Getting out of a three-year co-dependent relationship in your 20s is tough. What makes things even more complicated is when you decide to plunge right back into the dating pool after a week of your breakup.
A sad girl looking for love without really knowing what she wants may sound like something you’re going through, have gone through, and/or will go through. The following list is my pathetically pressed response to the first girl who gave me attention post-heartbreak who I now realize is the opposite of what I needed or wanted. However, what I really needed was to work on me. I should have exited the scene when she told me she “wasn’t ready for a relationship”. Instead, I ignored her needs and carried over my co-dependent habits into the new relationship. Take your time, practice self-love, self-affirmations, and just do you. Do this for you and for the next person who enters your life. Or else this may become your life…a pathetically pressed life:
- When you ask her on a date and ask her when she has time for you, she says she’ll let you know (with lots of exclamation points), but never lets you know until you ask again, again and again.
- When you have to ask her if she likes you or if she’s interested more than once. And even when she says she likes you or is interested, you can’t fully believe her.
- When she cancels brunch plans with you saying she made plans to see her friends from out of town, and then you check Instagram and she’s at a big lesbian party, smiling. You only find this out because the D.C. lesbian scene is this (-) small and Instagram has been the new Facebook.
- You’re always the one to initiate anything and everything.
- After spending 13 hours with you, she leaves to go out of town and doesn’t tell you.
- She tells you she wants to have a sleepover next week, but never follows up. (Also, who says that?)
- She says she wants to go to this hip-hop concert with you, but forgets.
- She says she wants to see you, but never has the time.
- She says she’s not evading plans but is only free on the days you’ve already said you’re busy.
- She says she’s interested but is cool with being friends first.
- You show up at the same concert and she mostly avoids you the entire time, even though you have a date scheduled the next day.
- The day after you have a dinner date, she acts like nothing happened, and gives you back your shirt she wore the other day.
- When she comes out to an event with you nothing feels right. And when it’s over, she has to run to see another person.
- You ask if she wants to see a football game and she says she might have to work but will let you know. You wait for her to let you know, and she never does.
- You plan to have dinner together but she cancels three hours beforehand saying she has to pick up stuff from her ex-girlfriend’s house instead.
- She texts you that you’re great. Great.
- When you finally reflect and realize things are going nowhere, you gather the courage to write a final text telling her how you feel about her and that you want to date her. Her response: She would like to date too, but “unfortunately cannot commit to that right now.”
Don’t let this be you.
