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Is Our Relationship over? looking for advice


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I'm not usually the type of person to post on forums but I am posting here because I have no idea what to do. To give you context to this story I always knew I was but I never openly experimented in a same-sex relationship. This all changed when I met this guy on a dating app back in 2018.

 

When we first started talking I didn't expect anything of it especially because I was only interesting in hooking-up and experimenting. To make this story easier to understand we'll call the guy I met Jake. When Jake and I met he told me that he wasn't looking for anything serious because he was still in a weird place with his Ex. Since I was only planning on experimenting with Jake I told him that I had no real expecations for what would happen between us. We went out a few times following this conversation and it was obvious that Jake and I had a good connection. On our 5th time of hanging out, Jake popped the question and asked me to be his boyfriend. Since this was all new to me I told him that i wasnt ready for a relationship with him even though I had feelings for him.

 

Even after I told Jake I wasnt ready for a relationship things between us still kept getting stronger and I was under the impression that we were exclusive. One day as a joke I decided to go through his phone and to my surprise I saw messages between him and his EX. In one of the messages, he told his Ex that he still loved him even though I was exclusive with him at the time. I was extremly heart broken by what I read so I told Jake that I wanted to stop seeing him. Jake apologized to me and said he was sorry and that there was nothing for me to worry about. About three weeks after I saw the messages between Jake and his Ex, Jake told me he was going to hang out with his EX's bestfriend which at the time i thought was weird but I didn't think anything of it. It turns out that while Jake was at his Ex's bestfriends house his Ex came over and Jake and his Ex made out. When I found out about this I was upset but Jake told me that he was High and his Ex pressured him to kiss him. As naive as I was i forgave him and took him back.

 

Fast forward to 5 months after this incident all signs of infidelity ended however we still never gave our relationship a title. Since i was battling with my sexuality from time to time i made homophobic comments such as "I would never marry a guy" or "I don't see myself long term with a guy". This apparently led to an underlying frustration for Jake because he felt as if our relationship wasn't going anywhere since we did not have a formal title and he said the comments I made hurt him. Jake's frustration with the status of our relationship resulted in him downloading dating apps behind my back in which he met another guy named Alex. Jake kept in contact with Alex as "friends" but then when we got into a fight Jake met up with Alex and gave him oral sex. Feeling guilty Jake cut things off with me without telling me about what he had done with Alex. We didn't talk for two weeks but I couldn't take it anymore so I messaged him and we spent 2 weeks "fixing our relationship". In the two weeks of trying to fix our relationship Alex and Jake still continued to talk however Jake and I were getting more intimate and started going on more dates together. Eventually Jake agreed to get back into a relationship with me and for the next 7 months of our relationship it was wonderful up until the ending of the year 2019. I noticed that Jake was pulling a way and I started to pull away too.

 

When we got back together after the situation that happend with Alex I told Jake that we can no longer hide things from each other and that he should tell me if Alex ever reaches out back to him. I realized later that the reason why Jake started to pull a way was that he started to become bored with our relationship. I found this out as I saw messages between Jake and his bestfriend in which he told them that he was bored with our relationship however he never told me this himself. When I confronted Jake about this he confessed to me how he felt and in that confession i found out that he cheated on me recently as well with a random person he met online. Since all of this information came out to me during a vulnerable time in my life I told him that we should break up but not soon since I needed to focus on finals. Jake agreed and in the time leading up to my finals he was very comforting and vowed to me that this wouldn't happen again, I was sure Jake would change after this time because he started to self-harm because of the guilt he felt. After finals happned we kept delaying when we would break up which left us both in a weird spot. My final straw happened in this year March when Jake told me that he started talking with Alex again. In that conversation Jake told me that he flirted with Alex. After this we mutually broke up.

 

its now been three months after our breakup, and in that time we have spoken several times causally. Jake has made several gestures that he still wants to be intimate with me. yesterday we finally hung out since the breakup and we made out and he gave me oral sex. While we hung out he told me that he isnt hooking up with other guys but hes talking to a few causally. I am not to sure what I should take away from this since we were intimate when we met up. We also still havent had a real conversation about the future of us after our breakup. However before Jake and I hooked up he told me that he had no real expectations from it and he is just going with whatever happens. I feel that during our relationship I was always the one to initate conversations on how things were going between us. I'm not sure if we should remain friends or if what we did yesterday meant anything for him. should i confront him? Should I wait until he initates to meet with me again to ask him how he feels? or should I just give up all hopes in this relationship? Although it seems that our past was a mess I still love him and I tried to move on but I still think about him a lot even when I am with other people. Thank you for reading this far and let me know what you think.

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It sounds like your relationship never really got off the ground to begin with.

 

You resisted making things official, which is understandable given your position, but you can't exactly expect someone to be devoted to you under those circumstances. Exclusivity is generally reserved for actual couples. You also repeated that you didn't see a future with a man. I'm not sure how you expected him to respond to that. Most people would not feel great about continuing to date someone who essentially says there's no future.

 

Now, he should have been honest and told you if he was still seeing other guys. I agree there. But I also don't think he should have promised you any sort of romantic exclusivity when you were not yet comfortable being in an official relationship. Sexual exclusivity makes sense, just to be safe, but I don't think dating exclusively was very realistic if you didn't want to be his boyfriend. (Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, and you did in fact become official somewhere along the way)

 

I think it's better to part ways completely with him. You two tried, and it didn't work. It was a good experience for you to explore your sexuality and understand what you want in a partner, but it didn't have the foundation to go the distance.

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You assumed a lot of things without any confirmation , for example you assumed you were exclusive months after you told Jake you did don’t want to be in a relationship.

My assumption would have been there is no exclusivity given the fact that you told him you didn’t want to be in a relationship with him. What was he supposed to do?

 

I’m not sure why you say it was for a joke that you went through his phone?

How was that funny? It was an invasion of his privacy , someone you wouldn’t enter a relationship with. ??

 

I think you took your experimenting with Jake too far and confused the hell out of him.

 

And at this point I’m not even sure what you want?

Have you figured out what you want?

 

And have you ever asked Jake what his expectations of a relationship are?

Perhaps his ideal relationship is an open one?

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I think part of the reason why I had to assume a lot of his feelings is because he never spoke openly about how he was feeling since in his past relationship his Ex always shot him down when he spoke openly. After Jake and Alex had a thing behind my back I made sure that it was clear that we were in a relationship since that was the reason he told me he got with Alex in the first place. I also apologized at that time for not giving us a title and for all the comments I used to say because I still didnt accept my sexuality.

 

I do agree that going through his phone was an insecure part of my side but why I said it was a joke was because it was infront of him and it was only really for 2 mins, until I saw the messages with him and his ex on snapchat.

 

At this point, I still want a relationship with him even though he cheated on me at the ending of last year when he claimed that he was starting to get bored. I forgot to mention that at the beginning of this year things were going well but started to fluctuate a lot because we both knew we should have broken up since he cheated on me. I believe in February he told me that he still had strong feelings for me but his sexual attraction to me was starting to decrease. He also said that part of the reason he wanted to break up was because of the guilt he felt from everything. Since the split he still reaches out to me and told me that he still wants to be intimate however sometimes are conversations are dry and sometimes they go on for hours. My confusion was that when we met up this week we were intimate and he told me he missed hanging out but I am not sure if our intimacy was enough for his feelings to spark up back for me so should I message him to ask him about it? We also never had the "30 days no contact" so I am not sure if I should start that now? I don't want to be strung along and that's what it is feeling like since he won't come clean about his feelings without me asking.

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It was never a committed relationship. You were hesitant half of the time and still exploring.

On his part , he's a liar and a cheater. So if you're ready to be in a relationship, this guy will only bring you pain and drama. He could have told you that he was seeing other people but he chose to lie. That says a lot about him.

 

Also, someone cutting himself is Not a sign of guilt and growth. It' a sign of extreme emotional instability and he needs professionnal help for that.

Take time to be alone for a while. It takes courage but you will lean to be strong by yourself so it will be easier for you to leave unhealthy relationships in the future.

Good luck!

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I think what's tough here—and a good lesson—is that most everything that made this work, in so much as it worked, is everything that makes it evolving into what you now want impossible. And I think that would all be clearer if there wasn't the formative component of this guy representing something of a first for you in exploring same-sex romance.

 

Early foundations are important. One person openly tangled up in an ex, another person openly uninterested in anything serious: that's just not a foundation that's easy to build atop, at least for long, since the connection, sexual and emotional, is kind of built on the idea that it can't go anywhere. You both, in effect, rewarded qualities in the other than make an actual relationship untenable and encouraged so-so behavior and choices. You made the gray zone the zone in which you guys connect.

 

Healthy thing to do right now, as I see it? It's to accept that what you had was meaningful, in that it showed you a glimpse into the awesomeness of same-sex romance, making real something that was abstract in you prior to him. And that's wonderful, a step toward your truth. Further, your time together showed you that you're now ready, and wanting, a very real relationship with a man. Doubly wonderful, but that's not going to be with this man, given your history, your mode of connection. Too much jagged history, too much blurriness. Not a fun pill to swallow, I know, but a pill that can lead to all sorts of fun and depth, if swallowed.

 

Personal story. Many years ago, while reeling from a breakup, I met a woman who was in a similar emotional state. We made no secret of where we were, the limitations, and engaged in a little gray zone romance between two cities. No definition, no exclusivity: occasional phone calls when we were apart, conversations that were always nice, and gray zone sizzle when we were in the same place for a few days.

 

After a bit, she told me she'd realized (a) she was ready for something committed and (b) she wanted that to be with me. I liked her, but wasn't in the right headspace. Kind of "tried" for a long weekend, but we both understood, without even really needing to talk about it, that what we had wasn't that. Cue: graceful parting, some mutual processing of feelings. A few months later she met a good dude—we have mutual friends—and has been married to him for six or so years. Happy story, with a dash of melancholy in an early chapter, and with that happy part coming because she accepted that whatever she'd learned from our sparkly little thing was not something that thing could evolve into. We were right for each other for a brief time, on a foundation with a built-in expiration date.

 

Which is what I think you've got here. Savor the experience, appreciate the lessons and awakenings, but accept that to live them fully you have to let go of this, just like a bike can't be fully ridden with training wheels.

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It's time to let go of Jake and think for awhile whether you're able to come out fully and meet whatever comes. You're still figuring finding your place in the world and asking yourself questions about your sexuality and how others may react. Give yourself a few years to gain some of that footing and be more sure of yourself and how you want to be among others.

 

The connection with Jake was just that, a beautiful connection that led you to think on new things and explore how you see yourself in relation to everyone else. It was a relationship at times. It was harrowing at other times and extremely painful. None of it was sustainable. Like Bluecastle, I also had the joy and privilege of knowing someone similar many years ago. We hardly had much to say and yet in the time we spent together it feels like we knew each other indefinitely. The chemistry was always there. The ending was also just as peaceful, respectful and kind. What remains is a very joyful and poignant memory.

 

Not every joyful and great connection is supposed to last. It sometimes works like two passing ships in the night and often the only way to start over is to do nothing at all and let time do the healing.

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Well I think that if you want the person you're seeing to be exclusive and committed to you, then you need to stop saying you don't want to be in a relationship and you don't want to label it and so on. That makes the other person feel like you're not really into them and don't care about them enough to actually call them your partner. And that leads to that behaviour that Jake did, where the person has one foot out the door all the time because you do as well. If you're gay then you can't change that and you will just have to accept it. It's not going to go away and you're not doing yourself any favours by hiding in the closet, and hurting your partner and yourself in the process.

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