I agree with all of this, and I don’t this can be stated too clearly - she is NOT ready to settle down with attachment. Well, she might be, we can’t know for certain, but every indicator you’ve told us tells us that she is not ready to settle down with one man for life.
That’s fine - you’re both young, you’ve been together a long time, and it is healthy for both of you to experience life and other people and grow away from each other and mature. Her excuses for doing what she wants to do are disingenuous, though. I think you would do better to understand what she is not willing to say - she doesn’t want to be tied down to you right now, but she wants to keep you around as her safety blanket/booty call.
That would be fine, too, as long as you are also seeing other women and you can handle just being her fuck-buddy. As long as you are having ideas that the two of you are soulmates and someday she’ll come around and realize what a catch you are, you will just be asking for more trouble by keeping the door open for her.
I’ve wondered that myself, but who knows. I do think it gave her the chance to see what her future would look like without me in it, and thankfully she felt that was not a future she wanted. That being said, some people aren’t willing to give second chances. I knew I might be setting myself up for an even bigger letdown by taking her back, but hell, I loved her. If the people you love don’t deserve another chance, who does?
When it is the right person these sorts of things don’t happen, that’s what real, mature love is. One simply doesn’t want somebody else, much like you want her and are willing to fight for it. Meanwhile, this chick is saying she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings so she hurts yours instead? Walk away and have no contact with her at all.
I have a female friend that did this same thing to her live-in boyfriend, she started “having feelings” for another guy and then kept them both in limbo for months. One day the boyfriend forced the issue and gave her the excuse she had been waiting for to pick the other guy. Six months later she did it again to the new guy.
GF fucked new guy, he wasn’t thrilled, and tossed her over.
She’s stalling, hoping to get him back.
When a woman has a choice of men, and tells one that ‘she is confused’, then, the one that hears that is usually her 2nd choice; but, she doesn’t know what her 1st choice is going to do, so, she makes this ‘confused’ noise to buy time.
At this point she isn’t even confused she just is having a hard time committing to stop talking to him all together. I even feel kind of stupid for giving her this much time to decide, it makes me feel like you guys said I would… That it’s only a matter of time till this happens again and what does this all say about how much she cares for me anyway.
A dark part of me is even thinking maybe I can have her back until I find girls I’m interested in me and have something to drop back on… Obviously that’s not what my heart wants but I’m having these feelings like I want to show her what it’s like to go through what she’s doing to me.
Everything you guys are saying is probably true, the chances she’s going to just get closer to me after breaking contact with him is there but how long till it happens again?
She wants him in her life and asks me to at least consider letting them be friends and I told her I couldn’t believe she would even expect that to be an option.
Ugh here I am trying to convince my girlfriend of 7 years to be with me and not hurt me over this fucking nobody in New York an entire state away.
Cbud, I’ve said it before, you deserve better. I really hope you’ll consider what others have said about dating other women. There are a lot of them out there who would value a loyal, committed guy like you. Women who have their heads on straight, and don’t make excuses for their bad behavior that hurt you.
Flip the roles for a minute: If you were the one who met some random blogger girl online and started communicating with her, would you do so obsessively? Would you start neglecting/ignoring your GF in doing so? Would you tell your GF “sorry you feel this is destroying our relationship, but I have a hard time telling people no and I don’t want to hurt her…”?
Of course not. Because you love Your GF. You would only act that way if you really wanted blogger girl instead.
You’ve got to stop looking for the slightest glimmer of hope in this and admit the obvious.
Glad to see you’re finally tapping into anger. Beats the hell out of the scared phase. I like anger because it’s the action emotion. It’ll prompt you to finally tell her to fuck herself instead of listening to a load of b.s. about having a personality flaw, when in reality she suffers from a character flaw.
You’re young and it’s your first real heartbreak. Trust me, one day you’ll look back on her and be grateful that the person you’re with is nothing like her. I don’t think you can ever really appreciate a great relationship until you’ve experienced some clunkers.
BTW, I don’t necessarily blame her for wanting to see if there’s something else out there. That’s normal for someone who got seriously involved so young. I do blame her for stringing you along, though. It’s not nice or respectful.
I’ll be generous and say that I believe her when she says she has “no impulse control” or whatever similar thing. Or rather, I believe that she believes it. It’s still a red flag. My ex truly believed it, and it led to all sorts of terrible things, including her flunking out of two schools. After we broke up apparently she got a bunch of pets she couldn’t afford on a whim. She also started smoking e-cigs all the time. Even when we were together, I semi-regularly had to drive an hour and half to bail her out of her piss poor planning.
Think about it: if your gf can’t control herself, and it’s not an excuse, what does this actually mean? It means she’s going to find herself doing all sorts of stupid shit on some unpredictable whim, and it will make your life hell when you have to start bailing her out of her bad decisions.
Of course, if it is an excuse, then she’s just being a jerk to you, and see the other posts in the thread for that scenario.
Playing devil’s advocate since most of us feel the OP is being strung along: These two are 24 y.o. adults. We are only hearing the OP’s version. Is it possible that his girlfriend has given up on a serious adult commitment with the OP since it hasn’t happened yet? Maybe she is trying to force the issue?
I read a long time ago that the odds of marriage diminish greatly after three years without a firm date set (it might even be three years without a wedding). I have no idea if its true but seems like it could be. I’m going by faded memory but I think odds of marriage were stated to ne less than 30% after a relationship exceeds three years without marriage. Perhaps things are different now. I know these two are fairly young but it seems like an engagement/wedding would have been the norm for a relationship this old.
I quoted the above because when I read it I got the sense that OP treats this relationship like he’s 20, not 24. I don’t think he is ready for a commitment or he would at least have been engaged with a date by now. After seven years (six as adults) they still seem to be simply dating. How long can a young woman keep this sort of relationship up? Sometimes there is simply a natural progression that needs to be followed or growth can not continue.
I’m not stating that this is the case but think its worth considering. I think we have to consider that the OP figured his girlfriend would wait around forever. I truly do not know. I do know that I wish the OP all the best, whatever is going on.
As I posted in one of the first responses to the OP:
Heartbreak can happen to anyone, at any age, but being ‘scared of losing’ a GF’ that is treating you like shit is not a normal reaction for a emotionally secure, mature 24yr old.
Breaking up with her was a very hard, brave thing to do, and the OP will learn and grow much from his experience IF he’s strong enough to respect the boundaries on the relationship he has imposed: Remember, one of the issues with the GF was *she *clearly wasn’t respecting the boundaries of how one acts & behaves when in a relationship. You were the mature one here - don’t let her stall tactics dissuade you now.
She definitely owned up to what she’d done and what a mistake it was. There’s no way I could have forgiven her otherwise. We had a lot of talks and she explained why, to her, doing what she did had made sense at the time – but she’s never tried to excuse her decisions after the fact. She knew that she had screwed up badly, and she worked really hard to regain my trust.
Don’t. She can always dump you for being a dick, but you have to live with you if you’re a dick. Just cut to the chase and get your ass on the high road out of her life ASAP.
I think that’s a critical point, and something Cbud needs to know - his ex isn’t taking any responsibility for her actions at this point, and that doesn’t lead to a happy conclusion like you and your wife have.
Well, hold on now…She has already dumped him…although, he doesn’t know it. He is her backup. So, if he goes around with her, it will be good advertisement for him. He won’t be so desparate, and he will have a backup, as well. Until, that is, she makes the final cut.