I hate being this cynical; but dammit, I’m good at it. I think you are right. A complete lack of trust, combined with your advice (everyone), is keeping me away.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
First thing’s first. I’ve always loved your username. It cracks me up every time I see it.
Second, a caveat. Take this advice in the spirit it is given. That is, I have the best intentions, but like Randal from Clerks said, “I don’t know thing one about chicks.” I’ve been led around by the nose, manipulated, and bumfuzzled by women on any number of occasions, so perhaps you should skip this altogether and read the next message. 
Everything the previous posters have said is true. This woman is trying to play you like a harp. She obviously either loves games or does not care how badly she hurts you, as long as her own emotions are satisfied. My advice is painfully simple. Do not play her games. Forget her utterly. You should not try to regain the emotional advantage here. You’ll do nothing but prolong your misery. You should make an absolutely clean break. No if’s, and’s, or but’s. Forget her, and tell her to forget you, because what you had (or didn’t, or maybe had, or whatever) is over. Irrevocably.
Harsh, and to the point. Get on with your life. Leave her to manipulate some other poor slob.
Thanks. She never brought me lasagna at work, so I think you’re right.
Thanks for the compliment on my username!
FWIW, based on her having been the hand-holder at church, I think you don’t have a complete mean-psycho-bitch on your hands. What you have is a woman who doesn’t know how to figure out what she wants. She just does test runs to see how she feels, then tries something else if that doesn’t fit. Try and try and try and see if/where/how things feel comfortable.
In other words, any guy she dates will be her personal crash test dummy. Only, there’s no science behind the tests, it is trial and error, and she’s just trying to figure out how hard to hit the wall without ejecting the passenger completely (by doing it again and again in different configurations). OOPS, please don’t be bothered by that broken skull, dear, I didn’t mean it. Maybe if you sat in the back seat and I turn the wheel a little harder… hold ON!
Avoid her, still.
Smart (and more to the point, compassionate, empathetic, and caring) people play these scenarios out in their minds (often subconsciously), to figure out how they’d feel beforehand. Or they don’t, and instead, discuss how they feel with the other party. With real words.
She didn’t like having you ‘there’, she doesn’t like having you ‘gone’, and she doesn’t know what parameter she’s missing. Now she wants to try another variation to see if that one works, instead? I suspect you really do NOT want to have to get bounced through a whole test pattern in order for her to decide how she feels, every time she isn’t sure. Heaven forbid she is unsure about having kids (“I’ll just have one, and then maybe I’ll know…” - “This is no fun, maybe if it was a girl instead”?).
Okay, maybe she isn’t that bad - maybe she wouldn’t do that to a completely defenseless innocent person who just wants love and … oh, never mind.
I kinda feel sorry for her, because she apparently hasn’t a rudder to steer her emotional decisions by. Hope she grows one eventually. You refusing to play along is part of that process, BTW. She’ll learn that people don’t like being taken for test drives without advance notice that she’s just trying out the suspension and the steering. That will force her to explore her feelings more often. Ouch, but if she hasn’t learned it by now, she either has had it real easy up to now, or she is an impossibly slow learner.
Glad you dodged. (sorry for all the metaphors, sometimes I just get rolling…)
Well said and worth saying. So far we’ve all been painting her as if she was working from some nefarious master plan. Your insight is more realistic. She is a human being who doesn’t have all the answers, just like the rest of us.
That said, Mr. the Sane, you’ve made the right choice to move on.
Yep! and please, call me Wonko!
Hedra- your guess sounds about right. One little detail I left out was that she held my hand at the church -I- go to, but the one she goes to was definately a no-hand-holding-zone, but then so was the rest of the world at that point.
Doesn’t matter anyway.
Dude, it’s like fishing. The trophies always take the most work and/or put up the hardest fight.
I’ll post my entire “Dating = Fishing” theory tonight.
Tripler