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What should i do?
hello, So i'm 25 F. I was in a relationship for about 5 years. A very happy one until it got a little toxic by the end. I started dating someone new. For about 5 months and we ended things on good terms. It was a mutual breakup. My ex of 5 years wanted to meet up and talk once I was single and the convo started off really bad but by the end of the night we were laughing grabbed dinner and coffee and sat in the car talking for hours which is exactly what we used to do when we were dating. Recently we were hanging out and one thing led to another and we ended up having sex. Now this became a routine. thing once or twice a week, he calls me all the time to see how my day is going, we grab dinner... Although he keeps saying we are friends with "benefits" when i went to an event with someone the next day he was asking a whole lot of questions for someone who always says he doesnt care about what I do. That same day i sent him a text letting him know that although this is all that it us between us I do still love him despite what he thinks. He texted me back saying my words dont match my actions. When literally that same night i was out, so was he and he kept posting all these pics with other girls when i never did that. So I guess my question is.. What shoud i do? Should I just move on and leave it as is, and I dont really understand his thought process. Because we arent dating but it almost feels like we are. Help pleasee
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I will start with addressing things you said as you wrote them. You said it started Happy and ended Toxic. That is a very big difference. The only reason most people could make such a big switch is pressures outside the relationship, stress of some thing or event that happened in his life that made him go off track of who he usually is, and even then, I don't think it could be labeled toxic. However your idea of what is Toxic versus what I experienced in first marriage that truly was toxic, may be different. I don't need to know the gritty details, but without some kind of idea with examples of how he used to be and what he was like in the end, I can't really be sure when giving you my thoughts or advice.
I will say this, it is very possible that what you thought was happy in the beginning, wasn't the most healthy relationship, with issues laying just beneath the surface where you couldn't see them. Or in my case, when I married at 20, I had no life experience by which to compare his behaviors. What didn't occur to me back then as potential problems, Looking back, I know I had plenty of Red flags, warning as to his true nature. In 5 years, a person should be able to see consistancy of good behavior. An example would be if he says he is a person who is slow to anger and never yells, then you would never have seen that pop up periodically or him mysteriously change his true nature at the end to something toxic. I am thinking that whatever issues he has, there may not have been the perfect situation until later to draw those issues, and distorted thinking and behavior out of him. What I am trying to say hon, is that without some kind of reason, like a time bomb inside of him (behavior wise) waiting to explode, you would not have seen a healthy, happy relationship change so drastically.
So you dated a new person 5 months but stopped. I have no idea why, only it ended on good terms. Was it his heart longing for someone from before or perhaps your heart still having a thing for the 5 yr BF? I know nothing here. If you can end on friendly terms, the wisest guess I can make is that neither of you felt the kind of chemistry that makes the one big difference between a Romantic relationship and a friend relationship. Yes, that makes sense but I know it doesn't take 5 months, let alone 1 month to discover. When finally divorce from 1st husband and dating again, I used dating sites and those who sounded promising on line, I arranged to meet in person asap at a coffee shop. Why waste 6 mon to a yr chatting on line before meeting to find out that there is no chemistry. I will explain what chemistry is to me. I believe it is the most perfect match of pheromones between two people so they feel strong sexual attraction of each other. There is also a weak connection or none. I shot for strong attraction. One guy met me for dinner, when we met in the lobby of the restaurant and were immediately seated, we both felt nothing at all and both spoke at once saying almost the same thing like "This is not going to work, is it?" I good way to judge when there is absolutely not even a tiny bit of chemistry is when a romantic kiss feels icky like you just got it from a male relative, Dad, brother, uncle...it would feel gross. So so mediocre chemistry is when the kiss feels okay but you aren't hot for and needing and wanting the guy in your life sexually. Too many marriages are just this kind of chemistry and end up with one tiring of sex as it is no longer mind blowing and the other still wanting it so they go out and get it elsewhere.
Since your ex wanted to meet up with you after you left, if you are the one who initiated the breakup, it says he didn't want to give you up and had not gotten over you and hearing you were single again gave him hope. He would start slow, just be friends and reassure you it was nothing more than friendship with benefits. But if this is so, then he is really wanting the whole relationship thing again. And without any intervention to fix what caused him to go toxic, it will eventually come back.
If he is the one who initiated the break up, it could mean he felt something wasn't right, that maybe you too didn't have enough in common to make a real long term or life long commitment work. He may have questioned whether he even loved you or was in love with you. Men can lust for a woman as far a sex goes, but lust should not be confused with love, it is NOT the same thing. I am married and I feel the love from my 2nd husband, and also feel the lust when he can't get enough of me, is ogling me during the day, and just the look in his eyes says he is mentally undressing me already. That is lust dear.So lets say, since he hadn't met anyone, that he still wants to but doesn't like being alone, most people who had a relationship feel naked without a partner, uncomfortable, empty handed so to them, its a feeling of wanting to fill that empty spot. If he knows he is not the right person for you and he is the one who broke up, unless he has changed his mind and gone from toxic to being in love with you, then he is most likely using you to fill that empty spot for now in his life, the companionship and the sex, until he finds a girlfriend at which point he will most likely break off even the friendship because what female is okay with dating a guy who remains best friends with an ex and sees her on a regular basis...that just rarely ever happens where it is okay.
So if he seemed comfortable with you and by the end of the night you both were laughing and having a good time, it was because he is a known quantity to you and you to him. Why do people buy jeans that have been stone washed to look like and feel like an old pair of jeans? Because the old ones are way more comfortable than a new pair. Its may be a bad example but it is also true in relationships, it is scary sometimes, and uncomfortable going through the stages of a new partner and breaking them in so to speak like a pair of jeans so you can become comfortable with the over time. He and you probably felt comfortable to each other. I know what I am talking about because after the divorce, I dated a guy a short time, it didn't work out, I met others to date, no one stuck and after 18 months had gone by, he called up and wanted to meet and the friend with benefits things started. He was comfortable but not without issues. I knew I could handle them for a short while and I was in need of an apt so he said we should become roommates. We did. He was likely doing the thing of she's someone for now but he may have had ideas of making me his for good, even though I wouldn't go there. I was divorced, almost 50, and knew he wasn't the kind of man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I made it clear we were only friends. However when I had a date who came over to pick me up, he introduced himself as a friend and room mate and my date was understanding, and also totally bamboozled by my male friend who tried to make friends with him and suggested we all go out to dinner together. Well, he was a controlling person and took over that date, drinking excessively during the dinner and was stinking drunk when we got back. I only had a slight chance to whisper I was sorry to my date as the roommate went ahead to open the door. I had a talk with the roommate and told him as a roommate and acquaintance/friend, not even a close friend, he had no right to suggest or try to direct my life. That was my decision. He secretly moved out days later leaving me with a place i could not afford on my own. This and other such things are what gives me experience to speak on this subject and make my best guesses with what you did say.
So there is a chance that if once toxic and now having issues when you go out on a date with someone, he is jealous, acting too weirdly curious for now but may become controlling in behavior very soon. He may feel threatened if he was thinking of having you as his girlfriend again, even if he denies that. Guys aren't dumb you know. They won't share things that might spook a female or make her feel concern or get her upset. They will also tell her things that they feel she is ready to hear, even if its not how they feel, and will lie and say they love you when they do not.
Then again, there are males who have no idea what love really is. Some are as confused on the love/lust differences, same as females and may feel lust and so they say I love you.
So when your guy says in response to your comment that you love him, he said your words don't match your actions. A man who was simple a friend, no benefits because there is no such chemistry between him and the female, a man such as that would not ever be confused and accuse you of not really loving him, because he understands that there are many kinds of love, love for family, friends such as he, and romantic love such as in a married couple. So the fact that he feels your words don't match your actions, means he is referring to another guy going to an event with you as the action that goes against the words I love you which would only apply if you were in a committed relationship, engaged or married, neither of which he is with you. So little does he know that he just gave himself away. He let out something that tells you exactly where he stands no matter what else he says to assure you that you both are just friends. He wants to claim you as just his, belonging to him only, whether by your choice or by any force or subterfuge of his.
If he went out the same night you did and posted pics of him with other girls or just other girls, he was trying to make you jealous. After all, you were one in a relationship, so in his mind, you and he don't equal 'friends' because he has the experience of both of you being more than friends. He is only going to see you as personal girlfriend material and saying he can be friends with benefits is something he can't do and may not even be able to personally see in himself.
From my experience, a dating relationship that did not work for whatever reason, won't work suddenly as friends only, the chemistry there is for a romantic relationship so it can never be friends with benefits.
Lots of guys will agree to that however hoping that in time they can change your mind or you will change your mind and fall in love.
I will state this again--chemistry is the difference between friendship versus romantic relationship with a man. If it's not there and never has been, he can easily be just a friend and would never make moves on you. He simply would no feel compelled to or even want to.
Since there was enough chemistry for both of you for five years, he was just lying to himself, you or both when he thought he could be just friends. That or he really has no clue due to lack of life experience yet or not having read enough books on male female relationships, the do's and don'ts and how to spot and handle the differences between how the sexes act, reason things, and how they articulate stuff.
So I am saying that there is NO way that he and you could be in a friends spot if he ever felt something like chemistry for you in the past.
I will share one more thing. Before I met my husband, I was approached by a guy who said he only wanted friendship. He saw me on the dating site. I refused at first. But he explained he had taken a teaching job in that state and was from a place similar to where I used to live, we had some things in common and other than other teachers, he had no friends yet in this area, as he'd recently started his position. SO I gave in, we met and had fun hanging out as friends. HOwever, fairly quickly as time went on, he must have fallen for me, I certainly saw the desire in his eyes one day and he hadn't said a thing or made a move but by my age, I knev what a guys eyes could change to look like if he was feeling sexual desire for you. I said, "No, no no no no." He asks innocently what? And I said, we are only friends but your eyes are saying something else, that you want to be sex partners as well, thats not going to happen. He didn't argue with me and respected my boundaries even though his face told a different story. Make he learned how to hide it, or I began to feel comfortable with him as a friend, and being divorced with many months since the last time I had sex, I was going crazy, I am very sexual and wanted sex. So one day I surprised him by saying, I had decided we could be friends with benefits. He went for it. He met someone else finally at the same time I met a guy I starting dating and we broke off seeing each other totally.
Then when family issues called me back to my home state, and his dating had ended as well as mine, he wanted to see me one last time. He never said anything to let me know that he'd fallen in love with me. The chemistry was felt by him but never ever with me for him. I was simply comfortable enough knowing I could trust him to even consider being so vulnerable as being someones sex partner. When I commented on how glum he was acting he only said, "YOu should realize why by now." I thought he meant because I was leaving and he was going to miss me as a friend. However once back home, I kept in touch on Facebook and at first he wrote but then abruptly stopped after a month or two. When I asked what was up, He said he had loved me. He had even had hopes of marrying me. He truly wanted a woman to marry and settle down with because before the year was over, I was surprised to see wedding photos posted of him with a wife. So my experience is that friends with benefits can work is there is no real strong chemistry/desire for sex with ones friend. If just one person for some reason isn't in touch with their feelings or is lying or pretending for whatever reason that they feel no chemistry but can be friends with benefits even though they have had desire before and maybe have now, then it wlll not work. This is all I can say without knowing what issues drove you apart and whether those are issues that can be addressed in couple counseling or whether the differences or issues or serious enough that there really is no way it can work or should work.
With out knowing the whole story, I still feet it is best that you no longer see him if you know you don't want to spend the rest of your life with him as your mate and father to your children some day.
We've ruled out him being able to be a friend or FWB, and that leaves a romantic relationship as the only possibility. Romantic but with toxic tones can go either way, some people can be helped with seeing a mental health specialist/counselor for any issues that are toxic to the relationship as long as they willing admit they have a problem and are decicated to getting help and overcoming those issues. If theres a chance this is the situation you have and you love him as more than a FWB, then you both should consider getting help.
If however it is like my situation where a retired counselor friend told my husband he needed to see a psychologist or he may risk losing me, he actually went. But he only went to fool me into staying with him simply cus he was going to see a Dr. hoping I'd see this as a good thing as stay with him. However I heard him telling a friend on the phone that the only reason he was going was to keep me, not becuase he has a problem because he claimed he didn't have those problems so he was only going to pretend in effort to fool me. Did he think I was an idiot and wouldn't see that he wasn't making an effort to treat me better? The ex counselor friend when I told him, sat down with my husband and asked if he was in love with me. He didn't answer and only complained how terrible I was. The man asked again, the husband said he loved me for being the mother of his children. That was not an answer either. So the man told him, love for certain aspects of a person and being in love with a person are not the same thing. So finally my husband admitted he had never been in love with me. While that explained a lot about his behavior and treatment of me, I knew then that it was over, this marriage could not go on. I wanted a man who was in love with me and I found that in my second husband. Its only by all the tough stuff I lived through and experienced that I learned what to look for and to not be intimidated to ask for what I wanted, no matter how many guys said I was unreasonable. They felt that way because they knew they couldn't meet my criteria. Decide exactly what you want in a guy and what things if present in a man is a deal breaker for you no matter how well off he is or how hot looking he is. YOu have already made yourself clear with your ex/FWB but he isn't accepting that. It could be another trait that some males have, something they unconsciously do without being aware of it for a while, where they will pretend to be friends, ask for more, like friends with benefits which in a shrewd way is getting exactly what a man had before, the friendship and the sex. But that doesn't mean there is necessarily love for the woman. So if she begins to hang with another man, no matter what he said, in his mind as a male he has fooled himself into thinking a believing his female friend is a woman who is in love with him and in a committed relationship with him and this all only because men can be territorial over women. If any man comes nears his woman flirting, he will become distressed or angry. I said, 'his woman' whether the female wants to be or not or feels that way herself that she belongs to him. Some males have to be the alpha male, the leader, the one who gets first choice on everything, the others do not horn in and attempt to take anything away from the alpha. So he may be seeing this as other guys horning in and attempting to take you away from him which they can't do if you are just a friend. So somewhere in his mind he is mixed up or he could be a controller and those types never have lasting relationships because of their disorder.
Hopefully you understand his distorted but actual thought processes now. I agree it is best for you to walk away from him and cut off all contact, even on media.
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