Am I in a rebound relationship?

[chevalier]

The guy is not in an abnormal circumstance. He’s in a all-too-common bad circumstance that makes him a bad prospect for starting a new relationship–bad for him and bad for her–and he hasn’t done a single thing to indicate that his recovery from his all-too-common bad circumstance is going one bit faster than would be expected. He is not ready to be back on the field. I don’t know why you’re arguing otherwise. If he forces this, he could get himself re-injured and unnecessarily compromise his recovery.

He’s not in a normal motivational situation for the expected behaviour. People who’ve just lost a relationship aren’t known for being open, warm, enthusiastic or enjoying perfect self-control.

You agree the guy has red flags. I don’t know why you’d encourage a friend to stick around as if that weren’t true, or try to rationalize them away. After all, I’m not saying she ought to change her phone number and go into witness protection! I’m saying she ought to tell him, “Listen, we need to back off, and when you feel you’ve healed enough that you can stop using your last relationship as an excuse to ask me to accept behavior that is not acceptable to me, when you’ve healed enough that you can have some patience yourself instead of convincing me you’re ready to sign on the dotted line after two weeks, then we can try again.”

I don’t encourage the OP to stick with the guy but I do say that she might want to see how the guy turns out in a month or two basing on how exactly unwarranted his statements about love were (because there’s a scale there, you know, basing on the information which we don’t have, mostly being how much and how seriously they’d talked before) and how exactly cold he acted or what the contradictions in his behaviour are (where there is also a scale, ranging from minor to huge and from something that doesn’t seem to agree to something that’s a big fat lie). The rest you’re pretty much putting in my mouth.

That is not unfair to him or anyone else.

Agreed. But will all due respect, the interpretations of his behaviour and the jumped conclusions are, indeed, unfair to him. They aren’t unfair just because they’re unfavourable but they’re unfair because of two or more possibilities the one that puts him in the worst possible way is chosen. It’s one thing to say he’s got a couple of red flags, another to take the worst possible variant of events for granted.

It is the totally rational and reasonable way to handle this.

The rational way is to examine the additional information which we don’t have and which I specified. Again: how much and how seriously they talked, how deep the conversations were, before he made that huge declaration of his. Was he the initiator in all that. How bad was his cold act (just a little cold as is said verbatim or icy). Are the contraditions in his behaviour small or big, suspected or certain, just hard to agree or flat out impossible to agree? Is the OP’s anxiety caused by the distressing situation or is all of it directly attributable to the man’s actions? In all of these questions, you and the other posters assume the worst possible. All of these examples I give again and again are routinely ignored and instead I hear another round of, “oh, so you are telling her to jump on the big waters with him and totally ignore her feelings.” Which is obviously not something I ever said in this discussion at any point.

I also hate to point this out, but this fellow may not have issues from which he is going to recover in this lifetime.

There is a possibility but not nearly enough data to call it a reliable possibility.

His self-admitted serious issues need to be out of the way before getting into a courtship, because serious issues have this way of being in the relationship for a lifetime.

For one, there are very few people who don’t have some mild to moderate personality disorders or other problems. The other thing is we don’t know how serious his problem actually is.

Anyway, since you have said upfront in other threads that it is impossible for you to ever be wrong, I’m going to leave the conversation at that, because I’m becoming more and more convinced that you did not write that with your tongue in your cheek. Go ahead and have the last word. I think I’ve made my point, and I’m tired of trying to convince you to drop your case.

If you really wanted to end it without the last word hassle, couldn’t you have phrased your last differently? As for the personal jab, it was neither accurate nor warranted. It may be somewhat distressing to each of us that the other won’t “see the light” or just give up but that’s not a reason to paint the other as someone having delusions of infallibility.

Besides, I tried to get out of this thread, it’s still “on paper” a couple of posts ago. If I seriously was the one to go for the last word, I wouldn’t even have made an attempt.

 

[chevalier]

I am just going to address these two because I will not debate you on this. For the first one I never said I was your Mom

Come on, did I actually imply you said that? I said you acted like one and you very well know what I meant. If you want to make me look like an idiot, please at least put more than token effort in it.

I was talking about those kinds of statements in general, not just yours. So you were reading a little too much into it.

Actually, you took the liberty to offer me advice as to when I should be talking and when not. My comment about “mum” was perfectly warranted.

For the second part, incredibly rude.

You have a right to that opinion. On the other hand, I believe that while it wasn’t exactly warm, it was still on the polite side, much less anything to do with “incredibly”.

You make time for this kind of stuff because you choose to, I choose not to because it is very unimportant to me.

And that’s somehow not rude to say (including to the OP). Please quit your “don’t have time” high ground, it doesn’t make you sound smarter or more important or busier or whatever than other participants in your conversation, which is basically a way of telling your interlocutor that you are more important than he is. We all chose to invest our time in having this discussion as opposed to doing something else and we all deal with the consequences of it, we’re in the same situation.

“Incredibly rude” in my book, maybe not “incredibly” but remarkably rude anyway, does tend to describe that way of talking to somebody. Besides, if this were so “very unimportant” to you, you wouldn’t be feeling the need to talk and mark a high ground.

Sorry man, but I am going to put you on ignore for this comment, I can deal with debate and all that, but this rude comment is out of line. You said you don’t want to go there, but that is exactly what you did.

To be honest, it is somewhat difficult to find a polite but adequate reply to that, so I’ll let it pass. Have a good day.

 

[Lorelei12]

He’s not in a normal motivational situation for the expected behaviour. People who’ve just lost a relationship aren’t known for being open, warm, enthusiastic or enjoying perfect self-control.

But this is exactly why he does not belong in a relationship, at least not for the time being. If you have a hard time being generally open, warm, enthusiastic, or self-controlled because of the way a recent breakup has affected you, the right thing to do is to take the time you need without drawing someone else in emotionally.

The problem with her waiting around for him to get over it is that she is putting her life on hold for him. In the meantime, she is missing out on other potential dates and spending time and energy being anxious about someone who isn’t giving as much to the relationship as she needs him to. Instead of asking her to stick around and telling her he loves her, he should be telling her he is sorry he isn’t ready to be in a relationship, and that he hopes that when he is she is still available. If he actually loved her, he would not want to cause her anguish by asking her to wait around for him. This in itself is a sign he’s not ready for a relationship- he is not emotionally mature enough to be putting her needs before what he wants.

 

[Khalid]

If I can take a flying guess at some of the behavior in this thread, I would think I’m justified in saying most of the nay-sayers have been burned in the exact same way, or worse (cf. al-anon meetings), and are therefore gun-shy, and that the minority has not.

In any case, now we’re on to talking about the people giving replies, so, the thread has come full-circle; the last two pages have been full of people re-stating the same old arguments used on the first three. Said arguments will not convince me that someone should “go with their feelings” (I think this individual has been burned), nor will it convince aforementioned “this individual” to rationally analyze the situation. There is likely merit in both approaches, but, it appears to me, that this conversation has reached the point where debate is just about useless (as debate relies on the chance to “convert” your debating opponent to your point of view), and will inevitably degenerate in to outright argumentation.

 

[Metropolis]

If I can take a flying guess at some of the behavior in this thread, I would think I’m justified in saying most of the nay-sayers have been burned in the exact same way, or worse (cf. al-anon meetings), and are therefore gun-shy, and that the minority has not.

In any case, now we’re on to talking about the people giving replies, so, the thread has come full-circle; the last two pages have been full of people re-stating the same old arguments used on the first three. Said arguments will not convince me that someone should “go with their feelings” (I think this individual has been burned), nor will it convince aforementioned “this individual” to rationally analyze the situation. There is likely merit in both approaches, but, it appears to me, that this conversation has reached the point where debate is just about useless (as debate relies on the chance to “convert” your debating opponent to your point of view), and will inevitably degenerate in to outright argumentation.

Henceforth why I decided not to be drawn into a debate. It is going nowhere, not helping the OP any, and is a waste of time. Henceforth why I said I would not make time for it in a later post.

OP- I hope that something in here has helped you. At the end of the day do what you think is best for you, not what we think is best for you.

 

[Khalid]

OP- I hope that something in here has helped you. At the end of the day do what you think is best for you, not what we think is best for you.

If the OP is still reading this forum after this thread, I agree.

 

[Eliza10]

Chevalier! My goodness! You are extremely persistent! Like a bulldog! Surely this quality is going to get you far in life. Not in this thread though. Not your area of expertise, dear. We women responding to this thread are the voice of experience. And we are women, so, just more experienced in relationships than you. Sorry. Its just how God gifted us. Probably because we have so very much at stake.

More than one of us here, who are trying to help the OP, have, in the past, ignored such obvious warning signs as described in her original post, and got ourselves trapped in most miserable marriages ever. You just don’t know how deeply lonely and devastatingly troubled life can be until you are in one. And getting out is more hard knocks! So a few hard years and some hindsight and you gather some wisdom looking back at the early clues that pointed right exactly to your misery of the day. We KNOW. So you aren’t going to talk us into “maybe this means some well-meaning nice-thing”. No. We know what it means and we KNOW the price of pretending something is nicer than what it plainly is.

 

[Lorelei12]

If I can take a flying guess at some of the behavior in this thread, I would think I’m justified in saying most of the nay-sayers have been burned in the exact same way, or worse (cf. al-anon meetings), and are therefore gun-shy, and that the minority has not.

I’d guess you’re probably right. Which is why we can recognize this unhealthy behavior so easily. I’d also guess that those of us warning the OP to let him go are more likely married. We know what a good relationship looks like, and this one isn’t headed in that direction.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

Just one more point - we spoke of paying attention to one’s “instincts” but neglected to mention that this can also be the Holy Spirit whispering to us and giving us more wisdom in a situation than we would normally possess. LISTEN to inner guidance!

 

[Khalid]

Chevalier! My goodness! You are extremely persistent! Like a bulldog! Surely this quality is going to get you far in life. Not in this thread though. Not your area of expertise, dear. We women responding to this thread are the voice of experience. And we are women, so, just more experienced in relationships than you. Sorry. Its just how God gifted us. Probably because we have so very much at stake.

More than one of us here, who are trying to help the OP, have, in the past, ignored such obvious warning signs as described in her original post, and got ourselves trapped in most miserable marriages ever. You just don’t know how deeply lonely and devastatingly troubled life can be until you are in one. And getting out is more hard knocks! So a few hard years and some hindsight and you gather some wisdom looking back at the early clues that pointed right exactly to your misery of the day. We KNOW. So you aren’t going to talk us into “maybe this means some well-meaning nice-thing”. No. We know what it means and we KNOW the price of pretending something is nicer than what it plainly is.

This is frankly offensive. A priest can not give relationship advice? a male counselor?

 

[TheRealJuliane]

This is frankly offensive. A priest can not give relationship advice? a male counselor?

I do not think the post was meant to be offensive. In fact, Chevalier was very persistent with his own perspective and wasn’t being very charitable by continuing to argue with EasterJoy and take the thread into the weeds. I think Eliza10 was trying to CAJOLE him into dropping the argumentation. That’s how I took it anyway.

 

[roselily]

I don’t encourage the OP to stick with the guy but I do say that she might want to see how the guy turns out in a month or two basing on how exactly unwarranted his statements about love were (because there’s a scale there, you know, basing on the information which we don’t have, mostly being how much and how seriously they’d talked before) and how exactly cold he acted or what the contradictions in his behaviour are (where there is also a scale, ranging from minor to huge and from something that doesn’t seem to agree to something that’s a big fat lie).

I saw she wrote the thread. I saw that all Sisters here by love only want good come to OP, but I know that you mean she need stop by herself at her own time.

 

[Miriam1983]

Thank you so much everyone for your advice. Sorry it took a while to come and write back.
Update: I gave my boyfriend the chance to still continue dating me. Since we are in a long distance relationship, Im staying busy at work and volunteering at the church.
We are now having issues because of Facebook. I write compliments on some photos he has, including his photo cover. I did not realized, but he deleted my comments that people can see public. I ask him why he deleted it, he said because he wants to protect me from his ex-girlfriend since she is crazy and very invasive. He does not want her to know whats going on with his life and wants to keep it private. But yet, I saw photos that she compliment and he did not deleted them. I ask him to deleted them and he did.
When I would post photos of myself, or both of us he never compliments them. I ask him why you don’t compliment, and he said he does not need to show it in public, he would rather tell me on the phone. I told him, then why you compliment all over the wall of your ex, he said that’s in the past, and he did it because she would make him jealous because she was talking and complimenting other men in Facebook. Then he told me if I was envious of his ex. That got me furious and I closed my Facebook.
He then confessed me that he met his ex online, she was from Texas. But later he found out she was married and had a daughter, and he continued in the relationship with her because she manipulated him in staying, and because she was not married through the church and was ok for both of them to still see each other.
When he told me that it hurt me because he gave his heart to a married woman.
He is telling me he is healing, but it hurts me that he won’t acknowledge me in Facebook, something he did to his ex a married woman. I feel I’m in competition with her. He tells me over and over again he loves me and it hurts him that I don’t trust his word. What can I do? Men are confusing

 

[SlackerCatholic]

Oh dear Lord…

Nothing is confusing here except your refusal to give up on this. Never talk to him again, never interact with him again, and start building real relationships with people in real life.

Maya Angelou has famously said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

 

[red85]

It sounds like your boyfriend is lost. I would forget about him. You don’t own him anything. If you choose to stay with him, you’re going to keep on suffering for it. Find someone who’s healthy, self-confident, and whole.

I can relate to your situation - I have known someone is inconstant, insecure, and a pain to deal with. Sometimes, you simply have to cut loose. If you’re going to stay with this guy, just know, he’s going to be fickle, confusing, and exasperating.

Pray for me, and I will pray for you. My own difficulty is simply craving out a life in Virginia while habitually dealing with rude people. So prayers would be appreciated.