We broke up and are now back together? Or are we?
Me: late 20's, not my first time I've been in a serious relationship. This is a GF of 3 years and lived together for 2.
So about 2 months ago my GF wanted to break up. We had a rocky time and she developed an interest in someone she works with (she didn't disclose this at the time but I found out later). I of course didn't want to break up and went through the whole begging/pleading nonsense and had the terrible heartache and was a complete mess as is typical in these situations and naturally it just pushed her away, but as anyone who has been there knows it's hard to maintain control from the get go.
She wavered over the next month, most days she seemed like she wanted to work on the relationship, but I could always see some uncertainty and it didn't feel genuine, but I still held out. She wanted to "break up" about twice again during that time but would change her mind the next day. She moved out during this time. Finally about a month ago I had enough and felt I was no longer going to go along with it. I told her to stop contacting me. I still felt some heartache but it was surprisingly mild, I had it together, was just hanging with friends and enjoying myself and moving on.
We only did no contact for about a week. Ended up meeting for lunch and I didn't really feel like I wanted to have no contact. She certainly didn't. We kind of talked about the dreaded "friends with benefits" situation, set some rules, and said we'd do it (don't lecture I know this is generally a mistake). I had been with another girl in the previous week and disclosed it, she wasn't happy but admitted I was free to do what I wanted since we were technically not together.
Over the past 3 weeks she has been gradually making more and more contact. She has since escalated the benefits to her desire to "date" and now she says "exclusively date." I respond by asking if isn't that a bf/gf relationship and she says she guesses it is. I've been a little reserved about getting back into it but I admittedly want to. After a month of back and forth she seems like she is trying to escalate things back to where they were. She rarely goes an hour without dropping me a text, just random stuff telling me what she is doing. She says she still needs "alone time" occasionally but I probably have seen here 10 days out of the last 14... mostly all her requesting the hanging out. The nights we don't hang out for our "space" she sends me texts probably on the half hour. We don't have sex every time we hang out either so it can't be about that. A couple of times I have declined to hang out and she has gotten pretty antsy about it. She is also starting to try to make future plans, like trips, with me. All of the pet names and "love you's" seem to have returned. She is asking me what I want for my birthday. We do still both agree that living apart is a better situation for us right now. We both seem hesitant to use the "bf/gf" moniker but it seems, to me at least, to be going this way fast. There is still some level of bickering we do but it's mostly constructive (like we are trying to figure out what the other is thinking) but we are having a really good time hanging out.
I really thought I was done but I have to admit this is drawing me back in. I know that interest in the guy at work compounded with some previous problems (and admittedly, lack of appreciation by me that I recognize and am trying to address, more for me personally than anything) is what led to this. She has been adamant that this was not about "that guy" but that it was her getting weak when things were down, typical excuse but that seems to be how girls work, and the reality is things were down. She assures me she has no interest in him and hasn't for some time, I'm inclined to believe her based on the amount of contact and attention she seems to seek from me. I have been casually seeing a girl for the past month now but interest in that is waning based on what is happening with my so-called ex. I probably wouldn't be that interested anyway, I think it was mostly a distraction.
So anyway, this was probably a hell of an essay and hopefully not too disconnected, but any thoughts on what is probably going through her head? My position is that I would like to continue things with her at this point if I'm reading her actions correctly. But I've got to look out for myself first. Thoughts?