Hey dis, are you a pack-rat by nature? a hoarder? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just curious...

Used to be...after the previous relationship went south and I found myself carrying armfuls of crap out to the dumpster, I've been a lot more selective about how much stuff I keep around.

Why do you ask?

because I'm a packrat type and way back when I was dating I found the clean break thing hard

I think this is less me being sentimental and more being a romantic sap. It's hard to let go after spending so much time soul-searching trying to figure out if she was the right one.

But, I've got creeping thoughts around the periphery like "You sure it's not because you hope she comes back and you can be happy so you don't have to take all those dating risks again?"

dis, I think if you have to do soul searching to figure out if she's the right one, maybe she's not.

Of course, this is coming from someone who was engaged twice before being married on the third go. lol

I was the one kid in elementary school whose parents were divorced. It was something I grew up with and a central theme to a lot of my early life. So I told myself "If I'm going to go down that road, I'm going to do it right, and hopefully only once."

So in that context, I thought serious consideration was necessary first, and I don't think it's that much of a symptom for the way this one went down. (Though maybe a symptom of my greater sense of being screwed-up in relationships in general.)

heheheee, I'm a packrat because I'm lazy and I hate anything domestic-like. :p

Seriously, I still have boxes of crap at my ex-h's house. Eh...it'll keep. When I die it will be a veritable treasure trove of college papers, pictures, cookbooks (double HA)...put it all in a time capsule and let the people of the future know that we didn't have a Rosie the Robot to clean up after our dumbasses!

ssssshhhhh. people will cotton on it's my undomesticity rather than eccentricity -I think I currently still have them fooled. a little.

lol. We musthave been separated at birth.

So dis...how're things going for you now?

I've not heard anything from her.

I'm currently working on the "Grand Unified Theory of WTF? What Happened", and I think my current working model is this:

Her parents' relationship is screwed up. Her mother dealt with it by being super-religious, her father dealt with it by starting a different family. Even though she's getting close to 30, her longest romantic relationship before this one was six months. As much as she's got herself convinced that she understands everything, I'm of the mind that there's some things you just can't read from books, you've got to live them.

Not that I'm any sort of expert, but it's one thing to read about love and another to experience it.

So the big theory right now is this: She didn't understand how the relationship would change once she broached the idea of being chaste. So while I was thinking we were working towards one thing, I became "just a friend" in her mind. So faced with the solidity of a proposal, she freaks out thinking about being committed to "just a friend", and retreats. Her primary source of advice being her mother (who hasn't really had much in the way of adult relationships outside of being committed to her religious belief) and her divorced friends, I'm sure it's been tilted towards not actually communicating.

But I don't know, not having heard anything, I'm filling in with speculation.

For me, I started the countdown clock. I'm going to be a weird guy for a bit, and maybe at the end of the summer I'll think about dating again. It's a good time for me to clean my own house.

-dis

Well hang in there dis. Sounds like you're doing ok, and that's good.

Maybe you could try redecorating.

zengun: clearly, because I need to find ways to be more repellent towards other people =)