Amazing and happy new relationship - needs space...help?

Hey Folks...

So around 5 months ago I met a girl online, which i had never done before. We chatted every single day for a month before meeting up. The next day she told her best friend i was her "insta boyfriend".

We are both 35.

She had left a city 8 months prior, and an 8 year relationship that was quite toxic the last while, to move to where we live.

We were quite smitten with one another instantly! A couple weeks into our dating, she went away for 10 days to visit family and we texted every single day, she would send me pictures. When she got home i met her downtown, and we spent another amazing 2 weeks together. I then went home to visit my family for 16 days. We texted stilj everyday! Time zone was 4 hours off, but i would always check my phone when i knew she was on lunch. Or when i knew she would home from work. I missed her, she missed me. She loved my smell, and had a shirt of mine at her house she would wear so she could smell me.

When i got back, it was glorious. Then a week later she got cold feet, and thought she may not fall in love with me so we should end it now. We talked and decided to wind it back a bit, and that lasted about a week before we were spending all of our time together again.

She showed great affection towards me, i repaid that 10 fold back. I sent her flowers to her work for her birthday, nobody had ever done that for her and she was so smitten and happy. She kept those roses a month until they were black. After her birthday we thought she might be pregnant...That weekend we talked about baby names, morphed our pics into babies and had a good time. Turns out she wasn't, though.

The week after that i spent 6 days straight at her place. She would ask if i could come over after work instead of going home etc...she would call sometimes on nights apart, one night we talked for 2 hours. She would message me sometimes if she missed me, and ask if i wanted to come over for the night. I would.

She told me repeatedly that i'm special, that i enhance her life, that i'm good for her. We literally did everything together and the most mundane things like cooking were exciting and happy. We made an awesome team...Last weekend we hosted thanksgiving with friends and spent the weekend cooking a turkey, then staying up until 6am hanging out like we often did.

Then this thursday and friday i noticed distance via text, and she was rather cryptic. She said she knows her heart and needed to talk to her friend. That nothings changed, but she has to be true to her heart. This passed saturday we got together, i went over early before she was off work to cook dinner for us..she got home and told me she sort of feels like im a platonic friend, and that she can't fall in love with me. She wanted me to still stay the night and hang out - and said "it doesn't have to be all or nothing". I didn't think that was fair, so i left.

It's only been a couple days and we've spoken a couple times. I've made the mistake of telling her I miss her etc..she knows im hurting and im sure she is too.

What's going on? She said today that she wants to give me space and time, and that its hard but i'll see its for the best. And that she needs space too.

My friends loved her, i mean..people were kind of jealous of how happy we were.

Anyway kind of hurting and afraid I suppose...

She rushed into a relationship looking to fill a void. When someone in their 30s tells you that you are her "best friend and insta-boyfriend" after meeting one time, it is a huge red flag. She didn't know you well enough to make such grand declarations, which is a sign she wasn't into you but the idea of you. That is an important difference. This woman was speeding into a relationship with you for the wrong reasons.

It sounds to me like either her ex came back or she realized she was in way over her head for only being together 5 months. Or possibly both. She was attracted to you on some level but it sounds to me like she needs to be on her own a while longer before starting a new relationship.

Stay No Contact and move on. She has no idea what she wants and you will be the casualty of that.

She rushed into a relationship looking to fill a void. When someone in their 30s tells you that you are her "best friend and insta-boyfriend" after meeting one time, it is a huge red flag. She didn't know you well enough to make such grand declarations, which is a sign she wasn't into you but the idea of you. That is an important difference. This woman was speeding into a relationship with you for the wrong reasons.

 

It sounds to me like either her ex came back or she realized she was in way over her head for only being together 5 months. Or possibly both. She was attracted to you on some level but it sounds to me like she needs to be on her own a while longer before starting a new relationship.

 

Stay No Contact and move on. She has no idea what she wants and you will be the casualty of that.

Hey thanks for the response! Her ex lives a long ways a way, and she wants nothing to do with him. He was a narcissist who treated her poorly. We were indeed smitten by each other, all the way up until recently i thought. At least she would tell me that, and whatnot Everything felt so right, like we were best friends. She would say how i enhance her life, make her feel good, how i am so good for her etc...I think the latter - i think the fact that she moved across the country to start a new life, and met me - and it got rather serious quickly has her scared and stepping back maybe? Perhaps she felt dependent on me in that, she doesn't have a lot of friends here yet, and with me she was introduced to my group (who loved her, and us).

Maybe she needs space and time to miss me, and find her own foot hold and realize that she is happy now as she told me 2 weeks ago "it's so great to finally be happy again". But to happy happy with herself, not a relationship?

I dunno.

When people come on fast and strong, they are bound to go away just as fast. She rushed into it and is now having second thoughts, possibly doubting if she can or should be in a relationship again so soon, likely due to baggage from her previous relationship. I imagine one needs much longs than 8 months to recover and reflect from an 8 year relationship (a toxic one at that).

A guy I dated for 6 months once came on strong (even though I tried to slow him down), then pulled away when things got more serious, and pulled hot and cold on me for a few months before I called it off. He came out of a 7 year relationship for 6 months and insisted that he was over it, of course in hindsight he was clearly still scarred by it. In the final fall out, he told me when he was with me he had flash backs (bad memories) of being with his ex.

A relationship that long demands a long recovery time. I suggest you leave her to it and move on. She's not ready to date for quite a while and she can't heal while she's jumping from relationship to relationship.

People who fall very heavy, very fast and try to hurry relationships along are usually either:

- Commitment-phobes who will fall out of love just as quickly as they fell in love. "You know those wedding bells you could hear? It was actually alarm bells sounding!" When the honeymoon period is over they aren't prepared to work on a real relationship with a real person, and go back on the hunt again, looking for the rosy glow and adrenalin rush of being "in love". Of course, this can happen with an on-off relationship with the same person, sometimes for years, which may have been the case in her previous relationship.

OR

- Abusers who will overwhelm their partners with romance and deliciousness, only to reveal their controlling side once the victim's hooked.

It sounds like she's the former. It's unwise to get involved with someone who's had a long term toxic relationship unless they've done sufficient work on themselves to learn from it and become healthier. She was not long enough out of her old relationship to do this.

You can speculate as to why she's moved away at this particular point. Yes, her ex could have come back, or she could have found someone else to fall in love with. Whatever, there really is no point in pursuing this any further.