Please help me figure out what to do.
I'm really struggling at the moment. There's a man that I dated for a month but we split up as he wants children and I don't. However we're best friends and co workers. I am normally a very logical person who controls my emotions with my intellect. I'm normally more than ok at letting go of things that are no longer benefitting me. Unfortunately I'm struggling to let this man go. I love him and can imagine spending the rest of my life with him. If I knew for certain that he didn't love me and want to be with me then I could move on and accept it. However there's been lots of signs that he still wants me, though I think a lot of it may be subconcious. There's a lot of chemistry that can't be faked. When we go out he'll reach for my hand and doesn't let go of it easily. The thing is I was coping as just friends who hug and hold hands. I knew where I was. However a couple of weeks ago when we were hugging he got his face very close to mine and started rubbing his nose against mine so that our lips were very close but not touching this made me think he wanted to kiss me. He's the type of person that is highly unlikely to say if he'd changed his mind or make the first move. So because he was acting as though he wanted to kiss me and I still love him I let our lips brush against each other.
For the rest of the day he was holding me, when I was cooking dinner and moving about the kitchen he'd follow me. When I was stood stiring the food he put his arm around me. When we were shopping he reached for my hand. One thing led to another and we ended up naked. Then over the next week we were flirting a lot. He started getting close to me at work, nudging me and touching my arm (he didn't even do this when we were dating), talking to me a lot more than normal etc. One night after work we ended up sitting in the car kissing. I asked him if he wanted to go on holiday with me to my Mum's and he was very keen to go. On the Friday he came round and we ended up in bed together. It was so wonderful, and incredibly intimate and nothing at all like no strings sex. Afterwards I asked him what he wanted from me, he said he hadn't really thought about it. I spoke to him today about it and he said he thought I was giving out signals that I wanted sex, I will admit I do still want him but I'd told him in the past that I couldn't kiss him or do more with him as I still had feelings for him. I also clarified our friendship a few weeks ago when we got carried away, and I told him again I couldn't do that stuff with him as I still cared for him and it hurt to do that, but that I was ok being friends who held hands and hugged as I'd been managing fine with that.
However I felt that he'd been giving me signals that he still wanted me. He said today that he can't give up the idea of having children. I'm a very logical person, and going on everything I know about him I honestly believe he'd struggle with children. However equally I'd love to see him have children. However I believe that what we could have is incredibly special and rare. I'm not a mushy romantic person, in fact I'm normally the exact opposite. That's why I'm finding it so hard. Part of my mind is saying walk away. But another part of my mind is saying fight for it as is my heart. I would love to find a way to move on. However despite him saying he doesn't want to be in a relationship with me I still can't get over how he behaves when he's with me. As my friend says, we're more coupley and do more couple things than most couples. He's done me a compilation CD that's full of my favourite TV show theme tunes, songs that we listended to together that bring back special memories, including one of being in bed together and songs like "Don't You Want Me?" "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and a couple of Barry White songs.
If he told me that he didn't love me romantically then I think I could move on. But I keep getting the feeling that he still loves me and would like to be with me based upon our interactions, even my mother thinks that there's signs he still wants me and she's incredibly pragmatic. And when she met him a month ago she said that when the two of us were together by the door that there was a lot of tension and chemistry. The thing is that he's 41, still living at home with his parents, has never moved out and I'm the only person he's dated. He's very idealistic about the concept of children, yet he struggled to maintain a fulltime job and a relationship with me, so I think he'd struggle holding down a full time job, running a home, maintaining a healthy relationship and raising a child would be very hard for him. But I keep thinking I'm terrible for thinking that as I'd love to see him happy. Yet I worry that perhaps he's giving up a chance to be happy for an ideal that may never happen or turn out to be what he imagines. I know I can't make him change his mind. However I think part of his refusal to give up the thought of having children is fear. All his life he believed he'd never find anyone, that no one would ever love him and then suddenly someone loves him and wants to live with him at some point in the future. As the break up happened just after I asked him if he'd like to move in with me at some point in the distant future (we're talking several months to a year).
I just don't know what to do. Do I just try to ignore my feelings for him and hope they go away, do I try one last time to talk to him about his feelings and risk losing his friendship, do I rip the band aid off fast and walk away from his friendship? Is there anything I can do to heal myself, to bring peace to my mind and stop the competing thoughts of "I should just walk away" and "This is an incredible, special relationship that could change our lives as despite the problems so far we've shown we can work through things"?
