Putting things behind you

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That seems a fairly mature attitude. I think most of the people who rush into these things do so because they're weak, and can't hold back their ardour long enough to find out who it is they're dealing with. A generation or two ago, parents had much more of a hold on their adolescent kids and would apply a firm brake to their sexual behaviour.....that hold is now gone and adolescents usually want to go for sex like a 5-year-old wants to go for cakes. They often don't understand the emotional significance of sex, so they don't want to hold back. And they often want to scoff at virginity and lose it as soon as they can, so they can brag about being sexually successful and experienced. As they grow older they usually calm down and try to do relationships in a more sober manner.


It sounds like you feel surrounded by one-night-standers. There's nothing you can do for those people.....I'd just avoid them and look for people who share yoiur philosophy. It's pretty easy to find out somebody's attitude to this - just make a comment like "I've known so many people who jump into bed together too quickly, and I reckon that's why their relationships don't work." A woman who wants to do just that will be put off.....but if she agrees with you then she'll probably look pleased and give you a higher priority. Of course they could lie, and try to use you as a trusting fool, but there's always an element of risk with a new person, and if you stick to your guns and wait, then at least you're more likely to find out what they're really like before sex has bonded you together....it will still be very sad to have to dump them, but not as sad as it otherwise would be.

Not everybody lies. The most common "deceptions" I've been subjected to have been down to people being coy about admitting their potentially unattractive features - even making an effort to look nice when going out is something of a deception, hiding the ugly bits and showing off the pretty bits. I have a number of traits that I should really warn potential partners about immediately, but I've often found myself delaying a revelation or two for longer than I ideally should. Sometimes it's done a lot of harm and they've felt like I've trapped them with it, mostly it's not been an issue. It's always possible to ask a person's opinion about an issue you have, without necessarily revealing that you have that issue. They might say they wouldn't mind. If they say they would, then you know you need to tell them about it. Mostly it's a matter of airing the subject.

One form of deception that happens a lot is that a women doesn't usually like a guy to know for a fact that she fancies him. That gives him too much security and power at a point when she doesn't know him, so she can't test his mettle to see if he's strong enough to cope with a long-term relationship. She'd rather feign indifference to see whether he's strong and interested enough to step out of his comfort zone and risk a rejection. It's deceptive, and bloody awkward for the guy, especially if he doesn't know how women behave. But I never had a relationship yet when that "hard to get" thing wasn't a feature during the opening phase......even with agency dating, meeting a person who I know is probably craving a relationship, it's as if they know I've sidestepped the chasing phase, so they've played hard to get after meeting me, and it seems so ingrained into their psyches that they don't know why they did it.....but as long as I've obliged them by chasing them enough, they stop messing me about....I used to think "she'll do this kind of crap on me forever if I form a relationship with her" but they don't.....it's just a selection tool, a one-off.


OK.....but your comments are welcome, and I've enjoyed trying to answer them.

When a woman blows hot and cold, I think it's usually a sign that she feels more than platonic, though there is some chance that she's just reacting to outside influences. These days I don't question it too much......I take it as a kind of encouragement (albeit a weird one), and I think it usually subsides if I nail my colours to the mast and show her that I'm really interested (without being invasive). But it's more difficult if you only want a platonic friendship. If the woman is interested in men for the usual reasons, a platonic opposite-sex friendship can become an embarrassment and a put-off for men who are sexually interested in her. She may be cool with that and want to hang onto you regardless, but it's better to discuss it than to guess. Last time I did that, I lost the friendship (she never contacted me again), which I take to mean that she wanted more from me than the platonic thing I was prepared to do, and understood that we were holding each other back. I wish she'd told me that before she vanished.....I think she was probably hiding behind our platonic state when she wanted more (we had previously both said we wanted a relationship with each other but I'd decided against that eventually), and when I spelled out the likely consequenses of our association (jealousy and conflict if either of us got a partner), she didn't like the openness....either that or she got the point, but she never said so.


That seems a weird way for her to react. If she liked you enough to notice and be upset when you cut back on the speed of your replies, she was cutting off her nose to spite her face. Perhaps she was trying to make you feel like she'd felt when you didn't reply quickly enough....but a much more adult response would have been to talk about it without being hostile. Still, I don't know that was the only thing wrong between you, so maybe that was just the trigger, and the anger was building up about other stuff.


Maybe your friends were feeling jealous? It's always good advice to keep a new friendship in perspective and to avoid getting in over your head until you know the person reasonably well, but if somebody finds a person who they can really open up to, when they can't open up to anybody else, it's a rare human being who can avoid gravitating towards such a friendly, listening ear. Listening well is pretty much the most important part of friendships, relationships and marriages.


I don't know the order of events........but now she has a boyfriend, yes he's likely to feel uncomfortable about opposite-sex friendships, and she's probably wise to let you go. I gather that opposite-sex friendships are usually OK for those in a relationship, but there are severe limits on the amount of intimacy a partner can have with such a friend, and I guess talking deeply with them on a one-to-one basis would normally be a threat to the other partner. I'd never try to completely remove a partner's opposite-sex friends from her, but I would expect such friends to be relegated to fairly trivial positions in her life. I've had to cut back with my female friends when I've been in relationships, e.g. one I was emailing a lot, we'd never met and she was so far away that we weren't likely to meet, so I was pretty safe from having an afffair with her, but our sheer closeness was unacceptable in the new context of my having a relationship, so she had to go.


But it was her fault that she chose to axe you for not replying immediately to her messages. Just because a close friendship ends, it doesn't mean that you did anything particularly wrong. You don't seem to have been a complete skunk to her by any means, so she was out of line to blame you 100% for the split, and that suggests that she isn't particularly mature. It's just sad that you lost your good listener, and that you'll probably never know why she left. People are often confused themselves about why they have to go. I was once told that it was because our town was too racist .....and I felt deeply insulted and hurt that she'd quit on me without giving me the real reasons. So I can only have my own theories on why she left, so I have to learn from my guesswork how to do better next time. It sucks.


Of course you do. The experience will probably have undermined your self-confidence. Any loss will likely do that, if you can be seen as having helepd to cause that loss. But if you found one good listener, there must be more out there. So you will probably have to wait a while, and that will be painful and scary, but I expect you'll find somebody else sooner or later.


Remember that she had a hand in this mess, and that she hasn't bothered to tell you anything useful about what you might have done that caused her to leave. I don't know the order of events, but if she got that boyfriend while she was still so close to you, then that too was weak of her. I would try hard to throw off that guilt you feel, by telling myself such things, and remembering that nobody worthwhile would be so nasty to me just because of a slight delay in my replies. I think you've had the blame fobbed off onto you as if she were perfect or something. I'd focus on that if I were you. I'd also ask myself what I feel so guilty about.......as far as I can see, the answer is "nothing." It's just her words that you're taking as gospel truth, but the truth of it is, she failed to back it up with any substance at all, and I suspect that the reason why she failed is because there is no substance to her remark.

But: I'm reading a lot into a small amount of information....so take my advice with a pinch of salt if you know relevent stuff that I don't. I hope you feel better soon and feel willing to try again....time is a good healer.

Similar, I actually forgive quite easily, but if what you did really had an impact on me, I will *never* forget, and I will play nice with you but if there is a 2nd offense, you are BEYOND dead to me. lol.

Also, though, most things don't have much of an impact on me and I forget the past quite easily, for the most part.

The few things that do, really do, I guess.

Thanks ToughDiamond for your replies, I appreciate it, I am trying to think in a positive way of how this incident has helped me to realize that I may have my own issues in terms of reading social cues or social communication with others, such as unable to explain the way why I treat her so closely and perhaps it causes some misunderstandings to her and has affected her life in some degree hence the reason why she forgo this friendship, I think it is hard for NT to understand how rare is it for people with difficulties in social interaction to find someone that they can open up to.