Dear Kristin, firstly, always remember that your parents love you, and only want the best for you. While you may easily be able to sustain a long distance relationship, in my experience, men very often cannot. If you are both equally wanting to commit to this relationship, one of you will need to move. If this guy really loves you as much as you love him, let him prove it by moving to be closer to you. Relationships are give and take, do not let the scales tip one way. Good luck sweetheart.

Sweetheart, everyone makes mistakes, and this is one that you have made and you are now facing the consequences. You need to forgive yourself, learn from the experience, and move on from it. One thing you mentioned “How can I fix him”, you can’t fix him, you can only make changes to yourself. It must be extremely humiliating for you facing people, but that’s exactly what you must do, face your fear and humiliation, you will find out who your true friends are, if it means that they do not stick by you and support you, then perhaps they were never really your friends in the first place. Everyone on this earth makes mistakes in life, we can’t go back and change the past, but we can use those less than perfect experiences to move forward positively. It is quite normal and natural that your ex is angry and feeling hurt. Give him time and space, let him know how much you love him, but give him the opportunity to grieve for what he thought he had. If only life were black and white, but it isn’t. Even good people make mistakes, but don’t keep beating yourself up. I truly wish you good luck, and remember, one way or the other, things will turn out for the best. Take good care of yourself. XX

There should be no rules about whether it is possible to remain friends after a relationship or not, however, by staying in such close contact, ie texting, phone calls, and meeting with one another a few times per week, neither of you is being given the opportunity to really let go of one another. You say you live in a small town, and that it is impossible not to run into one another – well this you have no control over, unless you decide to move away. If you intend to remain living where you are, could you minimize the phone calls and texts, just to begin with, and not make arrangements to meet up for coffee. Have you tried this? You need space to recalibrate as does he. Like you have rightly said, you don’t want to lead him on or give him false hope. Good luck, I’m sure it will work out for you both, you both need space and time.