[Anonymous]

I agree on the relationship first advice. I need to add to this story. This lady on the first time she was over at my house complained of shoulder pain and while doing a massage states “this sort of thing should be done in the bedroom”. I was more than surprised (being an old farm boy), but followed her into the bedroom where she became naked. Not having sex for many years I was a bit overcome by the desire and didn’t think every thing out. When I inquired about a relationship, becoming boyfriend/girlfriend she got very mad a told me she didn’t want any relationships and I was not her boyfriend, I was not even a “together” person to her.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much!!! You are right I have to put a hult to this……I think he’s got us walking down the aisle 😕 He wants to got to dinner tonight I should decline and walk away.

[Anonymous]

Hey April.
Thanks for your advice. Today he actually asked me what was bothering me. But April I just couldn’t put my thoughts into words. I just got stuck and hesitated. I told him that I will tell him about it later. I don’t know what gotten to me. But I can say that I am really hurt…still hurt that he should come around like this as if noting happened.

[Anonymous]

Ah, Footballpro….

Sounds like you’ve made one of those huge ‘live and learn’ mistakes that take you down the path to maturity. It also sounds like you’re hoping someone will tell you what you want to hear on one of two fronts. You want to be told that a. you should hold out hope and keep trying to win her back a la John Cusack in “Say Anything”, or b. you should walk away and never look back because she’s never going to want you again.

The problem is, no one can take the responsibility of how you proceed out of your hands. You don’t trust yourself after making the original mistake of dumping her, so you seem to be avoiding making another mistake at all costs. The trouble is, no one really knows your heart or hers, so no one can really tell you what to do except you.

So, it looks to me like there are a couple of likely scenarios to consider…

a. you keep chasing her with grand gestures of your love in the hopes of breaking down her barriers and realizing her love for you so you can both live happily ever after together
b. you keep chasing her with grand gestures of your love and she continually rejects you with you endlessly wondering if the next time will be the defining moment where she realizes her undying love for you so you can both live happily ever after together
c. you move on and live in constant regret and worry that you should have worked harder to win her back as perhaps she was waiting for you to chase her with grand gestures… etc…
d. you move on and you both live happily ever after — with different people

But here’s the thing… no one can tell you which way you should go or how things will turn out. Your very best bet, in my opinion, is to proceed by following your heart, while respecting her wishes. You’ve told her how you feel and she is either not interested or still too hurt to give you another chance. Her not deleting you from Facebook, etc… isn’t a massive sign of anything except that she obviously cared deeply for you. It doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to again.

If you really want to make sure she understands that you’ve realized you’re an idiot and that you will never hurt her like that again, go ahead and write a letter or ask her if you can meet in person for closure. You have to go into it with the intention of apologizing and letting her know your action was one of immaturity and not her fault in any way. BUT — you do not go into this trying to convince her to get back together (that is likely to just make her feel pressured and keep rebuffing your advances). Tell her how wonderful you think she is and that you’ll always regret what you did and you wish her nothing but the best.

That’s it.

Don’t text her, leave her messages, contact her on holidays or anything else, as impossible as that might feel.

As for you moving on, it truly sounds like that isn’t something you need to rush into. If you jump into something with someone else, while still hoping you will eventually get back together with her, you will not only compound the hurt with her, but you’ll very likely create hurt with a new person too.

Take your time and don’t add more people to the scenario until you feel you’re really ready, which means you’ve let go of your ex and are ready to move on to the degree that if your ex said she wanted you back, you would quite possibly turn her down.

This might be the grandest gesture of love you can make, but even if you don’t ever win her back, at least you’ll know you acted with maturity in the end without turning her off by making her think you’re holding out for her or chasing her.

Good luck, whatever you decide!

[Anonymous]

Dear 3-Dates-not-that-into-Him,

Your heading says it all! I think you have answered your own question. The way you’ve told the story this guy is too much, too soon. All of your examples wave a red flag: too intimate, too possessive, too in-your-face, too instrusive and too assuming-something-not-there. Every relationship has an ebb and flow. It’s important to honor the rhythm and some people need to work on that. Really, if you are not that into him, you owe him nothing but a polite (but firm) statement that you are unavailable the next time he asks you to do something. Your sister’s comments aside, you are the only one who can decide for yourself about how you feel. Isn’t that freeing?
Again: if you need to look in the mirror do so, and repeat after me: TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS (and let them be your guide).

[Anonymous]

Hi Julia and April,

I appreciate the responses. I did have a talk with her Sunday morning. It had some friction to it but we talked it out. She initially told me she wasn’t going to let me cause problems or drive a wedge between her brother-in-law and I. That kind of shocked me as that wasn’t my intentions at all. She did agree awhile back that she understood how I felt about showing her brother-in-law her boobs and that she wouldn’t do something like that again and she reminded me about that as well.

Here’s a fast-forward to Sunday:

Her twin sister went out of town for the weekend to visit girlfriends leaving her husband and two kids at home. Sunday morning as my girlfriend and I are laying in bed just talking, he texts her and asks if she’d watch his two girls for a few hours while he goes looking for snowmobiles. She agreed and he dropped them off.

He never comes back for them. His wife (my GF’s twin) comes over and picks them up 6-7 hours later. I had left for a bit to return home to get a few things done before going back over to her place and she had texted me the aforementioned. She said it was disappointing because she had planned on taking her son to the movie. She then added “…but <her son> enjoyed seeing and playing with his cousins so it’s ok.”

This is something he does to her often and she never says anything about it.

Another event is one evening not long after she had her breast implant surgery, her brother-in-law was out at a bar on Wednesday night. Her twin sister needed some help moving furniture. Instead of staying home or coming home to help his wife, her brother-in-law called my girlfriend asking her to go help her twin sister move furniture. When my girlfriend reminded him that she had just had surgery and couldn’t lift anything, he tried to talk her into it saying that it wasn’t heavy furniture, etc. She was annoyed telling me this story. She immediately tried to defend him though when she say that my reaction was one of annoyance towards him as well.

Are you certain this isn’t a boundaries issue? Is this her being a people-pleaser and not wanting to say no to family? Will this “level-out” down the road the longer she and I date?

She is an incredible person with some outstanding qualities. I just don’t know that I could continue to deal with this if she and I ended up married, etc.

[Anonymous]

You should expect you will have to apologize and you should expect that you don’t know what to expect. You cannot control someone else’s feelings. If you sincerely apologize, that is all you can do. If he decides not to continue the relationship, well, that is outside of your control, and a life lesson. We rarely learn unless we’re forced to, and most life lessons are, unfortunately, painful. You know the expression: no pain, no gain?

Either way, you can resolve to get some help for yourself. Maybe you could talk to a counselor about what is contributing towards your issues. The better you understand what contributes towards your calling him a loser, the more likely that the scenario does not play out again in the future.

[Anonymous]

As you are telling it, it doesn’t seem as if you are over-reacting. However, you are not being that direct with her either. If you care about her, you may want to sit down and matter-of-factly tell her that you are uncomfortable with the current situation and explain why. She appears to understand that you don’t like her interacting with her brother-in-law without her sister present, but she does not seem to mind the reaction it causes in you. She is triangulating. That is, she has created a triangle: you, him and her. She has (unconsciously or not) brought someone else into your relationship, and now there are three of you. People do this all the time: with another person, with work, with extracurricular activities. It’s gives them the illusion of safety and is a protective mechanism. If, after discussing the situation, nothing changes, then you have to decide how comfortable you are remaining in this relationship. This relationship should be about you and her, but it’s become about a third person. You deserve a relationship where someone is focused on the two of you, not on a third person.

[Anonymous]

It’s unfortunate but sometimes people get hurt. And when they do, they have a hard time trusting the next time around. You have found yourself as the recipient of that hurt your boyfriend felt in the past. Until he clears that issue up for himself, there is no amount of reassurance you can give him. It will be an bottomless pit. He just can’t hear you because in his heart he has trouble trusting that it won’t happen again. In other words, this isn’t about you. It’s about [i]him[/i]. With his filter of distrust, he may not be able to hear your reassurances clearly. Eventually, you may get tired of having to reassure him continually, and you will leave. You may get hurt in the process. You know the phrase: hurt people hurt people. Tread cautiously and continue to take care of yourself and make sure your needs are met. It’s troubling to hear someone say that they would rather put a gun to their head than hurt someone else. Most of us do not willingly want to hurt others. But your first obligation is to take care of yourself, whether in or out of a relationship. You may have to leave this guy and yes, that would hurt him possibly, but again, your first obligation is to care for yourself and [i]your life[/i], and not at the expense of making him happy or reassured. Good luck and take care.

[Anonymous]

You’re right–I guess I say he felt like the other guy rather than he WAS the other guy because I knew that I wanted to be with him….I didn’t see him that way.

I normally would not have a talk about the relationship for the exact reason you set out, but I thought that in this situation I needed to let him know a few things. I didn’t ask him any questions or for a response, it was just a calm and short, few minutes talk (although he said he would think about it and get back to me). Maybe it was a mistake, but I was tired of being there for him and getting nothing in return, and wanted to ascertain whether he’s open to the possibility of seeing each other again or not.

Two questions: Since being his friend isn’t what I want, do I tell him as much, or simply leave things? He tends to call me a lot and I would need to say something rather than just avoiding his calls. And if he gets back to me to tell me what he thinks (I’m expecting it will be him saying that he doesn’t want a relationship and that we’re friends), do I just hear him out and not respond right away? Tell him I don’t see him as a friend?

PS–I really appreciate your advice, thank you!

[Anonymous]

That’s a simple answer. But it’s the fact that I had someone else while I was with him that keeps me from being certain about whether I should, in fact, just move on. If he was just some guy I was seeing and that little complication had never been a factor, then of course, I would be gone by now. But I know that he did fall for me, I could see it, and know that a serious future crossed his mind.

I thought I could marry this guy, which I’ve never felt before (in my nearly 30 years). In hindsight, it seems obvious that having someone else in the picture for around 7 months while I was with N and not breaking it off would make him think that I wasn’t serious about him (how could it not?) So assuming that he had these insecurities the entire time we were together, and may now not be sure that he can trust me and has some negative feelings about what we had between us, what can I do? Even if it is a lost cause I at least want to know that I gave it a shot rather than wonder if things could have been different had I done things differently.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, he only wants you when you are with someone else. Classic case of I want what I can’t get. This is not a friendship. This is not a romantic relationship. He is not a boyfriend. He is not a friend. End it.

[Anonymous]

Just be honest with yourself and end it. Why “wait” for something better to come along? You only tie yourself up that way. Just give both of you permission to move on by ending it. You’ll respect yourself more and so will she. Otherwise, you just end up doing passive/aggressive things to get the other person to walk away. Then you’ll feel crummy because you will have been “left.”

[Anonymous]

No.

[Anonymous]

Move on. He isn’t interested in a committed relationship with you and he is stringing you along. Once you’re out of this situation for awhile (give it three months) with NO interaction, your head will be clearer, all the little details of your and his conversations will merge into one gigantic understanding: if you have to work that hard will someone, you are trying too hard and he just isn’t that into the relationship. I repeat: MOVE ON!

[Member]

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