Eliana,

I read your post last night, right before going to bed.  And I thought about your question, a lot!  Here’s what I can say: he’s a good guy because he’s the one I call at 2 AM when I come back from vacation and my upstairs neighbor has flooded my apartment and I’m freaking out and he calms me down.  He’s the one I call when I come home and my cat is having a seizure and I need help getting him to the animal hospital only to have him die on the ride there and comforts me.  He’s also the one I call when I manage to break my key in my front lock (it was frozen), and I’m stuck outside in the freezing cold and have to wait for a locksmith for over an hour.  So, I know I can count on him.

What he’s not is a great guy.  I will agree with that.  I just wished we never dated.  We could have been really good friends.  I don’t know how to explain it, because I really, truly, do not want a romantic relationship with him anymore.  I’m over that.  Our past relationship is just a dark cloud over my head.  Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of happy moments.  But now, every time a new episode in the “wife search” saga happens, something tugs at me.  Some kind of jealousy?  I wish he had acknowledged “us” to others.  I think this is what I’m most resentful about, and what I’m having a really hard time dealing with and forgiving him for.  A new girl comes along that he barely knows and he tells people who are important to him about her.  Why couldn’t he tell them about me??  His explanation of “I don’t want them to think bad things about me or you” doesn’t hold any water.  It makes no sense.  What he was really worried about is what are people going to think about me when we break up and I end up marrying a girl from my culture?  Because they’ll know we broke up because of me.