Warning: this is just a relationship rant. Well, not exactly a rant, just rambling.
Background: There is a girl whom I went out with in college. She broke up with me after a year but we stayed good friends for another couple of years. Eventually she started seeing other people and I decided that I still had feelings for her, making friendship difficult. We broke contact. Since then I’ve been too wrapped up in work, and been rather depressed by reverse culture shock (I was back in my home country after 8 yrs in the US) and career difficulties, so I didn’t do much socializing, let alone dating.
About one year ago we made contact again, and I found she was heavily into Internet personals looking for Mr. Right. I told her I’m still available and interested, she said she isn’t interested, I told her I didn’t think we can be just friends. We agreed to break contact again. I accepted that she’ll never be interested me, and took steps to try to stop thinking about her and try to build a new life. At this point it’s 5 yrs since we last met, and we’re in our late 20s.
But recently she contacted me and wants to go out with me. My first impulse was to to say no, there’s no reason to think anything has changed and things will work out. But there’s no reason to think that things have stayed the same either. I still haven’t met anyone else whom I respect as much as her. In many ways she’s way out of my league - very good looking by anyone’s standard, highest honors from an Ivy League college, good family, great athlete, and good enough musician to make a living as one. She’s very passionate and dedicated in her work (currently grad student in humanities and doing well) yet manages to keep an active social life, excercise and keep other interests alive. She’s wonderfully active and energetic. Not that I’m totally uneducated - I went to the same college and also a grad student - but I’m just a science nerd with no social skills and no life.
So I ended up saying yes, I would go out with her again. But the added complication is that we currently live thousands of miles apart. It’s hard enough to keep a long distance relationship alive, let alone start one. And I still don’t understand why she suddenly changed her mind, which makes me a bit nervous and confused, and afraid that the she’ll break my heart again. We’ve spent a couple of hours on the phone and we get along as well as before, but haven’t yet gotten past casual conversation. I guess I’ll have to visit her in summer.
Anyway that’s about it. If anyone has thoughts or advice I’d be interested to hear it. If you think I made a mistake, go ahead and tell me.
scr4, I’m sorry if this sounds… nasty… but here goes.
She may have tried dating a few people off the ‘net or from personals ads or whatever and decided they were no good, and with no other options has come back to you. She knows you’ve been interested for a long time. Could it be she considers you the best of a bad lot? If so - tell her to just keep walkin’… you don’t need that sort of “pity love” in your life.
Max
Thanks Maxxxie, it’s a good point and I do realize it as a possibility. She also mentioned in passing that she’d been seeing someone as recently as 3 weeks before contacting me, so it could just be a rebound from a particularly bad relationship and/or a stopgap till she finds someone else.
I don’t know though, I wish I could keep in touch longer without getting emotionally involved and assess the situation. It’s hard. In a way it’d have been much easier if I’d thrown away her letter without reading it. But I don’t know which would have been the easy way out, and I certainly don’t know which was/is the right one.
I may not be the best person to look to for advice in this situation but let me give it a shot. This is what I’d do: Tell her how you feel for her. Tell her exactly what you think about her, how much she means to you, what you would do for her…etc. Lay it on real thick. Then tell her that, despite all this, you are NOT life’s consolation prize. She went off to look for something better and came back to you because she didn’t find it. Let her know how unfair that is and end the conversation.
While I admire Cisco’s proposal from a certain POV, it’s a head-game approach. If you think this could be The Real Thing[sup]TM[/sup], then head games are out. Be honest, be you, give it your best shot. If you get burned, you get burned, and so be it. I’ve had my heart broken a few times, but it never proved fatal. But it’s clear that you’ve carried a torch for this babe for a long time, and the only way you can find out if it’s going to work is to jump in and find out.
I can’t give you much advice about the long-distance aspect of the relationship; for me, “long-distance” was when I was in Virginia, and she was in Connecticut; we saw each other pretty often. Might ask Coldfire or Spiny Norman how to manage an intercontinental romance. Also, I think one of our Down-Under Dopers is involved with someone in the Northern Hemisphere, but I can’t remember who, off the top of my head.
Thanks for the comments. Cisco’s approach is something I may have done in the beginning (i.e. last week when I first got her mail), but I don’t want her to go through such games. I’ve always been honest with her - at least, as honest I’ve been to myself - and I don’t intend to change that. I’m willing to risk another broken heart.
Maybe she’s spent all this time trying to find somebody closer to home who’s as perfect for her as you are. She failed and now she’s going back to square one.
What’s the worst that can happen? You each blow a bunch of money and some vacation time to meet halfway (she’s thousands of miles away, you’re in Tokyo, so meet her for a weekend in Hawaii…), and it doesn’t work.
If it does work, you get to spend a weekend in Hawaii with the girl of your dreams.
I’ve posted this before . . . and it’s just my experience so take it for what it’s worth to you.
I met my fiance 4 years ago and he wanted to date me then. I was not interested, not at all and said so. He never gave up, even though he did date other people, some seriously, some less so.
Long story short, a year ago January, I finally had gotten to a place where I was no longer so scared about dating him. Things couldn’t be better for us.
This may or may not describe your girl’s state of mind but it is a possibility. Like me, she may not have been ready for what could well be a very serious relationship. Perhaps she had issues of her own she needed to work through – issues you didn’t see or weren’t familiar with.
In other words, there are lots of reasons why she may not have been ready until now to give this a try.
As I told my sweetie about 18 months ago, if I didn’t give things a try with him, I would lose. And if I did try and things didn’t work out, I would lose. So I figured I would rather lose (if I lost at all) by trying than by sitting on my bootay and thinking “what if” thoughts.
One question - why did she break up with you in the first place? Was it an issue of not really knowing what she wanted in a relationship, or were there real issues? If the latter, have they been resolved or at least talked out?
Obviously you still have feelings for her. Perhaps she does still have feelings for you, and after some soul-searching, the answer she kept coming up with was you. If I were you, I’d give it another shot - I wish you good luck.
There are a few guys from my past who I do regret giving up. I changed, got my head together, whatever, and realized, “Wow, I really should have kept that relationship going.” A chance to go back and do just that wouldn’t be saying that the other person was my ‘consolation prize’. This may be true for her as well.
That’s a good question but I don’t have a good answer. It was the first serious relationship for both of us so I don’t think either of us knew what we wanted in a relationship. But I have my faults and character flaws, and more than once she has pointed them out as reasons for why she doesn’t want to be with me. I don’t know if they were just excuses, or if she decided they aren’t important after all, or if she’s blocking out those memories and remembering the good bits.
Thanks to Ethilrist, lorene and Contrary for their responses as well, they give me much needed hope. She and I are both busy people but I’m making plans to visit her in about two months.
scr4 - from what I have read, you haven’t done something that seems very straightforward -
ask her what has changed this time and what her intentions are now
See if you like the answers, meaning that they sound sincere coming from her, don’t sound “rebound or consolation prize focused” and are in line with what you would like to have happen.
Well, it seems more and more likely that the naysayers were right. She just confessed that she’s still dating new people from Internet personals. She also says she doesn’t want to get too emotionally involved with me at this point until we get a chance to meet. She did explain some reasons why things may have changed - some things about me that she thought important at that time but now realize aren’t. But I don’t know… I guess she’s confused herself. At least I think she’s being honest.
After writing that far I got an e-mail saying she decided not to do any more dates until we meet. Still… sigh If it’s going to be just another of her 50+ first dates I don’t think I can stand the emotional and financial burden.
So, say you meet, you date, the flame ignites. Are you willing to move to where she is to live, or is she willing to move to where you are to live? Who moves where? I agree with the ‘danger’ group.