He Needs More Experience
Important note of the day:
The Globe has a new system for leaving comments. This affects us at Love Letters, so pay attention.
The good news: You won’t have to wait for your comments to be approved. They’ll post immediately — and will be taken down after the fact if they contain bad words. That’s very good for us. No more delays.
The bad news: You will have to register for the new system with your Love Letters commenter name in order for it to show up. When you log on to the system for the first time, you’ll have to choose the right screen name. Meaning — if you’re Sally, choose “Sally” as your screen name. If you’re Rico, log Rico in as Rico. I know it’s annoying, but you’ll only have to do this once.
It’s the same system used for leaving comments on Globe stories, so if you already have a screen name for those comments, and you use a different name on Love Letters, you may have to sign up a separate account to switch to your regular Love Letters name.
I hope that makes sense.
I know the login thing is a little irritating – but again, it’s a one-time thing, and once you’re done, you’re set up for life.
They told me last night that the system is kicking in sometime today. I’m not exactly sure when. You’ll know when it happens.
Hang in there with it. It’s new to me, too. And if you have any problems whatsoever – if you can’t login appropriately as your Love Letters self and you need help – email me at [email protected]. Techies and I will come to the rescue.
Now … back to work:
Q. This is long but shortening it doesn’t seem possible so …
My boyfriend and I have been dating for three years. We’re both extremely happy in our relationship and imagine ourselves being together forever. We rarely fight (we’re good at talking things out before it gets to fight status) and are just an all around great couple. We both marvel at how good we are together.
History: We met right at the beginning of college. While I had relationships in high school, the bf did not. When we first started dating, I was aware enough to state that he might want to date other people, since it was an experience I wouldn’t ever want him to regret not having on the off chance we ended up wanting to spend forever together. Of course, being in love for the first time and happy etc, he wanted to commit and so we did, and we’ve been together ever since.
The Problem: He recently attended a party alone and a cute young underclasswoman made it very clear she was into him. The bf was heavy until his last year of high school so he’s always been very insecure about his looks/social skills (he’s gorgeous and super charming, though, and I tell him this often) and this was something that he hadn’t ever really had girls do. He didn’t tell her that he had a girlfriend, invited her to another party I wouldn’t be at, and continued to text her over the next few days.
Nothing physical happened even though it could have (I trust this) and he told me about it the day after the second party. He was very honest and sorry and tried to explain why he did it. There have been lots of tearful talks since then about our future.
Obviously I’m really hurt about the entire thing and we’re both really shaken up. It’s made him realize that he’s missed out on something, and he explained it as a feeling of happiness that I can’t give to him. The self-esteem boost that comes with someone being into you and the whole chase and mystery of impressing someone new coupled with the carefree-ness of not having any responsibilities — basically the excitement of the single life. But at the same time, he’s happy with what we have and doesn’t want to give that up. He described the thought of not being together as devastating and something that he’d regret forever.
This is our last year of college and I understand his feelings. I don’t want him to live the rest of his life regretting that we were together and resenting me for standing in the way of him being able to experience these things. I’ve tried to work out compromises, talked about taking a break, trying to figure out a way to let him do this while staying together, but none of what I can come up with works. The bf is convinced that this is a lose-lose situation. He doesn’t want to hurt me by pursuing other girls and we’re both afraid that a break would just end up turning into a break-up.
So, we don’t know what to do. I know that anything he did with other girls would haunt me (even if it wasn’t physical) and I’m not sure how to get through this without resenting him for wanting it, even though I can completely empathize with his feelings. We’re both suffering some pretty heavy emotional damage through this whole thing, but the one thing we’re both sure of is that we love each other and want to be together, we just don’t know how to reconcile that with his wanting to experience the single life.
I feel like it’s more his decision than mine, but understand that it’s a lot of pressure to put on him. I’m trying to let him lean on me and to minimize his pain as much as possible, but it’s really hard when I don’t have the answers and am hurting pretty badly myself. I don’t want to lose him but I don’t want him to resent me or regret this either. I just don’t know what to do.
Sorry it’s long, but any advice you could give would be so appreciated.
– Out of Answers, New York
A. OOA, you know what you have to do. You have to let him fly free.
But know this — if you’re not ready to let him go right this second, that’s OK. At your age, you don’t have to be ready for anything. There’s no rush to break up or stay together. There’s no rush to do anything you’re not sure about.
If he wants to leave, fine. Start the process and begin leaning on your platonic friends. But if you can’t stomach the thought of parting ways — and he can’t either — don’t do it right now. Take it day-by-day until the right thing to do becomes so obvious that it smacks you both in the face. Maybe he’ll go to another party and need to be single. Or maybe you’ll go to a party and need to be single. Or maybe he’ll be so upset about the thought of life without you that he’ll want to give up on these new experiences. Usually, emotions hit a tipping point and all of a sudden, the right thing to do becomes so clear you don’t have to feel insecure about it.
In the meantime, it’s purgatory, but that’s your age. Sorry.
I wish there were a time machine for traveling to the past to get more life experience — or for traveling to the future to know what you want. But there’s no flux capacitor for love. Not yet. And timing is everything, sadly.
My advice is: stop debating and take it day-by-day until one (or both) of you can’t deny your wants and needs.
Readers? Is this an inevitable break-up? Is there any way around it? Is this just a college problem? Am I right to say they should just ride it out until they’re ready, based on age — or is that just extending the misery? Share here.
– Meredith
Be civil. Be kind.
Read our full community guidelines.To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address