I am PMS-ing like crazy and thus feeling very negative. Last week I took on a new attitude about this new relationship. I was able to take my blinders off and not feel like I was the lucky one to have found him. He is 34 years old. He knows full well that a girl like me comes around, well, once every 34 years! I am a great catch, an amazing and attentive girl friend and anyone that I have ever been with claims that they are a better person today because of our relationship. This revelation helped me to see some of his negative qualities and not dismiss them just because he is "a good looking, successful, Jewish Doctor". Who gives a rats ass. Jewish Doctors are a dime a dozen as far as I am concerned! I think he feels entitled to get girls and to not have to try too hard to maintain the relationship just because his ego is the size of Africa! Well he has met his match!
Side note: I have not been alone for the past 10 years. I have been in and out of relationships since I was 16. Some over lapped and some started the following day or week but I have never really been alone and I was terrified of it. After I ended things with my ex and finally stopped all communication with him and truly was alone, only then did I face my fear and realize that its really not that bad. In fact, I liked it. I felt free and independent. I got to know myself a bit better and I liked who I was! Plus, now that I faced my fear I will no longer be scared to be alone and therefore I will not feel trapped to stay in a relationship that is not for me just out of fear of being alone. So I feel like I can be more real and ask for what I need and not be scared to speak up in case that will make him "leave me and wind up alone".
So with that said I have been a bit tougher and less needy and not acting desperate or feeling "lucky" to have found him. Perhaps this has made it a bit more difficult for him to get close to me but for now its working great for me. If we don't work out I will be okay and that is the most valuable thing to me.
My therapist suggested that I think about how I will sabotage the relationship with my "new attitude". I think I will ruin it by:
-feeling very entitled to making my demands heard and getting my needs met.
-I will be less accommodating to his needs and wants and fears.
-I will grow impatient of how slow he wants to take things.
-I will be so busy focusing on his negatives and my positives that I will inflate my ego and overlook the fact that he is a good guy that is trying to make me happy.
He shared with me that he is scared to make us official and use the term girl friend. At first i though that was a crock of shit and a line that a guy would use to play a girl. But the more I thought about it I realized that although he is 34, he has not had a long term girlfriend in a very long time. He knows that a girl like me has everything together and wants to move into the next stage of my life. He said that making a girl like me his girlfriend was almost like deciding to marry me and after one month he is too scared to do that. I feel like his fears are valid but I am still being very cautious about getting hurt. The truth is, he is treating me like his girlfriend... We are exclusive (not dating anyone else) we see each other a lot. He caters to my needs (he rubbed my stomach last night for an hour because I had period cramps...) He seems interested. We talk about a possible future. And he shares with me that he is not as confident as everyone thinks he is. On some level I think he is inexperienced with relationships and I know that I represent a possible wife, not just a girl to sleep with.
After we had this talk I called my best friend and said "this guy has exactly one week to grow some balls and ask me to be his girlfriend or else we are done!" I was feeling very angry and defensive and hurt. I was thinking "how could he not already know how wonderful I am and how lucky he is to have found me". I got vengeful and spiteful (like I often do) and figured that I would leave him and teach him a life lesson of "you snooze you lose!"
But then I slept on it. It's good that today I have enough self control not to act in the heat of the moment and to take some time to think before I react. I thought to myself... I have been so wrapped up in trying to get him to be my boyfriend that I haven't spent much time thinking if I even like him enough to want to be his girlfriend! I was trying to prove myself when really I should have been trying to figure out if he is what I am looking for. And the truth is after one month, I don't know for sure either so how could I expect him to know that he wants to be my boyfriend, husband, father of my children in one month when I am unsure myself!!!!
I realized that as soon as I take the focus off the other person and put it back on myself and my thinking and my actions, I am able to see the situation more clearly. And since this is my future and my life we are talking about, I think I can give it a bit more time to make sure that I am making the right choice despite what he is thinking or doing.
So for now I will try to "chill out" a bit and get to know him better and decide if he is what I am want and not wait for him to decide my fate (like I have often done in the past).
Besides, I do have a great time with him. We spent like 15 hours together on Friday and had the best day! We went to Indigo (bookstore) and he bought me a book that I have been wanting to read forever and I recommend it to all... Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix. We held hands while I read while he studied for a course he is taking. I felt like the couple from Love Story! He left for a few minutes and came back with amazing Swiss chocolates for me :) We had a nice dinner and then went back to his place and had a dance party in his condo, just the two of us! It was really cute!! So I hope that I can just be patient and enjoy how much fun I am having without putting the pressure of labels and future on this...
I really don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems he's just not that into you. If he was, you'd be his girlfriend. You're not asking him to marry you, be the father of your children, etc. All you want is a commitment and he can't give that to you. I also don't think it's healthy that you keep trying to convince yourself over and over that he should feel lucky to have you. Truthfully, he is lucky to be with you and he should be showing that over and over- YOU shouldn't be having to convince yourself of something HE should be showing you. I'm afraid you're trying too hard to convince yourself of something that just isn't right. When it's right, you'll know. There will be no games, no need to convince yourself of things. When it's right, he'll treat you like the queen you are from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteRelationships (obviously) are tricky. You can be with someone who says he loves you and want to be with you right from the start and it's not a guarantee it will work out. Just because he's hesitant to call you his girlfriend after one month doesn't mean he doesn't want that eventually, it just means that a month of the "honeymoon" phase of dating someone does not equal a strong relationship. The people who rush into dating, living with someone, marrying too soon are the ones who later regret it. I've never heard of someone regretting taking things too slow to get to to know someone and have a meaningful relationship. I wouldn't worry if I were you. You're both right to enjoy each other and take your time.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of guys who are shady, so I understand why you were upset when he didn't want to have you both coin the term boyfriend and girlfriend. At the same time I think its pretty cool that you want to wait before possibly calling things off, because some people really do just take things slower. Plus, if this guy is serious and wants to get to know you for the right reasons, then in the long run that's better than calling yourself a girlfriend. Of course, you just have to be cautious and aware. Best of luck!!!! :D
ReplyDeleteShouldn't he be dieing to be your boyfriend? Why are you exclusive if he doesn't want this title? He may well have sincere motivations, but I would delve deeper into this issue to see what you find, since it seems odd to me that girlfriend and wife go almost hand in hand to him. I feel like you may be excusing this when you don't really agree with it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the posts. I dated a guy exclusively for 10 months who said he didn't want to put a title on our relationship and "ruin" the type of relationship we had. We both weren't dating other people, and yet I still couldn't introduce him as my boyfriend. I spent 10 months convincing myself that this made me happy, that I wasn't shackled by needing to meet his demands as a girlfriend, that we could have our own lives and still date...but after 10 months of lying to myself I realized that I was depressed, unhappy, and had lost a lot of my confidence. I broke up with him and for weeks it was difficult to figure out WHY I had stayed with him for so long as a "pseudo-boyfriend". I am now happily dating a man who, after 3 weeks, told me he couldn't wait to introduce me as his girlfriend and wanted to shout it from the roof that I was with him. When a guy wants to be with you, he WILL make the effort and commitment.
ReplyDeleteOh for Pete's sake. Don't listen to all those people up there giving you crap for him not necessarily wanting to be your boyfriend yet. Because as you noticed, you're not sure you want him to be your boyfriend either! I think it's smart that you're taking things slow, and you've clearly matured a lot and learned a lot about yourself, what you want in a relationship, what you need in a relationship, and what you're willing to put up with since you started this blog. You're in a good place, having fun with a cute fun boy. Let it be. Figure out what YOU want, because you are the important one.
ReplyDeleteseriously. it's been like a month. no reason to commit to being boyfriend-girlfriend. just wait, enjoy each other, and then see after a couple of months. he's 34, he's much closer to "if im going to call someone my girlfriend, it's because we're on the path to marriage" and he may not be ready for that just yet, and that's ok.
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