Dear Neverdyed:

I will be able to read and reply to you when I am back to the computer, in about 14 hours from now. I hope other members reply to you before I am back.

anita

Dear Neverdyed:

You are welcome. The situation doesn’t read promising to me at all. Reads like he is definitely not interested in the kind of relationship that you are interested in. He doesn’t restrict (the verb you used) himself from dating other women and he doesn’t restrict you from dating other men. He lives far away from you, his investment in you is even less than before, you opened up to him and “the outcomes weren’t good”-

– I want to understand better, therefore I ask: are you hoping for him to have a big change of mind and heart and discover within himself that he wants you after all as his one and only? If so, please tell me more about this hope.

anita

Dear Neverdyed:

You are welcome.

“Your words woke me up more”- it is better to be awake to reality than it is to close our eyes to it. If we close our eyes we bump into things and fall. If we keep  our eyes open we can see where we’re going and choose our way.

“I hope that he’d value my worth”- he values you as a casual date; he doesn’t value you as worthy of a serious relationship. Better you don’t keep waiting and hoping that he values you as more than a casual date. In his brain, he may have the image of you and the term casual date connected, and such brain connections are not likely to change.

I was not valued by people myself, there are currently people who don’t value me, but it doesn’t mean that I am not valuable; it means that a lot of people don’t bother to value other people. See the difference?

anita

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by .

Dear Neverdyed:

I absolutely agree that you don’t have to be nice to him based on him saying that you are friends. I don’t know what he meant by saying that you and him are friends, what’s behind those words. These are words, after all, and it is easy to say words, it takes a few seconds to say things, it doesn’t take energy.. it’s easy.

I do hope that you put yourself before him. All we owe people is to not put ourselves before them at their expense. But put ourselves before others not at others’ expense, it’s what we owe ourselves.

Let’s say what he is interested in is being friends with benefits with you.. that’s a kind of a friendship, but not a kind I would like to have if I was you. If I was you, I wouldn’t let him define friendship for me.

anita

Dear Neverdyed:

I hope you still feel “confident and light/ worry free” and that if you don’t feel this way, that you will feel more and more moments of it.

You definitely don’t wat to continue to shrink your true self! If the cost of a relationship is the shrinking of your true self, better not be in that relationship. Unfortunately, this is a cost lots of children pay for their relationship with a parent, hiding their true self so to not get rejected by the parent. Later on, the now adult keep looking for that hidden true self.

“One thing I’m afraid of is that I’d be selfish or totally cold when putting myself before him”- can you tell me more about this sentence, more of what you mean by it?

anita

Dear Neverdyed:

“if he ever reaches out again.. I may simply ignore him, which is cold and probably selfish”- you have the option of sending him a message, letting him know that if he reaches out to you in the future, you will not answer him so to protect yourself, and that you are letting him know of this because you don’t want him to be surprised or upset if he reaches out to you and you don’t answer. Then wish him well. There is no coldness or selfishness in this option.

“I seem to have abandonment issues, but I can’t recall if it stems from my childhood”- if you want, and only if you want to, you are welcome to share with me about your childhood experience.

anita