Girl shared very personal information on our third date and then abruptly left

[Nebraskagirl14]

Just now, Mick17 said:

That’s a great way to think of it. We haven’t spent much time together so it’s hard to tell if the actions aren’t aligning with the words.
 

I’m also worried now that our early attraction has been sidelined by this revelation. That it would be hard to get back 

Agreed. I just advise an open and honest conversation with her. She may be the woman of your dreams. Who knows? But just take your time to get to know her :) 

[Mick17]

Update: sent her a simple message with unrelated nature photo I took on a trip yesterday. Sort of an inside reference

“How are you today? I really enjoyed seeing you yesterday. I would love to hear from you and see you again if that’s something that interests you. I’m here for you.”

[Nebraskagirl14]

2 minutes ago, Mick17 said:

Update: sent her a simple message with unrelated nature photo I took on a trip yesterday. Sort of an inside reference

“How are you today? I really enjoyed seeing you yesterday. I would love to hear from you and see you again if that’s something that interests you. I’m here for you.”

Chef’s kiss. Nicely done 👍🏼

[Batya33]

10 hours ago, Mick17 said:

I gotcha. Her walking out is not a fun experience. People do that when they cannot handle the current situation. I don’t know if it bodes well for future interactions. 

Yes some people do that -people react in all sorts of ways to tough conversations, to tough situations, to temptations. It's thoughtful of you to offer her your support.   Best of luck to you in whatever you decide.

[Wiseman2]

4 hours ago, Mick17 said:

 . I would love to hear from you and see you again if that’s something that interests you. I’m here for you.”

That's a good start. She was honest and vulnerable with you about this creep, so try to relax and not judge her for that or question her integrity. It doesn't do any good to ask her if she learned her lesson or is capable of fidelity. She's already paid the price.

[spinstermanquee]

Hi Mick, I agree with the posters that think she was brave to tell you. 

When the time came to discuss history with my then-boyfriend (we were further along than you two in dating) I told him I had a checkered past but no details - "Someday we might be in a restaurant and I get up to go the bathroom and some guy will come over and tell you a story about PG (Partier Girl, copied from one of Batya's stories LOL).  I'd rather you hear it from me."  I told him he could ask me anything he wanted to know, and I would answer any and all questions honestly.  Gave him a thirty-minute window.

His response, my paraphrase:  "Everything you have experienced, everyone that you have loved, made you into the person you are today, who is the person I love.  I have no questions."

If I *were* the same person of old, doing the same old things, I could not, would not have invited his scrutiny.  I could reveal anything because it was firmly in the rear view mirror, had no more power to hurt me - but it did have the potential to hurt him so I had to ask.  Funny how love can make you brave...  his response melted my heart.

Mick, it was an honest and vulnerable act, and if you ask me that is the ultimate respect you can pay a potential partner.  Here is the good, the bad, the ugly, and my life is an open book.

Good luck Mick and hope it all works out for you both 🙂

[lostandhurt]

12 hours ago, Mick17 said:

That’s a tough question, but it’s necessary. I’m worried the response might be “I’m not sure”. In which case I have to think real hard about pursuing this person.

Yes it is but avoiding the tough questions or discussions just puts off the issue.  The thing to remember being fearful of the answer and not asking it doesn't change the answer, it just keeps you from knowing what you need to know moving forward.

 From her actions on that night I get the feeling she is ashamed of what she did in helping a married man cheat.  If she wasn't she would have kept it a secret or would have been more carefree about her past.

People make mistakes, many times very stupid mistakes and taking responsibility for them and learning from them is what is important.  They cannot be undone but they can be the bricks that build our character and integrity.

  Lost 

[Mick17]

10 hours ago, spinstermanquee said:

Mick, it was an honest and vulnerable act, and if you ask me that is the ultimate respect you can pay a potential partner.  Here is the good, the bad, the ugly, and my life is an open book.

Good luck Mick and hope it all works out for you both 🙂

Thank you, I enjoyed your story as well and it was a very sincere response on the part of your then-boyfriend. I wish I could have waited to know myself so I didn't have to ask questions. But I'm glad she was open with me and sincere so early on.

I'm afraid by her non-response that she thinks I know too much now and do not want to pursue her further. Can someone psych themselves out of liking another person after spilling their life story?

[Mick17]

9 hours ago, lostandhurt said:

From her actions on that night I get the feeling she is ashamed of what she did in helping a married man cheat.  If she wasn't she would have kept it a secret or would have been more carefree about her past.

I agree. She would have deflected the conversation if she wasn't ready to talk about it. Part of me wishes that I had asked her to defer the heavy stuff until a later date. So that we could get to know each other a bit more before talking about it. I'm not sure what the next step is now that all the information is out there.

[Wiseman2]

4 hours ago, Mick17 said:

I'm afraid by her non-response that she thinks I know too much now and do not want to pursue her further. 

You did contact her, so she does know you're still interested. For whatever reason the disclosure of this didn't go well so yes it's possible she feels it was TMI and felt judged. Either way maybe she's not ready to date. People can pick up on disapproval even if it's nonverbal or subtle.

[MissCanuck]

I don't think she is over him or ready for a relationship with anyone else yet. 

I'm sorry, OP. This one is probably not going to regain traction. She's not in the right head-space for it. 

[Mick17]

3 hours ago, Wiseman2 said:

You did contact her, so she does know you're still interested. For whatever reason the disclosure of this didn't go well so yes it's possible she feels it was TMI and felt judged. Either way maybe she's not ready to date. People can pick up on disapproval even if it's nonverbal or subtle.

I tried my best to appear sympathetic and be a good listener. It guess it doesn’t hide the fact that I am disturbed about her history, or at least bothered a little bit by it.

[Mick17]

33 minutes ago, MissCanuck said:

I don't think she is over him or ready for a relationship with anyone else yet. 

I'm sorry, OP. This one is probably not going to regain traction. She's not in the right head-space for it. 

I’m afraid you might be right. I still haven’t heard back and I see that she has read the message I sent. I’m replaying in my head what if I hadn’t let the conversation continue long and stopped her. But I realize we would have to talk about it eventually 

[MissCanuck]

The duration of the conversation is irrelevant. All that matters is that she still seems to be healing from all of that and isn’t in the right place to date anyone else. 

[Batya33]

11 hours ago, Mick17 said:

Can someone psych themselves out of liking another person after spilling their life story?

A person can choose to react to that situation in any number of ways and you don't know her well enough to know.  A person can have a scary experience with another person and then choose to distance themselves -she may have scared herself then realized she can't continue -not about "psyching" herself out of a feeling as much as reacting to fear by choosing to avoid the person she had the scary experience with.

[Coily]

Something I've been pondering in all of this, as her .mil career is over and she is being processed out, she could be avoiding any entanglements with anyone still in the service. It took her telling you as a wake up that she's going to be on the civilian side soon-ish and will want to distance herself from life on Post.

I may be wildly off in that line of thought, but it sort of adds up with her actions of ghosting on you.

[Mick17]

3 hours ago, Batya33 said:

A person can have a scary experience with another person and then choose to distance themselves -she may have scared herself then realized she can't continue -not about "psyching" herself out of a feeling as much as reacting to fear by choosing to avoid the person she had the scary experience with.

It feels ***ty because I did absolutely nothing wrong in the moment. My gut tells me that your assessment may be correct though. I only hope that she can come around from that trauma because I still want to talk to her, see if she’s okay

[Mick17]

10 minutes ago, Coily said:

Something I've been pondering in all of this, as her .mil career is over and she is being processed out, she could be avoiding any entanglements with anyone still in the service. It took her telling you as a wake up that she's going to be on the civilian side soon-ish and will want to distance herself from life on Post.

She did seem a bit morose when describing her current situation and expressed that she’s just waiting to get separated from the service. That in itself is stressful. She said she could be in town for a few more months, give or take, and that it’s difficult to start relationships when she doesn’t know exactly when she’ll leave. 

I hope you’re wrong about the ghosting. It’s the worst feeling 😞

[Batya33]

24 minutes ago, Mick17 said:

It feels ***ty because I did absolutely nothing wrong in the moment. My gut tells me that your assessment may be correct though. I only hope that she can come around from that trauma because I still want to talk to her, see if she’s okay

So you want to see if she’s ok as a caring human being or mostly because you want to keep dating her ? You’ve only been on 3 dates right ? She might have no trauma at all just realize after she shared all that that she’s not interested in seeing you again particularly because you are in that world and know of the people involved. May be nothing intense. Many people choose not to keep dating after only 3 dates. You did nothing wrong a you can do everything right and still not be a good match. 

[boltnrun]

You not only will be around but actually personally know the person she chose to be involved in an extramarital affair with. I'm sure that makes her uncomfortable. She may be worried the married man will tell you details she would prefer you not know. (BTW, was he also disciplined? He certainly should have been as he's the one who's married). 

Oftentimes people remove themselves from those who know they have a disreputable past. If she moves away to a place where no one knows her recent past she might feel like she can have a true fresh start. 

After only three dates, this isn't really a breakup like situation. I understand you like her a lot but it's not as though you had years or even months invested. It's just one of those times where it didn't work out. 

[Mick17]

1 hour ago, Batya33 said:

So you want to see if she’s ok as a caring human being or mostly because you want to keep dating her ? You’ve only been on 3 dates right ?

More of the latter if I’m being honest. We were getting along so well and it doesn’t make sense why she would just cut it off there.

Yes it was the third date with her. 

[Mick17]

39 minutes ago, boltnrun said:

You not only will be around but actually personally know the person she chose to be involved in an extramarital affair with. I'm sure that makes her uncomfortable. She may be worried the married man will tell you details she would prefer you not know. (BTW, was he also disciplined? He certainly should have been as he's the one who's married).

I actually don’t personally know the person she was involved with, but I have coworkers who know him. They just told me there was an affair involved but knew no details. She told me the most about it. Yes he was also disciplined and removed from the workplace and will likely not promote further. However he has over 20 years in the service and can comfortably retire 😕 
 

 

[boltnrun]

1 minute ago, Mick17 said:

I actually don’t personally know the person she was involved with, but I have coworkers who know him. They just told me there was an affair involved but knew no details. She told me the most about it. Yes he was also disciplined and removed from the workplace and will likely not promote further. However he has over 20 years in the service and can comfortably retire 😕 
 

 

It's a small detail, but the fact that the affair seems to be general knowledge and people are talking about it shows again why she likely just wants to get away and start over. 

By chance did you know about the affair before she told you? 

I know if it were me and people were gossiping about me at my workplace AND I'd been subject to disciplinary action (and not being eligible for promotions is a disciplinary action) I wouldn't want to be there any longer and I wouldn't want to be around people who knew about it. 

I know someone who was in the military and was given a general discharge because he had a dirty drug test (there's more to the story but that's the basic gist). He moved hundreds of miles away because he just didn't want to be there anymore and he knew pretty much everyone on base knew what happened. 

[Mick17]

18 minutes ago, boltnrun said:

It's a small detail, but the fact that the affair seems to be general knowledge and people are talking about it shows again why she likely just wants to get away and start over. 

By chance did you know about the affair before she told you? 

Yes, I knew before she told me, before we even met actually. One of my good friends is in the same unit that she was previously assigned to. My friend had to fill in the job that the affair had created when the married guy got fired. When I asked my friend if he knew the girl I matched with, he said yeah she's probably the person that his predecessor was involved with and they both got removed. My heart sank but I wanted to meet the girl in person and give her chance. If the story came up, then it came up on her terms.

In an even weirder twist, when I learned the married man's name I found out that he held my current job three years ago, well before he and the girl met. His information was all over my work computer. My current coworkers knew him well and described him as sort of brash, very personable, and a bit of a ***bag. The coincidence was such that I mentioned it to the girl during our conversation after she said his name too. I didn't want to play dumb and pretend I didn't know him. I feel like this revelation disturbed her. It's truly a small world. 

I feel like this was set up to fail from the start, with too many connections and too much known so early on. 

[Batya33]

Also when it's this complicated it can be "fine" initially and then not fine.  When I was in my 30s I met someone at a weekend retreat.  We lived near each other.  He asked me to have lunch at his apartment (yes I trusted him for reasons that aren't important).  At lunch he told me he'd broken up with a girlfriend 6 months earlier.  She then told him she was pregnant with his child.  He didn't want to marry her.  She wanted to marry him. 

It seemed to me she may have gotten pregnant on purpose and he was too much of a gentleman to "go there" with me.  I said I was fine with the situation initially and we dated for 2 months. Then she had the baby.  He stayed over at her place to help with the overnights. I actually was fine with this. But then we ran into some of her friends at a movie theater and they stared at me in hostile ways. 

And  then I realized of course now he'd have to spend a lot of time with his new daughter.  I realized the situation was not fine and -should I have known this in advance? - I mean I'd never dated someone with a child and certainly not in this complicating circumstance.  So after 2-3 months even though he was doing everything "right" I ended it.  (And -he's never married and his daughter is 19 and an amazing person from all I can tell).

It happens and it's risky when it's this complicated from the beginning.  I think your situation is too close for comfort for her.