b2761

queen, it sounds like he only calls when it's convenient for him- a red flag, certainly.

you know what you have to do, dt. Keep walking. It's hard, but you know that it's what has to happen.

interesting to read all this- what's happened since?

interesting to hear this perspective!

how about everyone is special in some way. I do believe somewhat that "God helps those that help themselves..." On the other hand, over the years, I've increasingly had a problem with the concept that people get what they deserve. Could anyone possibly feel that children 'deserve' to be harmed? What if they're killed, like children in the Holocaust- they don't have any opportunity for life to 'make it up to them' for the bad they went through.

good thoughts to remember, katman

just sounds like your generic commitmentphobe, enjoying the buzz with you but not wanting it to go further. and since you DO seem to want it to go further, I think you've got to agree to disagree and disengage til you either meet someone else or down the road no longer have any romantic yearnings. It's the old joke "Doctor- it hurts when I do this..." "Well- stop doing that!" And trust me, I know it ain't easy when you realize those kinds of things.

There is that 'why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free' sound to this. Sure, he's paying for things, giving you attention, but he is free to do what he wants and he does get something out of it- which is the admiration vibe from you and your son. If you want more, than I think you probably need to tell him things have to change. I've likened it in the past to interviewing for a job, and everyone there is great, and they like you, but they say "Sorry- we're not hiring now. But you're welcome to hang out whenever you want- we think you're cool." So, you might do that for the day, you might come back a couple more times, but after awhile, you start to remember that you need money to pay your bills cause they're going to be overdue, and since this place hasn't hired you, they're not paying you anything. At some point, you have to pick yourself up and say "Well- this is a great place- but I also need to make some money somewhere." The most important quality two people should share is they want the same arrangement. Even if you have everything in common and it 'feels' real compatible, if you don't want the same thing, you're cheating yourself and eventually you feel it and often start to resent the person, cause basically, they have evaluated you and decided "Nah". Who knows- maybe if you start seeing some other guys, he might snap out of it and see he has more serious feelings than he thinks he does- but he sounds scared of commitment, and you have to realize that even if you do meet someone else and hangout guy asks you to break it off cause he's seen the light, you still would be taking a risk that once he had you, he'd start to feel things were 'too serious' again. Trust is crucial- and a critical part is trusting that the other person isn't going to flake out on you. (and regarding him saying 'be picky of men'- he might feel safe to say that if he feels he treats you so 'well' that you actually wouldn't make the effort to be with someone else! I wonder how much he'd enjoy being front row center watching you marry someone else!)

there's a Van Morrison song "Enlightenment" when he simply repeats a few times "non-attachment, non-attachment, non-attachment"- it's that somewhat zen idea that if you release your strong desire for a specific outcome, your relaxation may make the outcome you want more likely to happen. So- enjoy your friend- don't get too wigged out, and just let the chips fall as they may.

I sort of was juggling 'on the one hand' with 'on the other hand' cause of two well-reasoned posts- but what I actually ended up doing (1st get together this evening since my post) was just try to be normal and friendly. And she was the same. And later she gave me a ride home from the get together and asked if I wanted to see a movie in the next couple of days. Which gave me relief from wondering if she was now going to keep me at arm's length. I had been thinking at the time I posted 'we're not even being especially close friends, let alone anything else." So, I think I got a glimpse of what it would be like if the friendship disappeared and I didn't particularly like it. Sure- I would've gotten over it. But as of now, I'm just enjoying the friendship and going to keep up with that (albeit a tad more casually than previously- not to play games, but because I think maybe I was being too possessive, etc. and I need to make that friendship less of a priority in my life). The whole process DID make me form a more realistic, less-idealized picture of her- and that was overdue. I recognize that for romance, I'm going to have to look elsewhere, but I'm glad a friendship I value is going to continue. And I do appreciate the thoughtful advice you all gave, which I did mull over.

thanks for your responses. I need to digest them before responding fully, but you both make some great points.

I think that if he's having that hard a time getting over a divorce, he should be seeing a therapist about it. If he isn't doing that, it suggests to me that he's content to let that divorce prevent him from moving on with his life emotionally. Commitment phobia can come in many different guises. If I were you, I'd want some very definite evidence that he's made some real effort to get over that divorce. It can become a convenient excuse to avoid real intimacy. Recognize that you risk setting yourself up for a situation where he flirts with you- gets the buzz from that- but then can contentedly go home, knowing that since he told you he wanted out of the relationship, he doesn't owe you anything more. Or it can get into 'Oh, I'm so upset - let me sleep over- but we understand it doesn't mean anything, right?" Meanwhile, you are keeping your gaze in his direction and possibly missing out on the opportunity to get involved with someone without those issues. My advice would be to view him as someone that is not going to be truly available - maybe ever. You deserve someone who makes being with you a priority, and if it means going through therapy to exorcise the Ghost of Marriage Past, so be it. If he's not really willing to fight to slay that dragon, then that says something.

became interested in a friend romantically, but that interest was one- sided I think. But we stayed friends though I carried a bit of a torch- But now I feel like lately I haven't been treated very well as a friend (it's the kind of thing where she'll chat when we're somewhere we both have to be, but if I suggest seeing a film together, she declines). So now I am inclined to step far back for awhile myself. But we're involved in a group where we see each other three times a week, so I can't go totally NC. If I'm a little more distant to her than I was, I suspect she'll pick up on that and may ask why (I actually started this already and she seemed to notice the change but didn't say anything. I didn't blow her off- we chatted a bit when she approached me. But I didn't seek out the conversation and was a little cooler.) What to say to protect dignity and not have a scene? I don't want to say the truth "Well, I finally figured out for certain that we were never going to be more than platonic friends, and lately you haven't been a great one of those either, so I need to keep my distance from you til I get used to the idea." So what's a casual substitute? "I got the feeling you were stepping back on our friendship, so I figured I should do the same?" Too blunt? "I've been busy lately." ?

people sometimes are inconsistent. But I'd spare yourself going crazy and just write it off as a random moment. If it 'means' anything, you'll find out further down the road- but for now, just keep moving forward as though it doesn't mean anything, that she's involved with someone else now, and move on with your life as though their relationship is going to work out and you need to look elsewhere for romance.

Well, the usual question- are you willing to risk rejection and possibly losing the friendship by putting your cards on the table? You could put it out there and say something like "There have been times now and then when I've thought we'd make a good couple- what do you think about that?" If he isn't interested, well, at least you'd know that and you could grieve that but move on from it. There is the possibility that the friendship would fall apart, which would probably cause you pain, but I'm sure watching from the sidelines while he walked away with his girlfriends has been painful too. If he is interested, it could be the start of something great between you. Unfortunately- you'll probably never know until you take a chance.

I'm sorry this happened to you. It unfortunately happens to a lot of people in their lives, but it's never easy- and especially when you've really only stuck your neck out infrequently in your life. This is going to sound strange but because his desertion was so severe, it actually might help you move through the process of getting over him easier. They say that sometimes the kindest thing you can do to someone you're breaking up with is give them a kick in the gut, and he certainly did that. The way he handled the breakup was so deplorable and inconsiderate of you, it will actually make it a bit easier to get over him in the long run because there's no good excuse or explanation. Pity the people who get months and years of ambiguity with the sickening lingering sensation things are going to end. Keep reading posts and see how other people have dealt with their loss. Someone may have suggested the book "How to Survive the Loss of a Love" to you- it has some helpful things in it. Like just about everything in the world- the process is going to take longer than you want it to. But remember that this didn't end the way it did because of something you did wrong. His 'vanish in the night' is a classic commitmentphobic tactic (read "Men Who Can't Love" to find out more about commitmentphobes). This person was a ticking time bomb and eventually the bomb went off. Somehow it sometimes helps to think how things could have been worse- like if the two of you had been together a long time with alot more good memories to get over, and had had children, etc. (which would have necessitated a lifetime of involvement). I hope you in time find the peace that you seek.

sounds like he's 'really a nice guy'- except when he's not being one. We all have the tendency to remember how people were at the start when we're grieving a loss- but in time, some people are increasingly less nice (some people can only do 'nice' all the time for a limited time til the honeymoon period is over). At some point, it's healthy to start making yourself remember the not so nice things to get realistic about how things were. Read your first post up there about this guy and imagine it was a friend telling you about him. He's 'too busy' to see your friend regularly? You'd probably tell her he's not all that nice.

There's a woman I've been friends with for more than a year. To my surprise, my feelings for her started changing to romantic last summer. There's a mutual friend we have- a very flirty guy- and he asked me at some point if I was interested in any women. I admitted I'd started getting interested in X. And seemingly right around then, when all of us would be together, he seemed to ramp up his flirtiness with her- hugging her longer, saying stuff like "Oh, I can't help touching your hair- it's so wavy!" While I and another person would be left just sort of standing there awkwardly. It seemed to me to be a pretty messed up thing to do to do that stuff right in front of me. I asked him eventually (in summer) if he had feelings for her and he said no- said he wasn't interested in having a gf and if he was, it wouldn't be x. But he seems to enjoy setting up 'special friends' relationships with various women (as he terms them)- old girlfriends, new women to flirt with- so he gets the buzz of attraction and flirtation but doesn't have to do anything about it (these don't get beyond flirtation- not 'friends with benefits'- but heavy flirtation all the same). Also he now has had a gf for a few months. So a few months later, I felt I had to get it out to X that I had feelings for her. I didn't know if she had them for me- she's a shy person, too, and you get two shy people involved and before you know it, it's "The Remains of the Day" and years go by without anything happening. I think I probably didn't handle that discussion with her well- but I think had she been interested, it would've come together (more on that in another thread soon). The bottom line is, friends is probably where it is going to stay for us. But the mutual guy friend still does his flirty thing with her. I've got no justification to be jealous, but I am all the same. And I find out things he does- like on NYE, he went out to dinner with X 'spontaneously', then hooked up with his gf later at a party that night for the full on festivities. (NYE is kind of a 'loaded' evening for him to choose to ask x to dinner, wouldn't you say?). We're all supposed to be friends, but he didn't invite me to join them. And I find out more recently, they went to an event together I also would have liked to have gone to when- once again, I wasn't invited. I realize that because my talking about dating, etc. might have freaked X out, that she feels comparatively safe hanging with this other guy. After all, he's got a gf, so she can enjoy the flirtation without having to worry about it 'meaning anything'. Now, what's difficult is we're all in a series of classes together (we're all in our 30s- it's an acting thing), and I can't drop out of them. We all get together three times a week and this is going to happen for the next year and a half at least! I realize totally that NC would be the best thing for me when it comes to both her and him, but it's a hard thing to do when you've got regular contact coming, and if you step back, it feels like it will be just "Oh- look at him. He's blocking us out cause he's so hurt." (yes-that's my 'worst case scenario' voice talking). Dropping out of the class altogether would require alot of explaining to alot of people- and I'd like to stay in it cause I do get other things out of it. I feel like if I told X 'it hurts me when you guys leave me out of stuff', it's going to make the situation more uncomfortable, not better. It also seems like if you have to ask to be included, that that says something about the situation. I wish I could just fast forward to that place where seeing her will mean nothing to me- or to get in a time machine and never started to feel other feelings for her! (if only the procedure in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was real!) And I will discuss some of that in another thread, cause I realize that the bulk of my 'jealousy' here has to do with that she doesn't want to be with me vs. it being that she's in any way interested in him romantically. But it annoys me that he keeps doing that overtly flirty thing with her in front of me, too. Has anyone ever had a situation like this?