Seeking guidance over love life mess

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After my last GF fiasco (there’s a thread around here somewhere), I decided to try meeting women without much commitment. A couple of months ago I met a lovely 18 yo who fell in love with me and frankly the feeling is a bit mutual. But I always told her I wanted to meet other women and I didn’t want exclusivity just yet.

In comes the internet, a dating site, and this 25 yo… She fell in love with me over MSN chat (I have webcam, she doesn’t) and phone conversations. She tingles my brain in all the right ways, and I have spent countless hours thinking/fantasying about her, but I have no ideia if, face to face, I could love her or not. She showed me a picture, she’s decent looking, but I have never met her.

Anyway, she was appalled, in shock, in tears, when I told her I had some other girl. She treated it like cheating. She felt I broke her heart. I told her what I felt about her, which was that… well… portuguese verb is “apaixonar”… similar to “I am head over heels for you”, I guess, but not as strong as “love”. This sort of mended her heart again.

Now I know that feeling something for a girl over the internet doesn’t necessary translate to the same feelings in real life. Leaned that the hard way when I met someone I fancied online some months ago (she just didn’t do it for me IRL). 25 yo Doesn’t. And she says she loves me, she doesn’t understand how can I have other women when she would never do that the way she felt about me, and… She felt heartbroke again when I said I wanted to meet her and then we’ll see if I can leave the other ladies. “Other ladies??? You have other ladies??? I can’t deal with this.”

What’s your take on this?

Also, some more things that sit on my mind about this lady… Her previous boyfriend cheated on her. Worse, she caught him in the act. She had been with him for over 3 years. That was 4 years ago, and she never allowed herself to fall in love again. From what I could understand, she totally abdicated from having a love life. Until me.

I don’t want to break her heart. I want to meet her and date her and, if it turns out I do love her above all other, I want to date her exclusively.
Now, because of her reactions, I was willing to not see other women until I meet her and then I’ll decide. But this apparently isn’t good enough for her, she doesn’t understand how come I haven’t dumped everyone else already. I get no points for having been with no else since the first time I broke her heart (when I told her I had another girl).

I… damn it, I need some advice. I’m “this close” to lying to her and saying I have dumped all other women just so I can get some face to face time with her. I’m also “this close” to breaking up with the 18 yo, the one I do know IRL and that I like profusely, just so I can meet her. Well this doesn’t seem right to me at all.

Help me sort this one, ok? Almost every single one of my real life buddies would simply lie or omit information from her, but I don’t want to do that. I love being honest. Help me stay that way.

2

Dude. One at a time. And you don’t want any kind of exclusivity? That’s fine, but don’t lead anyone on and pretend that that’s what she’ll get. That’s just cruel.

3

Thats just not a good idea, you have something REAL going on already with someone you have at least some feelings for. What you have with the 25yo is a fantasy, and clearly shes much more involved in this fantasy than you are. Personally i would recommend cutting the internet affair off and focusing on the real life one, but somehow i don’t think you will do that. What you need to do is be firm, not try to appease or coddle to this girl. Tell her something like “I really like you and i could see this relationship going somewhere but at the moment you are NOT my girlfriend, we are not commited to each other, we have never even MET.” Once she gets that through her head you can begin talking about having a real life date, if she won’t go for that and she expects you to be commited to her before even your first date then you just need to run as fast as you can.

4

Dude…

5

Any declaration of “love” from someone I’d never met – or even someone I’d only known for a couple of months! – would send me running for the hills.

6

You’re considering dumping someone you like for someone you haven’t even met? WHY?

And don’t lie to internet lady.

7

You have to be very honest with the internet 25 yo and tell her that you’re not willing to give up your other girlfriends when you haven’t even met her. If she can’t live with that then just say goodbye. Not worth the trouble. Really.

Don’t lie just to meet her. That will only make things worse.

8

You’re a bit old for an 18 yr. old, but I guess it could work if she’s mature for her age and you’re not particularly worldly. The 25 yr. old sounds emotionally insecure, I’d end it, in this case I think curiosity might very well kill the cat. Dating more than one person at a time is OK if it’s ocassional and not too intense, but if your seeing two, or more people weekly and you’re intimate w/ one, or more on a regular basis, you’re asking for big trouble, both emotionally and from a practical point of view. STD’s are rampant and all parties concerned are at risk.

9

From a female point of view - a person who is asking you to be exclusive before you have even met them IRL sounds very, very clingy and needy. Is that what you are looking for in a relationship? If she is this needy and demanding now, I don’t see things getting any better down the road.

10

Ditto. And a person who was in a 3-year relationship and then totally without any relationship at all for 4 years doesn’t “fall in love” with someone over the Internet. I don’t care if you’re Prince Freakin’ William, you’re not that irresistible to someone who hasn’t even met you IRL.

You’re entitled to relationships on your own terms. If you want to reserve the right to have multiple relationships (date around) until you meet the right person to go exclusive with, that’s your perogative. Personally, as a serial monogamist, I don’t go out with guys who aren’t willing to be monogamous with me as long as they are with me, but those are my rules. If they are hers, you have to decide whether you want her enough to play by her rules. If you don’t, then the two of you just have two different expectations for how relationships develop, that’s all. But don’t lie to the woman; whoever she is, she deserves better than that. And you’ll never have a healthy relationship with someone you’ve been lying to almost since Day One.

11

This seems very reasonable to me. What doesn’t seem reasonable to me is expecting me to dump others before a single real life encounter. This seems like a huge leap of faith to me.

I’d like to thank everybody who’s advised me to remain honest. You’re just the kind of crowd I want to be hanging around.

12

Agreed. If I were seeing another person (or people) in the first place (which personally I probably wouldn’t be or I wouldn’t be looking), I wouldn’t give them all the boot on the off chance a person I’ve never met will be The One.

IMO, she either wants to meet you or she doesn’t. Any emotional conditions she places on meeting you may reasonably be interpreted as meaning she’s not that interested in meeting you – certainly isn’t “in love” with you – because of she were, she wouldn’t be making demands, she’d be making a dinner reservation.

13

My first reaction is that you need to make sure you’re not leading the 18 yo on (she’s in love with you, and you’re a little in love with her - this is dangerous), and get rid of the internet loonie completely. She is way more trouble than she’s worth. Of course, that could just be my 40 year old perspective, that I simply don’t have the energy for that much drama.

You can date as many girls at one time as you like, but please make sure that you are honest with all of them right from the start, so there is less chance of people getting their expectations up and being disappointed.

14

Well this is what’s going to happen…

I’m going to meet the 25 yo. If I feel attraction for her, I’ll probably date her (exclusively) and break up with 18 yo, for the reason that I’m too curious to just let her pass by.

Maybe in the near future I’ll regret it. Maybe I end up better. I just don’t know and have little way of knowing right now, my experience with women being so limited as it is.

Damn I do … so close to love… that 18 yo… but I just have to fill that what-if gap.

15

Good idea, but I also second featherlou’s suggestion of coming clean to the 18-year-old–you definitely owe it to her.

Good luck with whatever you do :slight_smile:

16

Yes I definitely owe her. I owe her lots of happiness and love, and feel very luck to have found her. I had already told her about the 25 yo, she even chatted with her (first time I broke 25yo’s heart). She told me to go find out If I liked her better.

Damn she’s the sweetest thing. I wish I had a crystal ball to find out if things with 25yo wouldn’t work out so that I wouldn’t leave her. 18 yo, I’m so sorry, but at least I’ve always been 100% honest with you… And believe me, it’s hard to let you go.

17

From what you’ve posted here, the 18 yo is the more mature, mentally healthier of the two women. You say your experience with women is limited; in my opinion, a woman who says she loves someone she hasn’t met and freaks out about him dating other women (when she hasn’t even met him yet, and has pretty much no say over his life at this point) is bad news.

I don’t know if either woman is right for you, of course, but don’t be too surprised if the 25 yo supplies you with endless drama. Then you can come ask us for advice on that. :smiley:

18

Yeah, and then completely ignore it, like he did w/ this thread! :rolleyes:

19

I must admit, I’ve found the thread rather pointless. What’s the point in asking for advice and then completly ignoring it?

20

Now, that seems a little unfair to me. The point of asking for advice – on the internet – is to find out what others would do in your situation (what they know of it), and to possibly discover options that you hadn’t considered. All we can do is say “I would…”; there’s no way we can say “you should…” with any reasonable expectation of our advice being heeded, because we don’t know the guy. We can’t truly advise him any more than we can truly fall in love with him.

Also, sometimes hearing advice can help you sort out your true feelings about a matter. You can start off genuinely confused and soliciting opinions, and you don’t realize until you hear “you should do X” (over and over) that you really want to do Y.