cause her some anxiety , and she said that she had commitment issues. She said that she used to be all about relationships couple years ago, but that she isnt now and she thinks that she just used to be naive. I told her that I didnt think there was such a thing as commitment issues, generally I dont think a person is scared of commitment they just arent that interested in the other person, and she assured me that wasnt the case. She said that she has had some bad relationships in the past, and considering the fact that her friends told me that she liked me a lot I believed her.

Fast foreword a few months and she still seems distant but things still seemed ok for the most part but now Im starting to have some doubts about the relationship. A couple months back I was exchanging some, what I thought harmless, fb posts with a freshman girl at my school who is 8 years younger than I was, and I also “liked” a picture of her in a bikini. the girl im seeing did not think it was harmless and she was really upset about it, I felt bad because I told myself that I would never hurt her but I feel like I did (because she told me how upset she was about it and that once she discovered it she had to spend hours on the phone with her friend) so I apologized profusely for the situation and told her that I would never do it again and things seemed fine after that. since then our workload in school has increased dramatically and we havent had as much time to see each other lately, as in hanging out once every other week outside of class. about a week ago we were hanging out doing some shopping and I got a text message from a girl I used to see, I tried putting my phone in my pocket before she could see this, and later I found out how much it bothered her. later she kept asking me over and over if my friends were doing anything that night, and then she asked if the girl who texted me was doing anything that night, and told me she was upset that I was acting “sketchy” about it. I assured her nothing was going on with the other girl and I told her how much I liked her. That night she stayed over and she seemed real distant, the next morning I tried fooling around with her and she didnt want to because she was stressed over exams, and then she complained about how guys always assume that a girl is having sex with them when she is at their place. I told her that I had no problem waiting for a few weeks after exams and this seemed to make her feel better. I told her that it is fine if she doesnt sleep over until exams are over because we both will be very busy and asked if we could grab lunch a couple times just to see each other and she replied that she didnt know why someone would want to hang out with her when she would just be a bitch to them (but I see her around school and it looks like she is perfectly fine and happy when she is around her friends so why would she be a bitch to me?). After that our communications have been pretty non-existant, and we only talk if I initiate the conversation.

Basically, I still feel a sense of distance from her and I dont know why. I get the feeling that she has been burned pretty bad in past relationships and I make sure to be affectionate with her and tell her I how much I like her, but I dont try to do that too much because I dont want to smother her. I really do love this girl, I would never do anything to hurt her, and I want things to work out, but lately she has seemed pretty uninterested or distant and I usually dont have that problem with girls so I dont know what to do. She used to tell me all about her life and problems she is going through but now if I dont ask her about things she doesnt tell me and I miss being the person she tells everything to. If I seem like I am uninterested in her also then she pays more attention to me. I know it is exam time but she has started to ignore some of my text messages and she has never done that before and I find this alarming. I am willing to give it time if I know that she is still interested and I am going to try to hang out with her after exams, but if she cant make time for me then I am thinking that I should just try to move on?

[April Masini, your AskApril]

Lawyers sometimes feel that they can argue their way into and out of conflicts and convince a judge of their point of view. The problem is that in a relationship, there is no judge. So when she tells you what her feelings are, rather than explain why they’re not what she says they are, you’d do better to listen and accept. When she told you that she had commitment issues, you got academic and explained why there is no such thing as a commitment issue instead of staying in the relationship and understanding that she was trying to explain that she’s not into this relationship all the way. You had your lawyer hat on and refused to accept opposing counsel’s argument — only it wasn’t an argument… and she isn’t opposing counsel. So, now, it’s played out.

My advice is that you accept that she’s given you a history of adversity and coolness and she doesn’t really seem very available to you now. From day one, she’s told you she didn’t want to get involved and you’ve sensed distance and chilliness from her. After seven months, this isn’t getting any better. Stop trying to figure out why she’s chilly to you and accept that she is and you can do better — and by better you can find a woman who wants to be with you and is actually warm and happy to see you!

I hope this helps. Let me know how things go and please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter. 😀

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