Quote:
Originally posted by MTSUGURL
I'm not terribly crazy about him, but he's so persistant and he really does love me. I'm considering giving him another chance. I know I can make him happy, and I keep thinking that I can grow to love him. Grrr.
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One of the cruelest things I ever did was date a guy just because he liked me. "B" was a great guy, intelligent, well-mannered, etc. When I met him, I had just been through a terrible breakup (we're talking major, cataclysmic soap opera here) and then a period of being really lonely. And he was a "nice guy" - a safe guy that wouldn't hurt me like my last boyfriend.
At first it was great. B showered me with affection. Always there for me. Never a negative thought or word. Full of compliments. I apparently was the most beautiful, smartest, funniest, most amazing girl ever to walk the face of the earth. And the attention was great. B was the perfect boyfriend.
Except for the fact that I just wasn't there. I would respond to him and smile and say "aw, thanks" when he did sweet stuff. But really I was just saying what I thought he wanted to hear - what a "good girlfriend" should say. But I just felt detached from it all. I can be a bitterly cynical and sarcastic person sometimes - that's how I relieve stress - and that didn't fit in B's little Camelot relationship he'd created. Whenever I said anything even slightly sarcastic, B would just ignore it. I started feeling trapped.
Then B starts talking about really serious stuff - most alarmingly about engagement rings! Telling me about the heirloom rings his family had that he could choose from to give his future wife!!! We'd been together less than 2 months! I was thinking more and more than we weren't on the same wavelength, and B thought he'd found his soulmate. He kept trying to say stuff that sounded dangerously close to the "L" word and I would always interrupt or change the subject to avoid having him say he loved me and then I would be forced to either lie or not say it back and hurt him.
I started pulling away, trying to spend less time with him for a few days so I could sort out in my head what to do. B realized something was wrong and came over, and we had The Talk. I tried to explain that I just needed space but it came out wrong. He got upset and I realized that I was being cruel by dragging this out any longer. So I told him I was so sorry and broke him with him.
He was CRUSHED. He never saw it coming. How could he have? I acted like I was perfectly satisfied. I felt like the meanest, most evil person in the whole world. I tried to talk to him a while after that, but things were always awkward.
OK, the POINT of my long rambling confessional here is that you should not date someone just because they like you. That is not enough. You have to like them back. It is very rare that you can "grow to like someone." Whenever one person is more emotionally attached in a relationship than the other it can cause problems, especially the more lopsided the feelings are. It sounds to me that this guy is really nuts about you, and that's great, but if you don't return that, you will just be torturing him. Because if it turns out later that you can't grow to love him, it will hurt him worse than if you never gave him that false hope in the first place.
I like what UKDaisy said - don't settle. Everyone deserves true happiness, and you can't get that by giving up and accepting "Mr. Almost-Right."