Ellie24

He finally called today. He almost asked me out. He asked what I was doing this weekend and I jokingly told him.. 'uh, i think i have class both days' because we are in the same class and it seemed retarded that he would ask me that unless he was trying to ask me out. Anyway, he made some comment on how he would also be busy and quickly hung up. The reason I was waiting for him to call is because I've been calling him the past few weeks to study. I just wanted to see if he has an interest or if he's just sort of going with the flow. I normally don't like playing games either, but I tend to come on waaaaay too strong.. so I figured it might be a better idea to play by the rules this time.

Last weekend, I went on a great date. I didn't know it was a date at first, we had been studying together for a few weeks and that day we were just supposed to study and I was going to crash on his couch since he lived way closer to school. He ended up taking me out to dinner and we walked around his neighborhood. After that, while we were watching tv, he put his arm around me and we kissed a little bit. He was very affectionate and sweet after we finally .. showed our interest in each other. I ended up sleeping in his bed instead of his couch and we made out a little bit until I stopped it and we went to sleep. We also joked around a bit about how we should study together more often. The next morning, he acted very platonic and he hardly talked to me in class. He hardly talked to anyone in class that day though, so maybe he was tired. He seemed to avoid eye contact when we were working together in groups and acted really indifferent. Maybe I'm reading too much into this because he hardly ever talked to me during class anyway. Now it's Wednesday, and I'm wondering if he will call. How long to guys typically wait to call a girl after a 'first date'? I think I really like him but I'm afraid i blew it by letting things get too far the first night. Any advice?

I realize that I should be happy and secure being alone first before trying to have a relationship with anyone. But, to some extent, I do feel like my ex and I were meant to be. I'm not sure if it's only my insecurity speaking, or if there's some sort of gut feeling. If I do want a relationship with him somewhere down the line, I guess I should think about it if the time comes again? I realize that for a new relationship with him to work, I would have to completely let him go. Perhaps that something I should focus on now, instead of thinking about unlikely future plans. It's like, I know what I should do, but I'm pretty uncertain about how to do it.

I've found that being with people who care about you helps. Hugs help, they really do. Remember that we've all been there before and there are lots of others going through very similar things right at this moment.

It’s been about two weeks since my ex-boyfriend (my second boyfriend) broke up with me and I’m still trying to figure out how I should respond to it. We were friends for a few months before he asked me out. At the time, he knew I was still emotionally invested in my first relationship, but he asked me out anyway, thinking that he could help me move on. My first relationship started while I was in high school. My mom didn’t agree with me dating at such a young age and she and I constantly fought. This eventually led me to fall into a deep depression. I didn’t fully get over my depression until I was in my junior year of college. All the while, my first boyfriend stuck by me, even though I became almost entirely dependant on him and he became pretty depressed himself. Throughout most of the relationship with my first boyfriend, I realized that he probably wasn’t the one for me, but I was too attached and dependant on him to let him go. When I finally came out of my depression, I decided I wanted to break up with him, as I no longer needed him and fully realized that we weren’t right for each other. This was after we’d spent nearly seven years in a relationship. My first boyfriend and I knew that it would be best if we had no contact but we still continued to talk on the phone and see each other, even having sex. I’ve broken up with him countless times before, but I always went back to him because I was too scared to be alone. I wanted this breakup to be for good, but I think all my actions in the past led him to believe we would eventually get back together. After spending about six months “alone” I began to think that I would never find love, and should just stick to my first boyfriend who was my best friend and who I cared about deeply, though didn’t love. We talked about getting back together again and even started talking about the idea of marriage, again. A few days before my first boyfriend and I were to have our big talk about getting back together, a friend of mine asked me to dinner. After dinner, he kissed me and told me that he’d been thinking a lot about me lately and thought that we could be very good together. I ended up going to see my first boyfriend a few days later and realized that my feelings toward him were still exactly the same. I cared about him deeply but did not love him and didn’t think we were right for each other. I saw my friend again after that, and ended up spending the night at his place. I realized when I woke up that morning that we had a lot of potential and I completely broke it off with my first boyfriend and decided to try having a relationship with my friend who became my second boyfriend. I intended on making my relationship with my second boyfriend very light and wanted to take things slow. I was afraid of falling into a routine that would resemble all the problems that I had with my first boyfriend: a lot of insecurity and dependency. However, I fell really hard really fast for him. I still had a lot of feelings for my first boyfriend and about two weeks after I started dating my second boyfriend I realized that I needed to get over the first one. I told my second bf that I needed some time before I could jump into a new relationship. I told him that otherwise, I was afraid I would carry over all my baggage from the first relationship. For some reason, my second bf told me that he wanted to help me, that I could lean on him if I needed to and he would be there for me while I got over the first bf. This did not sound like a good idea at all to me, and I protested for awhile before giving in. I knew even after I gave in that this had a huge chance of failing, but still hoped for the best. This worked out well while we were honeymooning, but about three months into the relationship I started a more demanding job and also started studying for a graduate school entrance exam. At about the same time that this started, he got fired from his job and became more uncertain about where he wanted to be in life. As a result, he started playing computer games about 4-8 hours a day. I would come home after a long day of work, classes, and studying to find him still in his pajamas, playing computer games. I already felt like my life was stressful enough without having to compare myself to my boyfriend who seemed to be loafing around all day. What I didn’t realize at the time was that not only was he very uncertain about what he wanted to do in life, but he started to feel strained because I was leaning on him a lot. We started fighting and it became more and more common. I became very uncertain about what I wanted to do with the relationship because it seemed to be going nowhere, but I believed I wanted to be with him in the future. I constantly felt like he would be a great person to marry one day, but at the moment he just seemed to be confused and needed to find himself. I hoped that by being with him then, that we could ride through the difficult time and that I would be there with him when he did eventually find himself. Our relationship became more of a strain on both of our lives and because of it, I didn’t take my graduate school entrance exam until a year after I intended on taking it. I also stayed in a dead end job because I was often too depressed to look for better work. He continued to not work it also took him an extra semester to finish school because he could no longer handle the workload. We both knew that our relationship wasn’t working but we tried and tried to make it work. We tried many different things but always ended up going back to old patterns, I think mostly because of me. About three months and two weeks ago, he told me he wanted an indefinite break from our relationship. He told me that he cared about me a lot, but that our relationship just wasn’t working anymore and he wanted both of us to completely clear ourselves of the old relationship so that we could start something new. I’m a naturally very insecure person and was afraid that during that time he would find someone else or that I would find someone else. I believed and still believe that he is the one for me, and was so afraid to lose him. At that time we were living together, so I asked him for some time to figure out where each of us would live and how exactly the break would work. I constantly wanted to negotiate the terms of the break and he kept avoiding the topic. I think he wanted time to himself to think about his life. He wanted nearly no contact during the break, except maybe an email once a month, at most. I pushed for more and more contact.. first asking that we email each other sometimes, and then asking for IMs and phone calls. I eventually pushed him to the point that he was considering having lunch with me once a week and having one of us sleep over every few weeks. I kept trying to put off the break because I was hoping we would be able to somehow work things out without it. We didn’t and things got worse and worse. We finally decided to both home back home with our parents, who live about 10 miles away from each other. One of the main reasons I decided to move back was because I was hoping I might be able to see my bf once in awhile during the break. About three days after we started the break, he calls me up and tells me that he got a job offer in another country, and that he decided to take it. He also told me that our relationship has gotten increasingly more painful to bear and that he just wants to break up. He also said that he doesn’t think this has to be forever, he plans on returning back to this country in a few years and that somewhere down the line there’s a chance we might get back together but, it’s something that he doesn’t want to even think about right now. It’s been close to two weeks since we broke up and I’ve come to these conclusions. I want to get back with him. I think I could really love him and I think we could have a great life together. In order for this to work, we both need to drastically change ourselves. I need to work on being more secure and independent. He needs to figure out his life and grow up a bit. To do this, I need to seek counseling and spend a lot of time not being in any new relationships. He’ll need to explore himself and probably the world until he feels ready to come back and try for another relationship. I think that in order for both of us to achieve this, it will take at least a year. I’ll have to get over him first, so that I won’t carry any of our old problems back into the new relationship. Thinking about this, I feel pretty scared. I really have no idea what will happen during that year or more that we are apart. I’m afraid that one or both of us will get into new relationships and I’m also not sure how I’m supposed to let him go with these thoughts of reconciliation in my mind. Also, I miss him a lot. He’s a really great person and I’m sad that I stopped noticing it. What’s also complicating the matter is that I think I’m also dealing with some issues from my first relationship. I’ve tried to be optimistic but it’s just really hard. I would appreciate any thoughts and advice.