Dear Julia:

You are welcome and thank you. If you want to post again and communicate with other members, please post again and I will not reply. If you want to communicate with me further at any time in the future, address a post to me and I will reply.

anita

Dear Julia:

No, I am fine with communicating with you on this subject and any other. I thought you might prefer not to communicate with me because you wrote that my previous post has hurt you and you mentioned that you agree with another member’s reply. I wanted to give you the option to post and receive replies by other members, replies that will not hurt you.

anita

Dear Julia:

You are not a monster, for crying out loud, not for what you shared on your threads here!

It is just that you can improve, that is all. Be more honest with yourself and with others, keeping in mind that others are not necessarily honest with you, many are not.

Like I wrote, being strong is a combination of being wise and honest, meaning you are able to evaluate others correctly, thoughtfully choose who to get further involved with and who not to, and then be honest with yourself and with all others.

No need to apologize to me, you didn’t hurt me, really. No harm done. Post anytime then and I will be glad to reply.

anita

Dear Julia:

I will read and reply to your recent post (and any you may add) when I am back to the computer in about twelve hours from now.

anita

Dear Julia:

You made a good point in your recent post and indeed, your record of long term relationships is quite impressive, 2.5, 7 and 5 years. I have a few questions before I attend to your questions for me, and if you choose to answer, please make your answers short and precise:

1. The men in your long term relationships,

-was each man interested in you right from the beginning?

-were they all from your country of origin?

-were there arguments/ fights within each relationship and breaks before the final break?

-if there were breaks within each relationship, who pursued whom to resume the relationship?

2. During these long term relationships did you have side-relationships with other men, from time to time? Did the men?

3. You wrote about the current guy: “I admit I was losing interest at times, especially when my friends were saying he’s not a guy for me”- what did your friends say made him not the guy for you?

4. You wrote about the current guy: “when I noticed he started being all ’emotional’ I felt like he’s not that interesting, too available, just another guy who feel for me”-

– what made the three men in your long term relationships not “just another guy who feel for me”?

– was your father, when you were a child, a guy who did not feel for you? Or was it your mother?

anita

Dear Julia:

I thought your recent ex, the five year relationship guy is from your country of origin because you wrote in your first thread: “Right around the breakup time I met this other guy. Him and my ex same age.. and both are from the same country, however completely different people”-?

anita

Dear Julia:

I understand. I want to get focused here, so I ask: what is it that you need here from me and how specifically do you think I can help you?

anita

Dear Julia:

He told you that he felt a better connection with a woman he saw twice, a better connection than he experienced with you. Unless he is a cold hearted manipulator, saying that so to stimulate you into chasing him, then I figure he wanted to hurt you, to discourage you from pursuing him.

“do you think he has feelings for me?”- at this exact moment I don’t know. He did before, no doubt in my mind,  and at times he still does, this is why he wants to go on that trip with you. It is possible that he has feelings for another woman or other women when he spends time with them, I suspect he does.

“Do you think he was/ is falling in love with me?”- yes, at times he was falling in love with you (had feelings for you as stated in the above paragraph), but again, he may have been falling in love with another woman or other women as well, at the same time. Reads to me that he is trying to create a.. mental organization in his brain, to place relationships in boxes- one box is a monogamous bf-gf relationship, another box is friends-with-benefits relationships. There may be other boxes,  a third box may be a one-time-hook up relationship box. He is just starting organizing this way, following his long term bf-gf relationship that ended last November. So he will probably spend more time organizing and .. getting it right.

You are catching him at this point in his life amidst this organizing, so you don’t fit any one particular box yet, his apartment, so to speak, has boxes strewn about and he is in the process of moving.

“what should I do to give us a chance?”- carrying on the analogy above, wait for him to move to a new place, to unpack the old boxes, organize his relationship-categories and then think if you want to be in the box he wants you in, so to speak.

But I don’t think you want to wait or that you will wait. So, edit the question to: what should I do to give us a chance and I have to and will do something!?

– continuing with the analogy, take him to a tour of your apartment, show him how you organize things, he may like it and figure out it is better for him to move to your apartment just the way it is, easier that way. Practically, it means, you don’t let him decide for you, you don’t wait for a confused person to determine your life, you show him your clarity, your confidence and he may be drawn to you. Everyone is drawn to confident people, especially those who are confused.

But be honest with yourself and with him all through, be confident, directive, but not dishonestly manipulative.

anita