My luck.

[hopefulseven]

Well, hello there. I'm just going to jump right in here, because you're going to get to know a lot about me in a very short time, and it's a little awkward for me. I've been reading some of the posts here, and I want to try my luck.

 

So I'm a 25 year old dude, university dropout, and all-around swell guy. I'm about 5'7" (which is to say 5'6"), roughly 230 lbs, brown hair, glasses, etc.. I tell you this because it's reasonably important to the story that I'm a shortish, fattish fellow with almost no ties to employability (I studied Philosophy in school). But I'm very nice, very intelligent, and very charismatic. I'm a writer and musician, I have a lot of really great, really close friends, and my last "girlfriend" (I'll get to the quotation marks later) was completely amazing, and I want her back.

 

A little about her? Sure. She's so beautiful, so smart, so funny, it really just isn't fair. She's a very career-driven, professional woman, whose focus and purpose in life is journalism. She gets me, and I get her. We have this fairy-tale story about how we got together, at least as far as I'm concerned, and we broke up four months ago for reasons of direction. She was moving away because of a job, I was staying because of my band, and everyone knows that long-distance is a terrible idea. And so we arrive at our current juncture.

 

I thought that being single would be a good thing for me. We were together three years, and before that I was with my previous girlfriend for four. I've been in a steady relationship essentially since before I graduated high school. So you'd think that being single would be awesome, right? I'm in a band, so shortish and fattish as I may be, you'd assume I could still get laid. Well, I can, but it turns out that being single kinda sucks. Not the being single part so much, just the not being with her part. I could definitely stand being single, I actually enjoy many of its elements, but when there's someone I love so desperately living halfway accross the country, it becomes hard to be happy and single.

 

Wow, this is going to be a long post. Well, maybe it will. I'll try and be brief and direct here.

 

We broke up for distance, with the implication that we might be able to pick up where we left off a little ways down the road. Shortly after she left there was some weirdness between us (what I call the real breakup), wherein I kinda lost my mind for about a week. Nothing cruel or horrible was said between us, but there were some seriously disconcerting emails that did not help my cause, and she expressed that she was no longer interested in trying to make what we had work in the future. Suffice to say, ouch. She broke my heart with that, and I haven't been the same since.

 

That, however, I'm cool with. I had a lot of things I needed to learn and understand; I needed to grow up a lot. This helped. Being single has helped a lot, because there were things I couldn't learn while she was with me. Since she left I've dropped almost 30 pounds, I'm eating better than I ever have in my life, and I'm deciding where and how I'm going to go back to school, so I can get a career. I'm a self-saboteur, or I have been, for about the last five or six years. I was always too afraid of failure to pursue success, but I'm growing out of it. I'm a lot better than I ever was, and let me tell you, I was great to her.

 

We had small fights. Everyone has fights, but ours were never major. We almost came close to breaking up one time, but that was an issue of insecurity, relationship-claustrophobia (on her part), and an unconventional breakdown in direct communication. That was the worst things ever got, and it wasn't even a fight. For three years, I think we did excellently at maintaining a healthy, happy relationship. We get each other, which is why it worked, and why I want her back. Some areas were strained; we weren't entirely sexually compatible, but these issues we overcame. We overcame pretty much all of our issues through direct, caring conversation. But we couldn't tackle two or three problems: my depression, my lack of direction in life, and... uh... I guess it's actually just those two. Maybe also my lack of good health habits and all that stuff.

 

So I tackled my depression first thing. When we broke up I decided I didn't want to let it rule my life anymore, and I let all the things that I had held onto for so long, all those reasons I was angry and depressed, I let them go. I beat depression, and though I'm making it sound easy, it wasn't. I was depressed for nine years. It's new (and kinda weird) not to be, but it's great. My lack of direction in life I'm tackling now. I'm going to go back to school, I'm going to get the training I need to get a career, and I'm going to work and work hard so I don't have to be a broke-ass loser anymore in life. And the health issue, well, I've lost 30 pounds, and I'm going to lose 50 more before I'm comfortable. I'm really learning how to take care of myself.

 

So, she still loves me. She's said it expressly. She's still, in her own words, "largely in-love" with me. I'm not sure about the hyphen, but you get the nuance. But she doesn't want to be with me. She doesn't, reportedly, want to be with anyone. She's reflected on her history of relationships, and doesn't like the sense of dependency that seems to settle on her in a relationship. I agree, I have my own beefs with relationships in general, but I think that between us, we could find something that works without constraining us to a conventional relationship's dependency. I think we could make our own rules, if she'll give me a chance. So I'm waiting, because I'm pretty sure the only thing to do in this case is wait until her mind changes. She won't want to be single forever.

 

But, even if she doesn't, I feel like she won't want to just be with me. I've proven myself to be something of a loser over the last three years, and I'm going to have to dig myself out of it, and show her that I can live in the same grownup, professional and monied world that she lives in. I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to be with me because she's afraid that I'll hold her back from the kind of life she wants, and I have to prove to her that I won't.

 

That's kinda where you come in. I think I know what I need to do, but I want your advice. I'm moving in the fall, and I'm going where she lives. I picked it for a couple reasons; it's where I want to go to school, and if my band is going anywhere, we need to get out of our little town into a larger center. But I'm also (mostly) going because of her. So, what do you think I can do to prove myself to her? I won't play stupid games, and I won't lie. These things I don't do. But I don't know if "just be yourself and she'll see" will cut it. I need to find a way to bypass her doubts, and concretely get her to give me another chance. Help me.

 

Anyways, it's been very good just venting here, and I'm hoping to find myself quite at home in your little community. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your comments or questions.

[waveseer]

This is my advice:

 

Be a friend, gain a friend. Be a lover, gain a lover. Be positive, gain the world.

[SighSob]

You said it, man. Right now she doesn't want to be with you, so all you can do is work on YOURSELF. Hopefully she will change her mind sooner or later. Just maybe keep Light Contact while you work on yourself so that she doesn't forget about you?

[hopefulseven]

Thanks. It's good to get some kind of feedback here, because I'm the kind of guy who likes to plan everything out, and when I can't do that, I get a little antsy. Glad to know that I'm on a reasonable course at any rate.

[Maverick212]

you seem to be going the right direction man, you're healthy, losing weight, getting in shape, going to school, you have direction. This is all you can do, when she see's the new you, she's going to be curious, and a bit intrigued, women love self driven men with confidence. all you have to do is display that when you see her and your golden