First date after breaking ip

[HeartSounds]

Hi. I will try to keep this short.  I’m 39M and she is a 28F.  My ex and I decided to go on a date.  We recently broke up and I was very devastated.  She told me she had no attraction to me and wanted to be friends after two years.  After talking to her more it appeared there were a number of mistakes I made that she wasn’t voicing that made her lose interest.  I really needed to change and I had little insight into it.  Being less selfish, doing activities she likes and spending more quality time with her were big ones.  I was obviously heartbroken and devastated but after reaching out to her and explaining I understood her concerns she thanked me and appreciated it.  She said she’s open to giving it another try after I asked and even began complimenting the things she found attractive about me in the beginning of our relationship.  She wants to go slow which is fine by me.  So we will soon have our second first date.  My goal is to do fun activities, keep it light and just enjoy the moment.  I want to make her smile and if I can do that I think it will be a success.  If you guys have any advice I’d really appreciate it.  I am very nervous and still in a lot of pain but I don’t want to lose this opportunity. 

[Batya33]

4 hours ago, HeartSounds said:

My goal is to do fun activities, keep it light and just enjoy the moment.  I want to make her smile and if I can do that I think it will be a success.  

You're contradicting yourself because -you're lying to yourself.  You don't want to just enjoy the moment.   You want her back, you want a serious exclusive relationship with her again. Be really honest with yourself.  It's fine to fake it till you make it.  Meaning it's fine to plan fun activities and let her control the pace -since she is hesitant and is not that into you -or nowhere near how much you are into her.  

Be clear on what she means by slow? Slow - like not seeing each other often? Slow meaning seeing each other often but no sex? Slow - like seeing each other but she continues to pursue others or have the option to? You're very vulnerable so get clear on what she means unless her actions make it obvious.  

I got back together with my ex fiancee.  Here is why I think it worked:

1. 7 years had passed with very limited contact and only one in person meeting 1.5 years prior.

I really had nothing about him I wanted him to change -but how he acted/person he was in the past was not working for me as a match despite him being a wonderful person.  Over the 7 years he changed a lot because he made changes in his life and grew in confidence as a result.  I changed a lot because I was far more settled in my really intense career, because I no longer craved the "thrill of the chase" -at all- in short I'd become the right person to find the right person and not because of him telling me to change (and I never asked him to change how he treated me - it just did not feel right and we were in our early 30s when we broke up and cancelled the wedding).  

2. We did NOT take it slow.  We didn't get back together for the first month we simply met up twice for platonic evenings -no talk at all about "us" -nothing.  No date like affection.  But sparks flew -on both sides -we simply did not act on it.  I was casually dating others, I think he was dating no one -he'd ended an LTR recently, I'd ended one months earlier.  On our third meeting he asked me to get back together.  I said yes after 30 seconds -I was teary, surprised and yes a little scared.  But "us" won out over "fear". 

We then needed approximately two minutes to talk about what this meant.  It meant: being exclusive, and the only reason we wanted to try again was to see if we should get married this time around.  It meant my willingness to relocate for his career if we got married. Heavy stuff right? Oh and we did wait to have sex again - because neither of us were into having sex unless we really felt it was going to work this time (we waited a couple of months) - but we were sexual/affectionate/romantic.  

We got married about 3 years after we got back together.  We took that slower for both emotional reasons and logistical reasons.

But to me it is not worth it in the least for you to start dating her and "take it slow" when it's been such a short time and she says if you do A, B and C she won't "lose interest" - I don't buy it.  If she really wanted to be with you she'd have expressed these things without breaking up and given you a chance to implement. Now if you didn't then sure I get it -but I think basically she lost interest, wanted to check out what else was out there and in hindsight she's "analyzing" it as well you didn't do X Y and Z back then.

Sure -go on one more fun, lighthearted date where you pretend to "live in the moment" without ANY hope of being with her long term.  Then get down to business.  Express your intentions with no apologies or long backstory - one sentence "I want to be with you and get back together.  I believe we can make the changes you mentioned while we are in an exclusive relationship.  I respect that you want to take it slow and if you like while we are exclusive we can wait to be intimate again, we can wait to get involved again with each other's families again but I need to know now if we're on the same wavelength because I also have to protect my heart and I'm looking for forever.  Are you?"

You can live in the moment AND be 100% true to your goals and dreams.  I have to live in the moment very often because I am a mom.  Parents can love their kids to the moon and back but also know that often life is wildly unpredictable (um thanks also to the pandemic) so you can't plan too much.  You have to be realistic.  But when I was single and wanting to be married I never lied to myself that I would be dating for "fun" and be "lighthearted and live in the moment" -I balanced that against -I am only dating people with serious potential for marriage even if it's "fun" to date Mr. Geographically Undesirable or Mr. I Never Want A Baby or Mr. I Live With Mom and Never Had a FT Job".  Etc.

 

[kctiger]

I think keeping it fun and lighthearted is a fine approach, however keep in mind it isn't your job to make her happy. It's a romantic notion, making someone smile, but ultimately don't lose yourself trying to make someone else believe in you. Right now you're so overly focused on getting her back, it may blind you to the reality of the situation. That being said, I wouldn't dump your emotions on her as I think that would just be overkill. She's not dumb, I think she knows you obviously want to be in a relationship over her. 

The relationship grew stale and she lost attraction. That's extremely common and I encourage you to explore why that happened other than saying you stopped being fun and spontaneous or were selfish. Was she perfect? There are usually deeper issues from a breakup and it's hard to make a true change quickly, so what typically happens is that you focus on making these changes in the beginning but eventually things slip back into the previous mode and the problems resurface. In my experience, women don't communicate their unhappiness, and we men do poor jobs of recognizing and confronting the small, subtle signs it's happening. So be mindful of that as well.