Greek Romantic Troubles.

[prettyv]

First, I'm half embarrassed to bring this up to most of my sisters and the ones I did never would tell me the truth if it upset me... My friends from home don't really get the Greek aspects of it. So I've come to a message board.


My whole life I've been anti-love, if anything. I grew up in a house with an openly adulterous father and a door-mat mother. To me, love was hurt and pain, not anything you'd ever want to have for yourself. I spend all of high school and my early 20s serial dating, but never trusting anyone enough to get close to them. I was OK with this scenario, I thought it was the best option for humans.


Cue, my current boyfriend. Within minutes of meeting him, I was giddy. I had never been giddy before in my life. He is an amazing guy, he's everything a girl could ever want: handsome, sweet, romantic, understanding... I didn't think guys like that actually existed. I won't pretend like everything is ALWAYS perfect, but I'm happier than I thought I would ever be, and yes, I am totally in love.


Now, current boyfriend is like most people in the world. Had a first love, had a second love, now is dating me. It's hard for me to swallow that, as I've never been in love before, so it's hard for me to imagine that you can just NOT have feelings for someone that you loved anymore, but I've seen it with alllll my friends, so I get it. I get that this is more my issue than his, and for the most part am OK with our relationship and OK with the fact that he has loved before.


Me and boyfriend are not typical college students, in the sense we're a little older. We're not 30 or anything, but we're not 21 either. A lot of my friends are getting married, it's not weird for our age group to talk about it, I don't want anyone to assume I'm 18 and sketching "Mrs. Boyfriend" in my notebook or anything. We're at an age where marriage would be totally normal. We have talked a lot about getting engaged, I'm sure it's coming this year, but being the romantic he is, he would die if he couldn't surprise me with it.


The only sad part to my love story is... because boyfriend has been in love before... he also lavaliered his ex girlfriend. This breaks my heart. Some of his friends in the chapter have girlfriends who have been lavaliered, and when we hang out as a group, it feels glaringly obvious to me that I don't have his letters. When I brought it up to him, he was heartbroken too. He admitted he only lavaliered his girlfriend because she whined about it a lot, and he eventually caved, without much thought for what this would mean in the future. He feels awful about it, he wishes he could 'take it back', but it is what it is. I can understand that... But he doesn't think his chapter would be in support of lavaliering me, considering he already did it, and it didn't work out.


I'm not sure how to feel or what to do about this. Whenever I'm cold in our apartment and I go to grab a sweater, it's a reminder that I'm never going to be able to wear his letters. He said he could give me the lavalier without chapter support, if it meant that much to me, but to me that's just... wrong. I couldn't accept that.


I've talked to one guy in the fraternity who is like a brother to me about the situation. He knows how different and serious our relationship is, but he is also skeptical of the chapter's opinion on it. I'm a well-liked girl at this fraternity and even before we started dating, I was friends with most of the chapter... I'm certain they like me a lot and I have been deeply involved in their fraternity events, etc.


Has anyone ever dealt with a problem like this? Am I putting too much stock into his letters? Would it be weird to get engaged and then go back to the chapter? For guys in fraternities who lavalier, would his past relationship affect your support for him?


I would love, love, LOVE to be a part of something so important to him, I know how much his fraternity means to him... It would be a huge honor to wear them. I just don't know if that's plausible anymore and I should just forget it forever.