How do i take things slow with ex gf?

[wonderingSoul_]

Hey guys, I am in a bit of a tight spot. Me and my ex had been together for three long and enjoyable years. She was feeling loved and felt really happy in the first 2 years. Then i started smoking weed around the third time around and smoked non stop every day for the rest of the year and that made me really lazy and she seemed to have lost the love she once had and she told broke up with me because she told me she lost the feeling of love. I've been 46 days clean of smoking weed and i have never felt better. I have started to wake up early in the AM around 6 AM, get a good breakfast and go work out in the gym. It been hard to get over her and after 2 months apart i finally started to get over her. She later contacted me and we talked, and she brought up getting back together and i said i'm just not sure if i want to go through so much pain again. And I do want us to get back together and so does she. But she does not want it to happen in one day, she wants to take things slow? I am not sure how to take things slow..I've never had to take things slow...And i dont believe exe's who have been together can really go slow...Could someone help me out?

[pcmaster]

Protecting yourself from pain is to protect yourself from happiness.

I dont think you could go slow with ex. Cause once you get in contact you already investing emotionaly. You just have to decide if you want to take that risk again. She dumped you so you have to decide uf you want to be reused again. I mean maybe its better to keep honour. But the thing is that reason why you broke up is fixed now so you could be sucsesfull couple. Only risk is that you might go back to your old habbits with ex and all the work done will be gone. Its harder to change for good with an ex than with new girl. If she wasnt with you at your worst, she dont deserve you at your best. You had strenght to pull yourself up and start live better on your own. Will you be as strong together with your ex? Maybe she did you a favor by leaving you and you can find better girl.

[TheEvilJester]

I agree almost 100% with pcmaster's advice here. Very much echoes a lot of what I was going to say myself. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to say exes are exes for a reason and getting back together almost never works. ....But in this case it sounds like you two did very well together and it was really only one major issue that broke you up.....

A major issue that is now no longer a problem. So, this definitely COULD be one of the times when it could work. The only thing is, do you want to take that chance? PC is right that you can only protect yourself from pain so much without it causing you to avoid life in general. In other words, it is wise to avoid obvious pain (a situation you KNOW would only end in pain), but sometimes life is about taking chances. This sounds like a situation that very well COULD end in pain.... but you don't necessarily know that for sure. So, if you don't take a chance you may just regret that down the road.... even if just because at least by taking a chance you'd know. Even if it winds up not working out, at least you know rather than being left to wonder "what if?"

The only place where I SLIGHTLY disagree is the whole "if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best" attitude. The reason I don't necessarily buy into that is because if your drug habit was really THAT much of a problem for her, then she had every right not to be okay with that, and every right to end things over it. I mean, weed isn't that bad of a drug in the grand scheme of things. If you smoked it now and then and it never really interfered with your life.... then, yeah, maybe she over-reacted.

But I didn't get that impression from what you described. It sounded like it very much DID interfere with your life, and if it did then she certainly had every right to not be okay with that. And, heck, if that was how you wanted to live your life then she can't force you not to do that.... but it sounds like you didn't want to do that any more than she did. After all, you made an effort to remain clean.

However, there is certainly still the possibility that she's not the right match for you anyway. So, when it comes down to it, you really just have to noodle on this and figure out if you want to take another chance with her, or if you think maybe you are better just to move on.

I also agree with pc in that it would be very hard to "take it slow" with an ex. You two were already together for so long that if you were to try again it would be hard not to just fall back into the relationship again. You can "take it slow" with a new love interest, but it can be hard to do that when rekindling an old love. I guess, really, all you can do is TRY. Maybe start by agreeing to go on a few dates and see how things go. Treat it almost like it is a new relationship and just try to proceed how you would if it were.

Whatever you do decide, good luck to you. I hope it works out for you for the best, in whatever way that turns out to be in this case.