Re-Dating Woman With Much Past Trauma, She Needs Lengthy Break, Unclear If I Should Hold Out Hope

Hello, my brain is broken.

I dated a girl 15ish years ago for only like three or four months, completely fell for her (I’m currently 35, she’s 36). She wound up breaking up with me and it really, really hurt at the time. Literally took a couple years to get over her.

Due to fear of getting hurt again (and some shyness), I’ve basically not dated since outside one three month relationship a number of years ago.

Well, the original girl popped back up in my life this past summer completely out of blue. She has a very young child (1 year old) and reached out to me. We’ve been hanging out for the last four or five months pretty much once a week. She has had an incredibly traumatic last few years, break up with ex, new daughter, parent’s divorce then one parent dying, grandparents dying, move back to the area we live, etc. Just a ton of shit. I feel so empathetic.

She enjoys hanging out with me, I’ve hung with her and her child a bunch, but she’s also been keeping me at arm’s length and sent SO MANY mixed signals over last couple months. She’s been very open about how overwhelmed she feels in life, the pain she’s still working through, still working through issues with ex (and father of child), etc.

While I’ve been incredibly patient, I finally needed to put my foot down and needed some more consistency. It’s been months, I want to take the next step towards a real, serious relationship…but she was just overwhelmed. We are both nearing 40. We even had a conversation about how she wants more children and I am interested as well. So I know that the timeframe here is getting short.

We’ve had a bunch of back and forth and she just can’t commit to getting into something serious at the moment. She wants to “hibernate” this winter and really work on herself. She’s recommended I try to find someone else to date in the meantime as she just can’t, as of now, give me what I want. She did say that come spring/summer – if I’m still single – who knows, maybe we can go on a date again. But she can’t guarantee at all what her mind space will be. She currently has a fear of intimacy. Mentioned every day she had been trying to figure out if she could settle into a serious, romantic relationship with me at the moment, but she’s just overwhelmed.

It sucks – I like this girl so damn much, literally more than any other woman I’ve ever known, and now I’m just…I don’t know. I’m just heartbroken. I know the logic is to move on, but I see so much potential there.

I promised myself when we started seeing each other again that – if it did not work out – I would put more effort into dating. I’m going to do my very best at that. Then again, she is going to be absolute top of mind all winter. I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get over it.

What I’m trying to tell myself is that I need to put that effort in – go on some dates in next few months – hopefully something hits. If it doesn’t, then I can consider reaching back out to her in spring. I truthfully think she likes me a lot and definitely sees me as a potential long-term mate, but she just has so much to work on.

I’m guessing the vast majority of advice is to move on, try to date more women, etc. Is that what you would recommend? Do you think it’s possible, come spring-ish, there might be hope with her?

TL:DR – dating woman with a lot of past trauma to work through, she needs a break, not sure if I should wait or move on.