I feel absolutely miserable today and have a huge gap in my life. Worst thing is this is one of the first times where I am directly responsible for it. After dating for 3 months, yesterday I broke up with my girlfriend. She has truly been a sweet girl and has done absolutely nothing to deserve it. I broke up for two reasons:

1. I am not sure if I am ready for a serious commitment, maybe in general, maybe with her specifically. This girl was marriage material and was sincerely happy with me every time she saw me. It breaks my heart to see how upset I've made her. I am 24 and when I go out with friends, we tend to flirt with other girls and have a fun time. Perhaps I can give it up for her, but I am afraid I will still miss living that bachelor lifestyle. I just moved to a new city a year ago after college and as you can imagine, there are all the things that come along with it, new friends, new money, constant parties, etc. On the other hand, I think that I may severely regret breaking up with her when I look back at it a few years from now, there aren't a lot of girls with the level of commitment that she had.

2. I never felt like I was in love with her yet. I enjoy spending time with her, but did not have that spark where I would consider saying I love you. Perhaps it was too early.

Based on this, do you think I have made the right decision by breaking up with her? She is leaving the country tomorrow for 3 months and I did not want to string her along waiting for me to make up my mind while she could be finding other guys while she is away. I initially told her I need these three months to think about things and did not want to string her along. She made a good point saying that if I am not sure about things now, what would change 3 months from now. So we are basically broken up.

Good decision, why drag things out and mislead some one when you can be honest and do the right thing for you both. See, break ups suck no matter which side of it you are on.

I am not going to beat-around-the-bush here, yes you have absolutely done the right thing at this moment in time. You can cause someone a lot of hurt if you string them along, I know because my ex did it to me.

I strongly advise you to think about what you want from a relationship. It sounds like you are not ready for commitment of any sort because you have to question it. You are young and naïve but I must stress that finding a girl who is committed to her man is extremely hard to come by nowadays; you were extremely lucky to find someone like her.

If in three months you realise what you want in life, and you want her to be a apart of it, you should see if she still feels the same about you, and if so, try and make it work. But do not force yourself if you don't think she's the one, or if your not ready.

Hope this helps, Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback guys. I now have no doubt that what I did was the right decision for the moment. Now I have a more difficult decision to think of, what I should do once this summer is over.

Do you guys feel that it is still OK to talk to her sometimes? I often miss her and want to talk to her, but I don't want to hurt her any further than I already did.

Then leave her alone.

I literally just experienced this same situation in April, but from your girlfriend's perspective. So much so that when I first read your question, I wondered for a second if it was my own ex. But, then I saw the age and knew it was different.

I can tell you a few things from my experience on the other side of the fence.

Yes, you definitely hurt her and she's likely wondering what she did wrong, if there's something wrong with her, etc. My ex oftentimes would comment that I really knew how to be in a relationship and how to treat someone very well. Like you, we dated for three months and it seemed as if all the right elements were there. Similar to you, although he felt that I was everything he was seeking in someone, he wasn't sure if could fall in love with me or not.

Here's my perspective on that. It's been three months and asking yourself to be in love with someone at that point is searching for emotions that haven't had time to develop. When I met my ex-husband, it took us nine months before we really KNEW we were in love. Sure we said it, but we didn't mean it until then. A good love takes time to develop, so be patient.

When my ex broke up with me, he said he didn't want to date anyone at the moment because he was just very confused and guilt-ridden. I was a nice girl and he felt bad for hurting me. We talked a little bit here and there via email, and eventually I recommended that he consider therapy as time just equals distance, not necessarily progress, to which he was very receptive.

You seem like a good guy and the way you phrased your question reminded me a lot of my ex (the only difference is that he got out of a long relationship a few months before we started dating and he simply wasn't ready for what we found). I recommend you take this time to figure out what you'd like for yourself down the road: do you really want a relationship that is committing and secure or, are you not ready to settle down yet? These are fair questions given your age.

The second thing I'd recommend directly from my experience is to take this time for yourself and grow, but then when this girl comes back to the country, get together for coffee and see how you feel. That's the one area with my ex that, I'll admit, I'd be really disappointed if he took this time and then just moved on without taking to me again. We had the potential to have something really good, but I don't think he was ready for it. If he just moves on and doesn't take a moment to see how he's grown, I'll know it's truly over.

The coming month might be a little confusing. She'll probably email you here and there stuff that you'd like, I'll make the assumption, you'll think of her. Month two, you'll slowly stop communicating, and I don't know what happens at month three. I'm still figuring it out as I go. I can say that my ex had mentioned getting together at some point when we broke up (he was very sincere about this because he knows I had a guy do that to me before and then I felt dumb when he wouldn't email me back).

I searched this question because I wanted to know if this man thought about me and, from your question, it appears he must. It's hard when someone is confused about how they feel. It really makes it hard for the other person to figure out where you weren't a match.

Take this time and really evaluate yourself because if you don't, you'll be like my guy, doing this in his 30s. But, hopefully, he will come around and give this another go.

Best of luck.

Blindsided12, I've just noticed your response and it was a very interesting perspective. I wanted to give everyone a bit of closure on this situation, hopefully help someone in the future.

I did see the girl after she came back to the country on a couple occasions and it was a good experience in the sense that I more clearly began to see the incompatibilities between us. Although she was just as sweet as ever, I could now see that we are on different wavelengths (humor wise, affection, etc.) and I am rather emotionless towards her. It would be hard to say if I could develop deeper emotions down the road with her, but it would not have been worth dragging her along to find out. I've now come out of a different relationship where I did just that (dragged things too long to see how I truly felt) and it ended in a much worse way than the one I posted about here.