And yet again...

[Cain]

I agree that I don't think she needs extensive counseling, but I do think she needs help dealing with a couple of issues.

[Citycat]

How old are you?

[Cain]

22




____________

[Citycat]

Ok. I thought you were older. I hope this relationship will work out for you two. You know, you have time in your life to have 5 or more this much lasting relationship. I'm guessing you're holding on to this one because it's your longest and also cause you care and are besotted. Good luck.

[Cain]

Ok. I thought you were older. I hope this relationship will work out for you two. You know, you have time in your life to have 5 or more this much lasting relationship. I'm guessing you're holding on to this one because it's your longest and also cause you care and are besotted. Good luck.

Yeah, this was my longest relationship. No, that's not why I don't want it to end.

I'm extremely opinionated and picky. It goes way beyond physical appearance. I'm extremely picky about little personality details. I've ended every relationship I've ever been in, except for this one, within three months simply because I lost interest. There's a reason I didn't lose interest in her and it's for that same reason that I don't want to lose her.

Irrational passion? If that's what you want to call it, fine. I'd like to call it love.

And I don't care how many long lasting relationships I can have. There's no reason to even think about that because my girl and I aren't over.

[Citycat]

Yeah, this was my longest relationship. No, that's not why I don't want it to end.

I'm extremely opinionated and picky. It goes way beyond physical appearance. I'm extremely picky about little personality details. I've ended every relationship I've ever been in, except for this one, within three months simply because I lost interest. There's a reason I didn't lose interest in her and it's for that same reason that I don't want to lose her.

Irrational passion? If that's what you want to call it, fine. I'd like to call it love.

And I don't care how many long lasting relationships I can have. There's no reason to even think about that because my girl and I aren't over.

Besotted doesn't exclude love, ok? They can go together

Are you really sure time has nothing to do with the amount of your love? I think if you had a break like this after 3 months of dating, you'd be thinking differently and wouldn't want to fight for the relationship as much as you do now.

[Cain]

Besotted doesn't exclude love, ok? They can go together

Are you really sure time has nothing to do with the amount of your love? I think if you had a break like this after 3 months of dating, you'd be thinking differently and wouldn't want to fight for the relationship as much as you do now.

Did you miss the part where we had a break a year ago for about three weeks?

Yeah, I stayed interested.

[Citycat]

How long had you been together before that break? More or less than 3 months?

EDIT: I was right when I said " I think if you had a break like this after 3 months of dating, you'd be thinking differently and wouldn't want to fight for the relationship as much as you do now." When you were with her for shorter, you didn't want to fight as much as you do now (you said it yourself that last year you thought it was over for good until she called).

[Cain]

So?

Love for a person grows with time. I wasn't arguing that.

What I was arguing was that the fact we've been together for a while isn't the reason I don't want to let go. The reason we were together for that long was because my love for her grew more and more each day. If I dated someone I didn't give a shit about for the same amount of time and she wanted to break up, I wouldn't care.

[Citycat]

^Exactly!

You wouldn't date someone you don't have feelings for for that long - you'd get bored after 10 days LOL

[Cain]

^Exactly!

You wouldn't date someone you don't have feelings for for that long - you'd get bored after 10 days LOL

My point is that it's not the time that's causing me not to want to let go. It's the feelings. Saying it's the time means that I don't want to have wasted a year and a half of my life, regardless of whether I have feelings or not.

[Citycat]

Ok. Nothing left to say. Just to repeat the "good luck to you".

[Cain]

Update:

I know that she's not coming here in August. I don't know whether I'm going there in September or not. I don't know when we'll be having our face to face. I do know that I wanted to make it clear that if she wasn't willing to work on us, now or in the future, I was going to walk away. I'm not trying to convince her to end this break. If she needs the break, she needs the break, but I wanted to make it clear that this can't be a frequent thing. We can't go on breaks when she's feeling unsure about herself. And since we're probably not having a face to face anytime soon, I wanted to send an email to clear the air... so I did.

The email basically told her that I wanted to know what the reasons for the break were. I didn't want ambiguous answers. I didn't want to hear "I have to be happy to make you happy." I wanted her to open up and tell me. I don't have a problem with the break. I have a problem with her not telling me what the reasons are. I told her that this is going to take work, for both of us, whether we're together or not and that her theory of "everything happens for a reason" isn't fitting. Relationships take effort. You can't sit back and hope that fate fixes everything.

I told her that if she couldn't see us getting through this and that she didn't want to make us work, she needed to tell me so I could move on. I don't want to be sitting here and waiting for 6 months only to hear her say "yeah, I kind of decided that we weren't fit for each other four months ago."

She replied back to me and things are finally more clarified. She said we'd talk more about it tonight, but here are her reasons for the break.

She said the biggest reason she wanted the break was because she's not giving me 100% and she needs to figure out why. She says that I've always given her 100% and that she needs to figure out why she can't give me 100% because it's not fair to me. Fine. I can understand that. I kind of feel like she can't give 100% simply because of the time of year, the stress from the distance, and the stress from grad school coming up. This wasn't a gradual thing. It's not like this has been happening for the last three months. It was very sudden... over the course of like three days.

Her second reason was that she's not happy with herself. She doesn't just mean physically... she's just not happy with herself... but she can't tell me any more than that. She doesn't know what exactly she's unhappy about. She doesn't know if a part of it is fear of grad school or what, but she's unsure of herself lately.

In a part of my email to her I asked if she saw me in her future. If she didn't, I was going to cut my losses and walk away. I'm not going to wait for someone that doesn't see me in their future after what we've been through, but she said that yes, she could see me in her future.

So, right now I'm just waiting for her to get through her stuff. It sucks that this is all happening right now because we were about to spend 4 of 5 weeks with each other after little 3 day visits every 3 weeks... but whatever. I'm hoping that within the next couple months she'll get over all this crap.

I do know that she needs to see her therapist if she doesn't even know what her problem is. The therapist can help her to identify it. And, if she's not willing to do that, I might not be willing to wait. How can she fix something if she doesn't even know what's wrong?

[lesa]

She said the biggest reason she wanted the break was because she's not giving me 100% and she needs to figure out why. She says that I've always given her 100% and that she needs to figure out why she can't give me 100% because it's not fair to me. Fine. I can understand that. I kind of feel like she can't give 100% simply because of the time of year, the stress from the distance, and the stress from grad school coming up. This wasn't a gradual thing. It's not like this has been happening for the last three months. It was very sudden... over the course of like three days.

There is no need to take a break because you feel you cannot give 100% to a relationship at a moment in your life. We all have moments where we give 110%, 100%, and then 0%, and 40%. We do it when we need space. So her reason here is not cool.

Her not being happy IS, however, a very good reason to break. You cannot have a successful, happy, and healthy relationship if you are not happy with yourself. She is working on that now.

She has to be realistic and understand that she cannot expect her partner to accept breaks everytime she needs space.

FYI tip: A simply solution to her 'not giving 100%' issue is to not expect or give more than what you are receiving...and then she would not feel too badly about what she gives you. This phenomenon of giving more than you are receiving is a cause of many otherwise healthy relationships to end. I really know about this topic!

[Citycat]

She didn't give you a non-ambiguous answer. You're still on hold. What's so urgent? Has a billionaire made a proposal to you and right now you have to decide between love and money? I suggest you wait till the end of September, and if you don't get back together, feel free to break up permanently with her.