This is kind of long, but I need some outside help.
So here's my story. I met this girl in the gym I frequent and would have good conversations with her. After a month or so I got the feeling that she wanting me to ask her out and I did. She was an intern student out here for about 6 months and we connected immediately. We both knew that she had to go back to school to finish her graduate degree and would have to commit to a LDR (she lives in Indiana). We initially made plans to meet about every month. I went out there, we took a vacation together later in the summer and she came out to see me at the end of August. Everything was great, we had great phone conversations. I told her I loved her when she left back to school and we would tell each other that we loved each other at the end of our conversations. We had talked about moving in together when she is done as she has a job offer were I work or one back east in MAryland. My position is temporary, but I could probably get a permanent position here and I've been applying like mad to jobs back east.
She is hoping to finish her graduate degree before Christmas and after her last visit, we didn't make plans for a visit as she is extremely stressed over school. About 3 weeks ago, I told her that I wanted to see her and she said that she didn't want me to waste money on a flight if she couldn't spend time with me when I came (she works till midnight most nights on research and thesis writing). She reiterated that she wanted to see me though. Since that time our conversations have been lacking and there are periods of awkward silence. I know how hard the end of graduate school is and have been there myself.
Last night during one of these periods we opened up to each other about the awkwardness. She said that it is tough talking every night as she almost feels like it is on a checklist of things she has to get done for the day and suggested maybe we not talk every night. This hit me pretty hard and I kind of was not keen on this. I told her that I need to come see her and that I didn't care if she had to work on her thesis while I was there, I just needed to see her. We decided that after she gets back from a conference on Thursday that we will try and find a weekend for me to come. She was still hesitant about this as she has so much work to do. I think it is important at this juncture as she said the relationship had become almost static. I asked her point blank to tell me now if she didn't want me to come and she said that she did, she just wouldn't know how much time we could be together on my visit.
Not sleeping all night with some crying and thinking, I'm starting to think that if I want to salvage this relationship that maybe she needs space and we shouldn't try and talk every night. I'm hoping that I can visit her the first weekend of November and then tell myself that we can make it till christmas. Maybe talking every 2-3 days will eliminate these awkward silences.
Thing is, I always tell her about my day and she used to be a chatter box about her day and just everything in general. Now she just doesn't even want to talk about her day as most of her days are crappy do to trying to finish her thesis and graduate work.
I really feel that when she is done with grad school that things will change. Maybe this is just me in denial as I truly love this woman. We have never really fought and when we are together we have no issues. I'm hoping a visit will help things. A month ago if you asked me, I would have said this is the one.
I'm so torn right now and don't know what to do. I want to make this work, but ultimately I know that she has to feel the same way.
Anyone out there have any advice on what to do here? I don't want to lose her and feel that if I do that it is something that I did or should have done differently. I think not having a date to look forward to meeting since late August has not helped. We haven't discussed which job she is leaning towards as this stresses out our conversations. If I go there in November I need to find out which way she is leaning towards a job and just get a feel for if we can make this work. I just feel at the moment that my heart is just being slowly broken to nothing.