Chickadee33, I no longer feel the need to justify what I feel to you or defend myself. I have tried to explain why I feel that this is different, and you are insistent on calling the kettle black. You accuse me of being redundant, and yet you remain unwavering in your assessment of an intimate relationship of mine, a view from the outside. You, nor anyone else knows the future of my relationship, as you are not some all seeing woman with a crystal ball. You continue to make judgments about me that I do not resonate with and no it is not because I am unwilling to see other perspectives aside from us ending up together. I have admitted that I do not know if we will and do not hold out for this as the end goal, and I have been very open to others’ interpretations and suggestions. Anita too has highlighted some of my patterns and I am working on things.

You take my words and twist them and take them out of context. I am definitely not just there for him when he feels like it. He has put in equal if not more effort most days than I have. He takes regular trips to visit me on weekdays and weekends and we have many leisure activities that we both enjoy, indoors and outdoors (I also do not live nearby). He has encouraged my involvement with friends and family and everyone has been accepting of me as his gf. I mentioned that we were not exclusive in the summer as a demonstration of how things evolve and change, even when you think they may not or you should throw in the towel. It did not feel over when he said he wanted to see other people and as I resisted this suggestion of his, the happier he seemed to become and the more he secure he acted. Do I have surveillance on him 24/7? Do I know for sure if he had casual sex or dated other women, no, but I trust him and he is honest. If he did it couldn’t have been of much significance and it definitely didn’t take up his weekends as he’s spent every weekend with me since we met. His weekdays consist of no leisure time, except for an occasional dinner with me when he can muster up the energy. He’s just not a casanova and I’d be almost impressed to find out that he’d been one, without my knowledge of it. It seems that maybe you’ve dealt with some men you could not trust in the past, who may have betrayed your trust.

Your entire aggressive black and white view of relationships tells me that there are a lot of unresolved issues between you and men. You almost seem angry with me, and without fulling knowing your story, I wouldn’t be able to determine why. Do you see yourself in me? Maybe you had a similar relationship in the past, and got burned. Now you are either closed off because of it and have very high expectations of men, or are in a better situation, but I can’t fully understand the reason for your need to scold me, or preach to me. You see me as some sort of foolish woman, who can’t get her pretty little head around the fact that this man does not love her. He does not keep me on the edge of his life, he has me quite fully immersed, he’s just admitted that I’m not what he pictured, but I don’t see that as him denouncing what we have. I’ve said time and time again that if he feels the need to date and still keep searching, he should do that. I don’t have any desire to hold him back from complete happiness. Something seems to have changed with our relationship, where he does not feel the need to do that, and says he is happy with me. He is not some lothario who keeps me on my toes, never returning calls, answering texts, seeing me infrequently, completely ignoring my feelings or my daily life stresses. This is a man who is giving and kind and completely there for me but is currently asking to have a relationship, while living apart. I don’t think that makes our relationship something to leave, or something outrageous, if it works for us.

If he met someone who truly knocked his socks off, there would be a discussion. He doesn’t think it will happen, and he admits that he has trouble being knocked off his socks because of his own eternal sadness. But do I leave a man who is there for me out of fear that he might one day leave me for someone else? I would then truly be at the mercy of an anxious avoidant attachment style if I did that. One day at a time, like I said being in love in impermanent, love is fluid in that in changes, it surprises you. I do believe it can be constant, and no I don’t think it has to be desperate. It does slip between our fingers from time to time though. It takes effort to keep loving someone. It becomes a practice. It’s not just a choice you make once, or the divorce lawyers of the world would be out of business.