I've posted my story on here before but there have been some recent developments. The summary goes like this: ex and I were together for 2.5 years, very off/on for most of the relationship, the last 6 months was a series of drifting back and forth, then went to limited contact in July. I realized I wanted her back in August. I begged her to come back and promised to change, you know the drill. She rejected saying that she didn't think we were good for each other but that she didn't want to see me hurt. After a few more attempts at getting her back she proposed no contact "for a while". After a month of pretty solid NC we've slowly been communicating again, very casual. We've seen each other several times in group settings and have been very friendly. She has not started seeing someone else but a few weeks back I noticed that she had a profile on match.com. I have a profile on another dating site and have been meeting girls but this has just re-enforced my feelings for my ex.

Now, last weekend I saw my ex at a wedding that we both attended. We sat together and had a lot of friendly casual conversation. Lots of joking too. At the end of the night we said goodbye and hugged each other. A couple of days later I emailed her telling her it was good seeing her at the wedding. This started a series of casual emails back and forth. Then the other morning I woke up to an email from her that completely ignored my previous email to her, saying that she found my profile on that dating site I was on. She told me I should use a more recent picture and then said she had no room to talk because she is using an older picture too, then said she hoped it wasn't awkward talking about this but she wanted to "break the ice".

I responded back by saying, 'so now we know we are both on dating sites', that I thought it was a little awkward but that I was still pretty ok with everything. I said that I had found her profile on match a while back but didn't feel like bringing it up to her at the time because I was trying to respect her space. I told her that I wasn't sure what kind of response she was expecting from me but I was pretty honest with her about my feelings without going off the deep end. I told her that an email probably wasn't the best forum to discuss it but that if she wanted to talk about it I'd be glad to discuss.

She replied saying that I look much better in person than in the picture. That she is sorry it's awkward for me but that she's not taking the online dating thing seriously and that she deleted her match profile because she was so over that. She said she just signed up on this same site that I am on. She said 'maybe you are having better luck than me' which I felt may have been fishing for info from me about my dating. She also said that she cares about me a lot, that she would be willing to talk about it but she wanted me to know that she doesn't want anything more than a friendship with me. I wrote back saying that I was fine with the friends thing and that we probably didn't have much to discuss, I just wanted to be honest with her about my feelings instead of glossing over it or ignoring it altogether.

So my question is this. Why even bring any of this up? Why did she ignore my previous email and launch right into this online dating thing? I'm confused, I know she is telling me she just wants to be friends but I also have a hard time believing that she is completely ok with knowing that I'm putting myself out there as well.