Dear Bro Jo,
Thank you so much for your words of wisdom; it seriously made me feel so much better about this situation!
I have a couple of things to ask about though (sorry) but when the guy mentioned me coming on really strong I thought long and hard about what that might mean..
I'm not the type to come on strong..ever..I really should work on coming on stronger actually, or else most guys think I'm indifferent to them.
The only thing I could think of was that other people were kind of pressuring him in a way. One of our mutual friends told the guy that I was really awesome and that he should put a ring on it (I know this sounds presumptuous) but several other people (his baseball coach, some people in the ward, one of my friends) said the same thing while I was with him (and I'm not sure who said what while I wasn't with him) I didn't ask them to say this either!
The bottom line is that how is it my fault that he was being pressured by others and not by me..? Is it wrong to be like-able? (k I'm really not a brat I promise.) but for real. How does a girl fix that?
I know this is a little desperate but I really like this guy. A whole lot. And I'm not asking him to fall in love with me..(I can't predict the future! Who knows maybe its not meant to be..) I'm just asking for a chance.
Is there anything else I can do in this situation?? (I mean besides show up to all the FHE activities and Sacrament meetings looking ravishing;)) ha.
Help..?
- Confused
Dear Confused,
We can't "fix" people; we can help them, but even then only if they want our help.
And let's be honest with ourselves: you absolutely want him to fall in love with you; if you didn't there would be no reason to write me about him.
You could try talking to him and asking him what happened; I think that's a fair thing to do, but I don't know that you should waste your time.
Sister Jo is a HUGE advocate of showing up, looking ravishing, and making him regret he ever blew it with you. But she's also right when she says that even if you didn't come on too strong (and I believe that's the case), the response to someone who has freaked out about feeling pressured is never positive if you pressure them more.
You had a chance, and so did he. As great as he may be, he wasn't smart enough to realize it at the time, so you need to move on and make him regret it.
Then and only then will there be a chance he'll come around.
And if he does, you frankly may not care.
And THAT'S the position you want to be in.
- Bro Jo
Okay, I have to respond because I am growing weary of your tendency to castigate all men who reject women as idiots. This guy you call stupid for rejecting a girl who "came on too strong" - or for that matter, any other reason - may not be as stupid as you think. Maybe, just maybe, he might have a perfectly valid reason for leaving her. I write this because these past two letters could have easily been written by my ex-girlfriend.
ReplyDelete(As an aside, I know your writer is NOT her because of the ages mentioned, but the sentiment sounds eerily similar.)
The back story - I met my ex at church, where she developed a crush pretty rapidly. I didn't realise it at first until she showed up at a Sunday dinner group I was hosting with a mutual friend. We hit it off and I asked her out. Before the date happened, she brought me treats, we hung out, and things moved fast, so much so that we'd kissed at the end of Date #1 and had Date #2 planned for the next week. After going out nearly six times in two weeks, she was at my house making dinner with me when she dropped the L-Bomb in my kitchen. I realised that two weeks was WAAAYY too early for that and pretty much had a soft break-up on the spot, citing the need to take things slower. She didn't take it well and blew my phone up with angry texts and voice messages for the next two days.
At this point, I'm sure that had I written you, you've called me an idiot and told me to crawl back to her begging to be taken back.
We cooled off, I waited a couple weeks, and then we reconnected. While we didn't cross any major boundaries, things got physical pretty fast and then one night, she started telling me about her sexual history and pressuring me to have sex with her, telling me that I wasn't mentally healthy if I someday ended up a thirty-year-old virgin.
I walked out the door and refused to speak to her ever again, blocking her calls, ignoring her texts, and avoiding her at church.
Did I do the right thing? You bet I did; the Spirit and two blessings confirmed this to me. I had a inkling when I first called things off that the direction this relationship was going wasn't healthy, but I couldn't quite explain it at the time. In retrospect, all the red flags were there, but if you'd asked me the night she professed her love for me why I was walking out on her, I'm not sure I could produce my rationale for it, other than I knew it wasn't right. My intuition was, later on, proven to be quite correct.
While I don't think your writer (or even most of your female writers) are behaving like this to the guys that won't stay with them, you need to realise and be a touch more compassionate to those men who - just maybe - might not be so stupid after all. He might have a justifiable reason for breaking up that, if you took the time to hear it instead of assuming all kinds of malicious intent or ignorance, you wouldn't say another demeaning word.