Everything was fine until my first love put a hold on our relationship, what do I do?

[lovestruck1]

I've been with my girlfriend for just over one year, and it's my first serious relationship that I've been in however I now need some advice. We're both from the same area but we have what I'd class as a long distant relationship, I still live at home while she is at uni 150 miles away.. However this hasn't proved to be a problem over the past year, I made regular trips up to spend the weekends with her; I even spent a couple months working up near her uni where I actually lived with her one week on, one week off. This proved to work wonders for our relationship, even though we were both sharing a single bed and the room was very small, we kept saying how we loved living together. It was great.

Anyway I'll fast forward to just before Christmas, my girlfriend is at uni and I got a temporary new job. Also worth noting whilst working this new job, every spare hour I had at home I was busy designing a new eCommerce website, I found this to very time consuming. This now meant I couldn't text message as often as I'd like to. My job required long working hours due to the seasonal period, which In turn made me slightly lazy on the text messaging (we didn't skype much at this point either). With the lack of communication this made my girlfriend very upset, I don't think I realized at the time how much it was actually affecting her. I became complacent.

I realized that I wasn't putting in as much effort as I should have been, especially as this was a long distance relationship. I started to make small improvements. This wasn't me trying to change myself to suit her, as my close friends say the same thing. I don't communicate and I don’t think about others, only think about myself. I knew they were right and I knew it was time to grow up, make a change to better myself as a person).

It was now Christmas and she was back home from uni, we spent a lot of time together and things were great. She was saying how she’s never fallen or loved someone as much before; this relationship was different from all her previous. I in turn have never loved or cared so much for someone. Then towards the end of Christmas she started freaking out about the future, and where the relationship was going. Even though things we’re good between us and we loved each other very much. She was creating problems in her head by thinking 18 months down the line, “what if” this happens, “what if” that happens. The way she see’s things is that, she’s going to be leaving uni in 18 months time, by at the end she could go straight into a job and move to a city somewhere. She sees me at home still working on my future while she’s got hers planned.

My future plans are to start up my own ecommerce business (very close to doing), potentially study a degree, get myself into an apprenticeship and work my way up. My situation could change, for all I know I could land myself in a job/apprenticeship that would require me to move to a city anywhere in the country. Who Knows.

2013 I said new start, communication had improved, we Skype’d almost every night then I went up to visit her. I just spent this last weekend with her up at uni, I brought her roses etc... Things we’re going well, however we did have one or two small arguments over petty things. I also didn’t help the situation by saying things without thinking. For my girlfriend this past weekend was the tipping point and as a consequence she’s put our relationship on hold. We had a very emotional skype call and I could see it wasn’t an easy decision for her to come to. In her eyes even though she loves me very much, she doesn’t see any other way forward than having a “break”, whilst she figures things out. She’ll say things weren’t right before this weekend, but I think it’s just that seed of doubt about the future planted in her head, going round and round. Who can predict the future? Who can predict real life? Live for today or don’t live at all.

I can’t help but come away from this past weekend knowing I didn’t do enough, I didn’t put in as much effort in as I could have, I once again was thinking only of myself at times. I’ve been lazy, I’ve been complacent, and I’ve known what I needed to do to make myself a better person but I’ve just been too slow. For that I hate myself. All I can do now is pick myself back up and work on the things that I know need improving, become that better person I want to be.

Who know’s she could have been the love of my life, I may not get that second chance to find out. I know you’ll probably say I’m young and there’s plenty more time for me to find that special someone. But actually “what if” she is the one, I won’t know unless she decides to get out of the “what if” and lives in the moment, the now, the present. If you are always living in the “what if”, how do you ever expect to be happy or progress in life?

She’s hopefully coming home in 2 weeks for the weekend to visit her mum, she’s told me to keep the Friday free so we can meet up to discuss further and see how we’re both feeling. Until that time, she doesn’t want any contact with me.

I do apologize about the length of this post, I didn’t intend on it being any longer than one or two paragraphs but once you get writing.. you know. If you’ve made it this far and read my situation I congratulate you! I’ve never loved anyone like this before; I just don’t know what to do with myself. This is the first time I’ve ever turned to the internet for advice, any takes on the situation or advice would greatly be appreciated. Thanks for reading :)

[Boisdevie]

Having a break to figure things out does not sound good. So often people have a break and it really means that the relationship is dead but they're unwilling to actually tell you. As for her worries about the future - well if she's projecting way too far into the future or over-analysing everything then there's very little you can do about it. You can only give her the space she's asked for and see what happens. At least she's given you an indication of when the No Contact period comes to an end so sounds like she's trying to be reasonable. You can only wait and see what she has to say.