? New territory for me

[bluebells3]

Hi there,

I have a dating question. This is the first time I've dealt with dating someone casually--every time I've dated someone before, it's just sort of evolved into exclusivity and then a serious relationship, or it's been a mutually understood fling that didn't go anywhere and didn't have to.

 

So, a few things you should know:

 

1) We've been extremely close friends for about three years. We're in our early twenties.

 

2) We dated for a year, but we could both tell it wasn't going anywhere because of some emotional stuff we each had to work through, so we broke up. He asked me out again a few months after we broke up, and I agreed to give it a second shot. We know where we want the relationship to go and how to get there; we spent a lot of time talking about what went wrong, what we needed to do differently, and where we thought we should start. In the end, we decided that we had jumped into a serious relationship too quickly without laying the groundwork for a healthy, successful long-term relationship, so we started as far back emotionally as we could go (non-exclusive, non-official, etc., etc.) and we've been going on at most a date a week for the past 2.5 months.

 

 

At first, this all sounded great. I was fully on-board; I wasn't sure I wanted a serious relationship with him again, and, if I did, I wanted to make sure I wasn't ever going to have the "what-ifs" creep in. "What if there's someone better?" and that sort of thing. And taking it slow is perfect, because I've needed to rebuild my trust in him; the break-up and problems before it weren't easy on either of us.

 

Now I'm started to get attached emotionally again: I have a great time with him, the conversations are flowing, the physical chemistry is there, and we seem to be moving in the direction I want to go, and he said he wants to go. I've stopped dating other guys; for the most part, they were all right, but there was nothing I really wanted to pursue and it seemed silly when I knew I was starting to get attached to this one.

 

He's not ready to be exclusive, though. He hasn't been dating furiously, only one or two dates with women besides me, and I do want to make sure that he has the chance to explore a little bit; I don't want to trap him or seem like I'm trapping him. But I know that in a couple of weeks I'm probably going to start getting a little jealous or upset about him dating other people.

 

I guess my end question is: am I being psycho or desperate? It's only been 2.5 months; I have no idea what a normal timeline is, and our situation is a little unique. And when the time comes that I get emotionally attached, how can I bring it up?

[CptSaveAho]

Just bring it up... that way you know

 

Are you going to wait another 3 months and be stuck in this same limbo. Say something silly like "Ok were girlfriend and boyfriend now" Check out his reaction.

 

I mean youve already had "the talk"... if he bounces now, he was always going to bounce

[ja123]

You open your post by stating that you are casually dating someone.

 

I don't know how it is possible to casually date someone with whom you already had an exclusive year-long relationship.

 

If he came back to you wanting to try again, then I don't see why he'd want to continue dating other women.

 

You're not at all being desperate or psycho. You want to have your needs met, and he is not meeting them as you intimate you want a serious exclusive relatonship.

 

Tell him how you feel.