Dear Anonymous:

Good to have you back here! I just read some of our previous communication so to refresh my memory. It’s been a bit over two months since our last posts here, and a whole lot has changed in these two months.. had no idea back then that the world will be pretty much on a lockdown. I am fine for now, one day at a time, as it always was and will be, thank you for your concern.

You had an intimate dinner with this man at his friends’ house, no physical moves that night other than a goodnight hug. A week or two afterwards, he invites you for dinner at this place, made out some but you pulled the plugs (excellent! Proud of you, if I may say so, you stuck to your value of no hookups/ casual sex: no sex outside an exclusive relationship), he’s “respectful and nice about it all” (so far, so good). A few days later, he is spotted hooking up with another girl.

Later on you talk on the phone with him, you then let him know of your value (italicized, above). He then shared with you that his is scared of commitment, that “he needs to know a girl for at least a year before committing”, and that “when he meets new girls, if emotions aren’t as ‘intense’ as they were with the toxic ex, than he gets it in his head that the girl is not ‘the one'”.

You asked me if I think that you setting a boundary of no physical stuff was the right choice, if I have advice on how you can move on from him even though you don’t want to move on from him (“I’m afraid I need to because I’m going to be sitting here hoping he’ll change his mind”)-

My answers/ input today: let’s look at what he told you in that phone conversation: he had a 12 year “toxic back n forth relationship”, and from what you shared earlier it was his only long term relationship. What this means is that he didn’t yet have a single long term relationship that was solid for any significant length of time. His only long term relationship was back and forth.

He presented himself regarding that relationship as the victim of a “very manipulative” woman who “used his emotions against him”. Fast forward, he is using women’s bodies for sex while at least a few of the woman want more than sex, you being one of them- is he a victim turned perpetrator (but presenting himself as still, a victim), or perhaps he wasn’t a victim during that 12 year on and off relationship.

Notice the following: he says that “when he meets new girls, if emotions aren’t as ‘intense’ as they were with the toxic ex, than he gets in his head that the girl is not ‘the one'”- but wait, if his ex was not the-one (he calls that relationship toxic and says she manipulated and used him, so I figure she was/ could not possibly have been the-one), why is he basing choosing a future the-one on how he felt for the one… who was absolutely not the one? (I would imagine he would choose a different indicator for the-one from the indicator he used to find a toxic, manipulative woman).

Plus, a mature person will not base his choice for a partner in life on an intensity of emotion because intensity doesn’t last.

“He says that he never shares this stuff with girls”- meant to make you feel special. If he doesn’t share about his emotions with other girls, it means he is only willing to share his body with them, doesn’t it, pursuing them for sex. And on the phone with you, he is pursuing you for sex (to take place at a later time) by making you feel special. I suppose he is making the other girls feel special in one way or another.

In summary: I think that you should stay away from this person in each and every way because he is bulls**** you. I think it’s likely that he wasn’t committed to his alleged toxic ex (she may have been toxic, he may have been toxic with her as well, I don’t know, but neither do you). I think that he is superficially a “nice guy” but not really because he uses women, and he is not honest about it.

Don’t get confused by the fact that he spent an evening with you not trying to have sex with you, or that he bothered to talk to you about emotions while not having sex with you- he has time, he doesn’t mind talking once in a while, mixing some truth with half truths and lies.

Regarding “how sad I’d be if/ when he meets someone and.. decides to marry them.. I’ll be left wondering why not me”- a wedding ceremony is not going to change him from a superficially nice guy to a truly nice guy, from a guy in the habit of having sex with a variety of women to a man content with just one. “why not me”- I hope because you are smarter, and will choose better than a woman stuck with an unfaithful man.

anita