Me and my girlfriend (M19, F19) have been in a relationship for over a year now, we’re both in our second year of college, and I just moved back home to her to transfer to a college closer to my family. She’s been feeling really overwhelmed and pulled apart recently by multiple things, she’s an athlete, and in a pretty demanding major that also requires her to work long games along with her two jobs that get her about 15-20 hours a week maybe. She’s also dealing with not having a lot of friends at her school, and though she has one she hangs out often and is on the team with her, she is somewhat introverted but a social person naturally. We sat down and talked about how busy and stressed she is recently, and she told me she thinks she needs time to herself to figure out what’s going on. She feels too pulled in every direction and doesn’t get a lot of time for herself, and although she loves me and doesn’t want to lose me, she hates that she can’t be present with me when hangout and that we can’t talk much when we aren’t together. We ended up breaking up, but a day later talked again and decided we wanted to go on a break where we’d check in with eachother because we want to improve our relationship instead. We’re exclusive still and have agreed to talk when we can but I am really trying to give her plenty of space so she can process and feel relaxed and work on herself while knowing i’m here and I love her and want to support her.
I want to just sit back and let our break work, and enjoy the date we have every now and then until she feels ready to go again, but I am terrified that she’s just exploring her options or keeping me here for emotional and physical support while she can go hangout with other guys or find people she’d rather be with. We just recently had to have a talk about her hanging out with a guy who obviously wanted to get with her, and every time they’d see eachother he’d hit her up. It took a while but she agreed that she shouldn’t hangout with someone like that even in a group setting. Now, she’s gone over twice inbetween afternoon classes to this guy on her team’s dorm. Way last year he asked her out, and she shut him down. There was a moment where she overheard him say he could easily take her away from me, but this year he apologized for his behavior last year and it seems like they’re making up, it’s just a little awkward. He hasn’t made any passes after she set a boundary, so i don’t mind her hanging out with him for now. He has a roomate too and and she’s gone over twice to their dorm to hang this week. she said she went over there to help him hang a mirror and go to walmart and the other time he just played 2k and she did homework. The roomate was around them and she agrees that she wouldn’t go over in a solo setting between the two of them, and i don’t mind them hanging out alone inbetween classes or with other people in his dorm, but she said her other friend was busy and she needed to be around someone because she was struggling during the day we were broken up. (That was the second time, the hw and 2k) I don’t know why I can’t get it out of my head that she’s actually making moves and they are doing more, but I saw one of her texts to him and she said “do you hate me, you haven’t texted me all day” my head is just saying no shut that down but I just stopped her from hanging out with the other guy and I don’t want to make her stop hanging out with all of her friends. She has in the past had fine guy friends who are completely platonic. Do I need to stop worrying and let her hangout with whoever, or should I worry about this guy? Is this break gonna be fruitful or am I just being played? I love this girl with all my heart, she means the world to me and that’s why i’m staying by her side, but I don’t want to get heartbroken.

TLDR: giving gf space and on an exclusive break, she’s hanging out with a two guy friends in their dorm, and i’m worried i’m just sticking around to be replaced. I wanna give her time to herself though, so I don’t know what I should do.

2 comments

  1. “but I am terrified that she’s just exploring her options or keeping me here for emotional and physical support while she can go hangout with other guys or find people she’d rather be with”

    Going to quote this one back at ya, want you to read it and remember what you said here because it’s how you feel. That’s how you feel you said so yourself.

    Let’s start with the baseline here of that you feel this way. I’ll ask you a follow up question then I’ll follow up with some other questions that I want you to really sit with and ask yourself. Starting with, “What if she is?”

    What if she is? What if she is just exploring her options and keeping you there for support while she fucks around.

    Then what?

    Is that the end of you? Does your world end?

    Let’s say it doesn’t. You feel the sting of that for all it is, you get stung hard and knocked down to the dirt by the thing you fear most. Does it end you?

    Do you get wiped out completely and will never stand again to do anything worthwhile ever again? Doesn’t seem reasonable at all to say that would happen yeah. More like you’d feel that horrible pain, who knows how long, then time would move on and you’d slowly forget and go forward as a wounded in the heart person to do your things and that’s more in line with what would actually happen.

    If that’s the worst case scenario it doesn’t sound so bad yeah? The end of the actual world doesn’t come, you’re not annihilated and your pain never ever heals from her actions? But what actually happens is it hurts like shit for awhile then you eventually get over it as you fill your own big life up with all kinds of crazy shit in the future that totally make you never even think about it even a few years out from now?

    Ask me how I know it goes down like that and I’ll tell ya. Breathe. You can do that right now, just breathe homie. Separate your anxiety about the what if’s into a perspective of “and then what?” Ask yourself “and then what” all the way to the end of the chain as you breathe in and out.

    Control is an illusion, we never had it any way. She’s doing her thing out there, do yours. Grow now, here is that part where you plant seeds that grow to big ol’ trees later on. Big strong trees. Plant water and grow. We don’t control anyone, we only get to observe and witness the show when it comes to anyone else. We do however have the potential to control ourselves and that’s the big gift we get as individual people. Flex on that, start now right in the middle of your worst fear and insecurity that you weren’t enough for this person to keep them around stuck to you. Work on being the kind of person you yourself is absolutely head over heels with who would never be so out of sorts about something like this. You can generate that energy yourself. Start right here with it, your best time to plant a seed, right now. Later on with the tree that casts shade on the person you become? Think on this time here how you turned challenge into no big deal and how that made you.

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like