Q.A reader writes, “‘I can’t like you right now.’ That’s what I’ve been hearing from this girl whom I have been dating for two months. I have not made love to her or even kissed her. In fact, I keep rejecting another female friend who keeps coming over to my house. I have never exhibited such anti-male behavior before. I’m pretty sure I love her for doing all this, or I must really be in for the chase.
She got out of a four-year relationship this March. Since then she has dated random men until October, which is when I met her. She told me she wants to have a ‘meaningful’ relationship with me instead of a ‘meaningless’ one and that the only type of relationship she can have now are ‘meaningless’ ones and she doesn’t want to waste our relationship. She needs time to ‘get to know herself’ because she hasn’t had free time to think, again, because she’s been dating random people after her four-year relationship Normally that would sound pretty fishy to me in addition to, ‘I can’t like you right now.’
Now, I want to know, am I:
A) For the first time in my life, in such self-denial that I have no chance with this girl?
B) Being played for a fool?
C) Supposed to believe her?
I’ve been pressuring her to ‘discover herself’ faster. I think the other relevant information pertaining to this is that she has once refused to hang up the phone and told me that she sees herself marrying me. This sounded sincere to me (I thought I heard some crying in the background also). I appreciate any information you can give me, I would highly value any advice you could share with me.”
A.One of the great things about women is that often, they are not only honest, but very open as well, especially when men take the time to look past their own feelings and really listen objectively to what a woman is trying to tell them.
This woman is right. Not only that, she is protecting you from getting hurt, you were just too naive when it comes to knowing about women to notice. She is on the rebound. After a serious relationship of four years, it can take a year to a year-and-a-half for a woman’s emotions to heal and for her to be ready to fall deeply in love again with a new partner. That’s just a general estimate, even she will not know when she will be ready to love again until the day she is over the past relationship, after the fact. Any man she meets during this time could be hurt very badly if they fall in love with her. She is not ready for that right now, and although she might be able to go through the motions of a full-blown love affair, she is also capable of rejecting you, getting up and walking out the door and leaving you with no prior warning. What you have to lose here is your heart. Like a thief that comes in the middle of the night, it would be a surprise and leave a very bad taste in your mouth.
Regardless of how nice she is and how much you love her, she is less than useless to you. In fact, all she could do in this state is use you, use you up and then throw you away. All she will do is string you along and drag your heart through the gutter as you continue to chase a woman who is incapable of love at this time. She will never be a match for you, because your timing was off. You don’t know how lucky you are that she’s so open and can articulate her true state of the heart. In spite of being open with you, she is in deep emotional ca-ca and needs professional help. Being intimate with random people, having meaningless affairs, she wants a commitment from you to a long-term relationship and even marriage without the preliminaries. This is not a healthy emotional state. Talk to other girls and send this one off to heartbreak hotel. She can’t go to lover’s peak right now, it’s off limits to her heart.
It’s great to fall in love, but it’s even better to be able to avoid getting hurt, and never hurt anybody else in romantic relationships. When you can look past your feelings and see her true level of love for you, and pick out the particular words she says that match her actions, you’ll never get burned, and always be able to find love easily.