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Sparkle (0)
In a past relationship, I had a situation where I found out my guy was seeing another woman in addition to me. Of course when the truth came to light, all the warning signs I’d been experiencing fell into place and I knew I’d always be on the look out for similar actions in the future. One thing that experience taught me (in addition to other, smaller, not-quite-as-bad experiences that have occurred since then) is how super-important it is that my guy likes me just as much as I like him. Although this may seem like a simple and obvious request, it’s often a lot harder to find than it sounds.
(I'm about to give a recent example, but I want to preface it with these words: This was the best-handled “we’re not seeing each other anymore” situation that I’ve ever been in. I feel no malice towards this guy at all, and I haven’t said anything negative about him or his actions to my friends -- who, as we all know, are the ones who are destined to hear anything negative that we need to get off our chests.)
A few weeks ago, I stopped seeing a guy that I’d been dating for over three months. I dated several other people during that time (since he never technically became my “boyfriend”), but they were mostly halfhearted attempts at distracting myself from this other person. For the record, if I don’t have a commitment from a guy that he’s not seeing anyone else, I consider it mandatory that I date other people. There’s no way I want to be sitting at home, thinking about one person in particular, when he’s actually out on a date with someone else. Hell, no.
And yes, this is a self-protection mechanism I adopted as a result of past hurts; it's been in place for less than a year. Sometimes certain things happen to us, and we end up adapting our future actions in an attempt to keep those scenarios from happening again -- or at least keep them from having as much of an impact.
The short explanation with this most recent guy is that he likes me, but he doesn't like me enough. For over three months, we saw each other at least once a week, and we had some form of contact pretty much every day. But when we had conversations about "us" -- if we were seeing only each other or if we were also seeing other people -- he wasn’t ready to say that I was it. He has a number of good reasons for not being ready to take that step, and for a while this situation was okay with me. We always have fun when we're together, and I wasn’t ready to give that up. (Indeed, this is the same guy I referenced in the post I wrote about exclusivity -- the guy I decided to keep seeing after he told me he wasn't ready for anything more.)
When we talked about exclusivity again a few weeks ago (I’d like to note that the subject was brought up by him -- it’s not always the female who has to bring up such things), he told me once again that he likes me, and that I'm awesome, but he's okay with me dating other guys and he wants to keep his options open as well. I knew as soon as he said it that this time was different -- I was no longer okay with it. It’s funny how that happens. They were the same words, but hearing them at a different time just caused something to click in my brain and I knew that I couldn’t continue to be his “for now” woman.
It goes back to what I said in the beginning -- I need the guy to like me just as much as I like him. That’s what clicked for me. If I could see myself being happy with dating only this person, and I knew I wanted to see him more often and get to know him better...but he was telling me that he wanted to keep his options open? He doesn't feel the same way I do. And rather than give it more time and risk being hurt, I decided to move on.
I’m not mad at him in the slightest. He could have told me what I wanted
