Hi all,

So, my girlfriend and I dated for 2 years. We had ups and downs as any relationship does, but I treated her like gold. Our conflict management wasn't the best, but I worked on it everyday and it was constantly getting better. Sometimes in the past I just saw some of the things she was saying as outlandish and would more or less tell her so. This caused her to feel like she couldn't speak her mind, which I understood. I worked vigorously on it.

We ended up breaking up about a month-5 weeks ago. We met up a couple of times and the first time was great, she slept over. The second time, even better. The third ended in an argument over something from the past that she brought up (not cheating, something she feels I am not telling the truth about, but I am so I became frustrated).

This past weekend we randomly saw each other, went home together, had an amazing Sunday all day together. She said she was hesitant to get back together and I found out that she joined match last week. Since Sunday we have been talking almost constantly. We have gotten coffee together everyday this week around lunch time.

Tuesday night I had a dream she went on a date, I asked her in the morning and it turns out she did. She said it was terrible. I reacted by saying, 'well pretty tough to beat our coffee date' and she agreed, even though it KILLS me inside.

She says she is unsure what she wants because her heart is saying she wants to be with me but her head is telling her I will revert to being how I was in the past and not to get back.

She is still going on match as of last night and I don't know where exactly we stand or how to approach it.

PLEASE help, this is the girl I want to marry and don't want to Fu*K this up.

OK, now leave out all the unimportant parts (meeting up and sleeping over) and concentrate on the actual relationship problems of the past.
I am a bit disturbed by anyone who starts out saying what you said in your first sentence, and we hear it a LOT. All variations on 'madly in love but' --- in your case, 'ups and downs but I treated her like gold.' No you didn't; you clearly didn't, you say so, over and over.

It might be too late to make this work, regardless of advice. Of course she is going to have some disaster dates, and why wouldn't she rush back into your arms each time? Doesn't mean you get her back.

I can't tell what she finds problematic about you. You say 'conflict management' and you say that you 'more or less tell her' about what you find outlandish. Tells us nothing! Do you bark out nasty epithets? Are you super loud and dismissive, unable to talk anything out? 'Talking things out' isn't something heterosexual men are especially famous for.

I can give some simple advice about how to work on that (if she's open to the idea), but first - what did she accuse you of that you say you didn't do, and did you actually do it? We don't know either one of you. There's no point helping put band aids on lies. If you are being truthful and she doesn't believe you, that's another problem, and much more difficult to address. So --- are you really telling the truth, and why doesn't she believe you?

Thanks for your answer, I appreciate your honesty.

To start, you are correct, there are some areas I could have done a much better job with her, but for the record she says that nobody has ever made her feel as loved as I do.

To answer your last question, I would NEVER cheat on her. I have never cheated in my life. My father instilled that in me from a very young age. There is not one other girl I even look at it in the same light as her. So, that is a resounding 'No' coming on that front. There has been no cheating in our relationship, which is why I feel it is salvagable.

For starters I am 29 and she is 27. Our conflict management means, in the beginning of our relationship we would get into arguments on the street, yelling matches. I realized this wouldn't work and worked on myself. The disagreements we have are of trivial nature and are fixable. I have severe ADHD (not an excuse) and I react before thinking a lot. This is something over the past year I have worked on and become MUCH better at. I actively work to better myself everyday and she sees that. I go to a therapist every week to work on these things. It is more of a dismissing something's that makes her feel disrespected. Sometimes I will come back with telling her the truth on a matter and she takes it as me being an to her. But I feel like lying would be counter-intuitive. I sometimes get frustrated if she continues to bring up something that is bothering her, but I have worked on this as well and have gotten considerably better.

What the issue is, she sees me slip up and I recognize it almost immediately, apologizing for it explaining what happened and she says I shouldn't have to be apologizing as that means I am doing something wrong.

I edited my response while you were typing yours. I changed the question about cheating, after realizing that I read that part wrong. Please answer my question about why she doesn't believe you.

The simple advice I have for working on communication, talking out a given disagreement, is to have a code word. If you shout at her dismissively, 'end of subject,' and she wants to talk it out calmly, she says the code word. A word you don't use every day, such as 'penguin.'

The trust issue is much deeper and she may need therapy too, if you can absolutely swear that there is not one shred of reason for her to think you are lying.

ADHD - feh. Just think of it as a broken angerstat. Anger is not a bad thing; nature gave it to us for survival. But most of us can put a lid on it as a means to an end. The end is keeping the person we love. We FORCE ourselves. Jealousy is another attribute that we have to indulge in in private, alone. We FORCE ourselves to not let it show. Right now, with her dating, you must have tons of it. It's OK to say you have it but not OK to act on it.

Leave her alone and let her date and make up her own mind about any future with you. This requires space so you won't continue to be her emotional tampon, her safety net, while she explores and experiments. I find it interesting that YOU have taken the full responsibility for this break up, and her confusion, and that's not fair, whatever your flaws are. We all have them, and so does she. Dumping you solved her problems.

If you want a fair chance at this, then backoff and not be a victim of your own false hope and be prepared to see what happens without your influence. All you are doing now is cementing a place in the friend zone while she enjoys her freedom, and you stay attached, and that not only unfair, but self defeating, and unhealthy because she never has to miss you or make a decision one way or another about you because you are there no matter what. Even after a lousy date(?).

That kind of loyalty in the face of a broken commitment is where you screw up, and only shows her you are a better friend than a partner. She suffers no consequences for dumping you, and you can never heal and be objective to what's really going on. Neither of you can ever go back to the glory days of love and romance, just have great days every now and then, and if marriage is the hope, forget it.

Fact is you are no longer a couple, and only YOU seem to think you will ever be again. Her being afraid of you reverting back to what you were before is pure hogwash, and thinking if you prove to her that you won't, will change nothing because she doesn't want to believe it in the first place. No the clear signal is you are okay with this daily coffee crap, and that's not healthy or honest from you both.

Back off and protect your own dignity and self respect my friend, because obviously that's exactly what she is doing for herself, as she fills in the blanks from breaking her attachments to you. You should have thanked her for her time and given yourself a chance to heal from this break up in the first place. Its not too late to rethink chasing after her with hope of getting back together, because she is running away from you and what YOU want from her. Only you can do this for yourself, because she won't, she likes coffee with a friend while she explores the possibilities of her world. You have given your permission for this to happen.

LOL, wonder what happens when she has a good date, or worse, a great one? Will she still have that coffee at lunch with you? You are not a couple working things out, you are friends just having coffee. You are not ready to accept that though, are you?

First, I agree with both of you wholeheartidly. The second response from talaniman really resonates as it is true that I for some reason am taking responsibility. In the meantime since writing this, she said text me and said the past two weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster... which it has been. We were angry with each other, and now we aren't. So she suggested that she needs time to process everything and that we shouldn't communicate, which I said was perfectly fine. She then offered up without me bringing it up, that she would not go on any dates, nor be open to looking for them because she is very conflicted and wants this but wants to make sure it's right because her feelings coming back are still so new and fresh.

So, that is where I stand currently. But I completely agree that everyone has flaws and she needs to accept mine. The reason I take responsibility is because there are times when I do react a certain way that I see hurts her and I know it is not acceptable.

We are both very attractive and it won't be hard for either one of us to find other people, but I think by her texting me that today it reaffirms that she still has those feelings for me and hopefully if I RESPECT her wishes as I haven't sometimes in the past, she will see that there will be no reverting?

And to answer your question about lying, I have given her no reason to ever think I lied to her. That's what is so perplexing to me. She is in therapy as well but for an issue she has that goes back to HS. She had an eating disorder and I can tell it is not easy for her sometimes.

So far you have heard from one man and one woman here. Interesting differences, I think.
Sounds like there is hope for you two.

You sound like a very decent sort of guy, but sitting on your hands waiting for her to decide your fates with no time frame that's unfair and unacceptable. Being in limbo, for me is worse than being in a friend zone! So how long is this waiting game for a 2nd chance supposed to last?

You have no clue do you? That fear of you reverting back to the way you were is utter hogwash!!!

So how do I go about setting a timeframe? I am open to anything as the waiting is giving me extreme anxiety.

Set your own time frame by making your own program that works for you. You have been dumped and your friend zone canceled. Heal and enjoy your freedom. No rebound relationships, just have your own fun! It's not about finding a replacement for what's lost, it's about finding yourself without her.

She may find her courage and faith in you, she may not! You may find yourself and don't want her back! It's all your program to run and totally your time frame to make.

Uh oh. Alarms going off. 'Set a timeframe' for what? You want her back. You want it to work again. The ball is in her court, right?
"So she suggested that she needs time to process everything and that we shouldn't communicate, which I said was perfectly fine."

YOU don't get to 'set a timeframe' for her to decide. This has me worried that you have pervasive control problems that you may not even be aware of. If she needs time off, I doubt very much that she is toying with you, keeping you hanging, by not telling you that she will be able to decide on Dec 4th at 4:33 p.m.! She doesn't know!

Of course if you have to set a timeframe for yourself, for giving up and moving on, then just keep it to yourself.

She went from dumping you, to keeping you as a friend, to asking for no contact. Typical girl move, we gals hate to hurt people, and often don't have the guts to say, "buddy, it's over, no hope, move on".

She joined a dating site, she went on a date, and she kept you in the background stringing you along with coffee dates.

Now she's asking for no contact, most likely because she realized she was stringing you along and felt bad about that. Sadly not bad enough to cut you loose.

She's hoping that you'll figure it out, that you'll come to the realization that it's over, without her actually having to do the dirty work.

I could be wrong, but I doubt it. I did this too many times to count, because breaking up with a guy that obviously cares about you, is really hard. Hurting someone you loved, is gut wrenching. It's much easier on the girl to just cut contact and hope the guy moves on without you having to actually tell him you're done.

Alty, I understand where you are coming from, and normally I am in tune with this stuff and can read the writing on the walls. But the fact is that we were broken up when she signed up for the site and not speaking. Both angry at each other. We had a long discussion on Sunday and we basically agreed that we both feel a certain way. It's still very 'new' again. So I do understand her needing some space to determine her next move. She loveS me, it's not past tense. We have some hurdles, but I see us getting through this, hopefully...

As far as timeline, I was getting conflicting advice from people and was unsure what he meant. I have told her to take her time and I need to respect that. In the interim, I am setting myself up for the possibility of a life without her, although I am as I said, hopeful. Maybe I am a hopeless romantic, maybe I am holding on to something that I shouldn't be. But I still have faith in love, as cheesy as that sounds. If she is stringing me along, then unfortunately that is a reality I will have to deal with at the time, but from what our mutual friends say to me I don't think that is the case. But who knows?

I do really appreciate everyone taking the time to lend their advice and more is always welcome as I am not the best dealing with my emotions calmly in this manner! (at least I know my faults!)

And as far as the coffee dates, those were all me turning getting a charger back from her to 'oh let's get some coffee' which turned into her telling me how she still feels for me and it being tough to see me because of that and she is conflicted between her head and heart. I took the old George Costanza approach, it's like a commercial jingle, COSTANZAAA... TOMA (top of mind always)

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. She is trying to decide(?) what she should do after 2 years of being with you(?). That's her challenge to deal with.

Yours is to make yourself a priority for a change, because hopeful as you may be, being dumped and friend zone cancelled, are action that don't say love, romance, or commitment, or any future at all. Its important that you survive and thrive without her and leave her confusion behind, to have a clear head, and conscious to effectively deal with your own challenges.

Honor the commitment to yourself to be healthy and happy. In the face of her confusion at how to meet her challenges, you only have your own dignity, and self respect. Hopeless romantic,or NOT.

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Originally Posted by DavidNYC

So how do I go about setting a timeframe? I am open to anything as the waiting is giving me extreme anxiety.

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You don't set up a time frame. Controlling her is not what a relationship is about. By you setting up a time frame, you are essentially controlling when she will make her decision. Her decision is hers and hers alone. Only she can determine what her "time frame" is.

What you do now is focus on where you went wrong in this relationship, and I see a lot of wrongdoing on your part. You are not a hopeless romantic. A hopeless romantic would never, EVER, call their significant other "outlandish" and things of that nature.

You need to focus on getting yourself healthy so that you don't react the same way in the next relationship. It's time for you to go completely No Contact. Remove all of her contacts from your cellular devices as well as your social media pages. Stop stalking her on Match. What she is doing now is absolutely none of your business.