I need advice me (18m) and my (18f) gf have been together for 5 months now. We met the first day of school and after a month or so of me watching her hook up with my friends and random tinder dates she realized she no longer wanted pointless hookups. One night at one of my fraternity parties my friend who had hooked up with my current gf before we started dating turned her down when she came back to him. I saw her crying and comforted her. We danced the night away and it was awesome. She came home with me, one thing led to another and we have been together ever since. I asked her out around 2 months into talking. She’s fallen hard for me damn near in love and I just can’t say the same. I’ve tried to strengthen my feelings for her but for some reason I just don’t feel that I am in love with her or even falling in love. Keep in mind this is the first time a girl has chased me normally I’m chasing the girl. For most of our relationship I’ve wondered what it would be like single as a freshman at a new school with new people. It got to me a lot and I kept it a secret only confiding in my single friends. Last weekend I decided to break up with her because of that. After two nights single and a ton of crying I realized I missed her and made a mistake. We talked it out and have been fine for the last week. I promised I was in our relationship whole heartedly. Recently though I’ve found myself getting lost in thought and I don’t know what to do. I feel as if I may have mistaken loneliness for love. I want to be with her but at the same time I want to be with someone I love. Valentine’s Day as well as her birthday are coming up and I feel like by this point I should have stronger feelings for than against her.
TL; DR
Me and gf have been together for a while and my feelings aren’t getting much stronger and I often wonder whether it’s fair to be with her if I can’t love her
1 comment
When you’re the one going after the girl, there’s a tendency for our feelings to multiply. The more we try and fail, the more we want the thing. You stick yourself in a cycle where you’re convinced you should be together because you want it so much, and when she doesn’t reciprocate, the attracting feeling gets multiplied with a frustrated longing that can only be broken by being together. You convince yourself that’s what love feels like, but it’s actually heartache masquerading as love.
Since you didn’t have to work for this, you haven’t gone through that same cycle, so you’re not feeling what you have in the past. This is a good thing, because in the past your actual goal has just been to end the frustrated longing for yourself. For once, whatever you feel about this girl is pure and isn’t just about you. You’re in a place where can build on the feelings and grow into love. You can’t force it, and if you aren’t feeling anything then that’s that, but if you’re at all into her, just look at this is a new experience for you, and one that can be much better if you let it. In those other situations, you may have gotten what you thought you wanted, but it was always about you. Now it can be about both of you because there is no frustration or heartache cycle to break free from.
When feelings are strong at the beginning, they inevitably fade and things deteriorate. When you build up from very little, you can grow forever.