Hello - I recently started dating a girl (a little over a month ago) and things were going absolutely wonderfully. We had such great chemistry and she would constantly tell me how lucky she felt to find me, how amazing she thought I was, how it felt like we had known each other for such a long time, and a number of other extremely positive things. We clearly liked each other a lot. We slept together after the 4th date (probably 3 weeks after we met).

Eventually, we had a conversation to try to figure out what direction things were heading, and she informed me she was very scared because in her previous relationship (which had apparently ended only 1.5 months before we met), her ex had treated her very well at the beginning and then started to treat her horribly and she was worried it was going to happen again. We decided not to title anything and just to continue dating and see where it went.

The next week was still great, and we went down to the beach together and had a wonderful time. Her job requires her to be out of town a ton, so when I dropped her off upon returning home from our trip, she was going to be leaving town for 3 weeks. The next day I didn't talk to her. After that point, I could kind of sense a change in her whenever I would talk to her as if she was trying to decide whether to keep dating. She was just acting differently than I had seen before that point. Eventually, I asked her what was wrong and got this response via text:

"I'm fresh out of an awful relationship and still have some healing to do. I am still a little scared of relationships...so it's all too fast. That's how I feel and I think we should be friends before anything else and see where it goes as I believe that friendship is the most important base to any relationship if you want it to last".

I would tend to call a spade a spade and say that clearly she has changed her mind about things and move on - but the fact she had told me on numerous occasions how she was legitimately scared of how fast things were moving. I'm relatively terrified of anyone I'm dating planning any variety of the friend card, as I generally think that signals the end of things - but this situation feels different to me for some reason. She sent me that text last Monday night and I have pretty much not spoken to her since. I'm telling myself that I should let her come to me, but I really, really wanted to let her know that I'm OK with her needing time.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to do at this point. Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Call me crazy, but I have always thought that friends was a great place to be. The dating was great wasn't it? You had fun and got to know her, which is the point of dating in the first place. She wants to shift gears, let her, its just a few adjustments to make, like get back to the life you enjoyed before her, and date others, FOR FUN. Like you did her.

Hey that's what makes dating, and being single great, you have many options when you don't get to hung up, and stuck on someone to fast. So just me, have a great time, and check and see how she is doing in the future, if you are not busy. Don't be disappointed, just let her heal in her own time, and don't let your feeling get to far out of control. You should have figured out she wasn't quite ready for the deep romance from your previous conversations, and backed away to a safe distance then.