please help! i need relationship advice quick!

[lovehurts]

help! i need advice! i am currently with a man i believe is still in love with his exgirlfriend! we have not been together long...less than 3 months...i want to believe that he wants a relationship with me but im afraid he may be trying to get back to her and i dont want to get hurt. i feel this man is worth being with and we would have a happy life but i do not want to be hurt if he is going to leave me...i do not want to be rebound. how do i find out if he truly loves me? he says he is over her but he still has her phone number in his cell phone and stays in contact with her family. i feel he even drives by her house still. what do i do? please help!

[BabyGirl16]

First off, It's only but so many ways to know if a man loves you. And just because he loves you doesn't mean that he is not in love with her also. The best thing I can tell you is to discuss this issue with him, ask him what are his true feelings, is he having any doubts, or do he at all feel an urge of getting back with her? Once he's answered these questions, then make the best judgment you can. use your own intuition. But I would personally like to say that if he aswers these questions and you still have doubts. Then reither he's cheating, or going to cheat or not.. I believe that you should be by yourself. Because nomatter what he says, your still insecure in this relationship. And I feel that a relationship, should be based off of trust. Find out why you feel a certain way and make your decision the best way you can. But look at life as a big experience, Whatever shall be the outcome...learn from it and use the experience to develope yourself and help you to grow.

[grneyedscotsman]

Hello lovehurts.

 

I understand you have authentic reasons to feel insecure. Just curious, have you and your S.O. discussed exclusivity? In anycase, you are getting signals that possibly show that he is not as disentangled with the other woman as you would like. You are indeed in a period of heightened insecurity over it. This is a natural stage to be in right now, if he is fresh out of his last relationship (within the last six months), and if your relationship is relatively new. The sorting out of emotional attachments is going to be a gradual process for the partner who moves from one relationship to another. At first you were not concerned because you yourself were not as emotionally hooked into the relationship with him. So the ambiguities and lack of clear boundaries around whom he speaks with was not as big a challenge for you, right? But as you got more attached, and he took on more importance to you, it became more of an emotional issue. You went through some back and forth negotiations (on the emotional level) and new clarity was reached. But not total 100% clarity. This is rarely reached in a jump, but is more a gradual process of sorting things out.

 

If you are optimistic, this may still be seen as the gradual clearing process which ultimately leads to the next even more clear level of commitment and solid emotional boundaries in the relationship. If you are pessimistic--which can seem to happen if you let your insecurities dominate your inner emotional landscape--then maybe you focus on the threatening aspect of the situation and think about letting it all go.

 

As long as you see this as an issue outside of yourself, you will simply be like on a yo-yo string, being pulled back and forth--based on his emotional responses (and how you interpret them) whenever discussion about his ex is brought up. Look, he is going to have emotional responses about her. This doesn't necessarily mean his spine is made of jelly and that she can emotionally blackmail him into reconnecting. I don't know what his spine is made of, and at three months, neither do you. Maybe he doesn't even know. I have no idea what his inner landscape is, without actually talking to him. And for the moment, that only keeps you from grasping your real opportunity here.

 

Your real opportunity--and perhaps the only thing you can really count on--is for you to get a better grip on your own inner emotional landscape. You have some issues around insecurity. (As if we all don't.)

The thing is , this category of internal issue is precisely what confounds even the best of relationships and creates alot of blockages down the road when it resurfaces again (and it will, for other reasons)--blockages to authentic and robust intimacy.

 

When you go outside yourself--looking to him and his actions for a solution to prevent your insecurity--you are creating a kind of codependent linkage that ultimately will not serve you or this relationship (or any future relationship). So the interesting opportunity for you and you alone is here--right now in this relationship-to commit yourself to doing some personal growth on your internal emotional landscape. In other words, learn how to better take care of your insecurities (and any other negative emotional states that come up for you in matters of love). Self-care in the emotional realm is the single strongest skill that an individual can develop-that will enable them to achieve healthier and higher caliber intimate relationships.

 

So this is your opportunity to do that kind of personal growth. Think of it this way. If you focus on him and what your strategy should be to minimize your insecurity, i.e. let go, relax, leave, whatever--then you are missing the opportunity to do your own internal work. You are looking on the outside (at him) for a change to happen--and missing the opportunity on the inside to go ahead and make a change (in you). You cannot control what happens on the outside. The only area where you can develop mastery is inside.

 

The relationship with him will turn out one way or the other. Either you two will stay together. Or not. The question is, where do YOU want to be, regarding that personal growth, either way? If you do the personal growth and you two stay together, you will be setting up conditions for a higher quality relationship sooner, and you will be unplugging the polarity pattern that the two of you are already developing over this issue (which really is "insecurity" which equals to him likely seeing you as "possessive" on one side of the polarity). If you do not stay together, and you end up having grown personally, then you will be in a far better position to see and get the kind of relationship you want the next time around--without having to go through this issue again.

 

Relationship is our teacher. Love brings up our lesson plan. And we just have to face the same lesson again, until we learn it.

 

Either way it turns out with him-it is only to your advantage to change your focus and work with this situation as an opportunity for you to foster your own personal growth around insecurity and your responses to insecure situations such as this one.

 

What to do specifically, if you want to rise to this challenge for personal growth as your best response to the situation? You can get involved in reading materials--self help books, and frequent this forum. You will find others who are in very similar situations as yours.

 

As for your boyfriend, continue to communicate with him. This new relationship may very well indeed be a large adjustment for him. If you avoid backing him to a corner, you will not threaten this relationship.

 

I wish you well!

 

Kindest regards,

 

grneyedscotsman 8)

[Lightingbird]

Perhaps you should discuss all of this with him. Talking usually can solve all if you do it and listen.

 

Other than that, my friend Greeneyes has said it all!