Is my situation doomed? Or is there still hope?

Hi guys,

First of all, my name is Rich, from the U.K. Thanks for having me on the forums.
Secondly, I really need some help/advice. My situation is looking like it’s doomed but I’m persistent and I want to salvage any hope I can/if I can.

So almost two years ago, I met a girl online – we started chatting and it went really well. She’s from Australia and had just been to the U.K. and had only just left. We continued the rest of the year talking, chatting and geting to know each other really well. We did this up until she came back to the U.K. toward the end of the year and spent almost a whole month spending time with another. I could tell she was really into me but I was insecure about possibly entering a relationship through fear of things that had happened in the past and I foolishly believed I should be pursuing my own goals and making myself happy before I commit to someone – completely overlooking the fact that she didn’t care about that. She was actually the perfect person to be with whilst I worked on myself and didn’t care that I wasn’t from a lucrative background or that I had issues with anxiety. After she went back home, we carried on the same, conversing in a definitely more than platonic way. The following year, she came back to the U.K. and stayed with me for a month or so in the summer of 2017. She met my family and friends, it was a really good time. At the end of her trip she said to me that she’d never wanted to be in a long distance relationship with anyone. Ever. But she was willing to try one with me if I felt the same. I realise now that I did start to feel more for her then but I was really struggling with anxiety, insecurity and depression etc. and I still felt like I couldn’t enter anything serious. Not just with her, with anyone. I felt like I had to spend my time working on my music, pursuing my own goals and ambitions and improve myself before I ever commited to anyone. She was upset and went home but again, we carried on talking when we could, flirting, and conversing in a more than platonic way. The following year in May of 2018, she came back to the U.K. for a long extended trip until the end of the year. She stayed with me for a couple of months, but I was in a much worse way. I was on all different types of medication, I was up and down, I was frustrated with my music and felt like I needed to be alone to work on myself. So she moved out of my place after just over a month and rented a room closer to London. We still spent the weekends seeing each other, hanging out and sleeping with one another. One weekend, she took a short trip to Vienna to see family and then that’s when I realised that I had made a huge mistake. She didn’t care about any of my issues, never really having enough money – she just liked me for me. So when she came back, we met up, I cooked for her and I said to her I’d made a huge mistake and I wanted to date her properly if she’d let me. She was really touched but said she had a permanent job lined up back in Melbourne without any annual leave for a year and she wasn’t sure how it would work. I asked her if she’d think about it. We carried on being intimate and meeting when we could. However, a couple weeks later, she started to give me mixed signals. We were still being intimate with one another but she eventually confessed that she had started to date other people. Our intimacy started to become less and less frequent at that point – she said she still liked me but wasn’t sure if she did as much as before. I started to panic and became a bit needy, trying to talk whenever we could. One night after we had dinner and slept together, she confessed that she had been dating some guy who’s a doctor. She said he had pissed her off on the first date with something he said to her which made me feel a bit better but it began to make me panic more, the fact that she had mentioned someone very specific this time. Our chemistry became less and less, most defintiely because of the way I had acted before and because there was someone new in the picture. She eventually told me she had begun dating him repeatedly – when I asked if she was in a relationship with him, she said she didn’t know. She then went back to Australia for a month in October for a wedding with a plan to come back to the U.K. from Nov 2018 to February this year. She asked if she could stay at mine this time, albeit on the couch as she had obviously moved on. I said yes. However, a lot of my friends told me it was a huge recipe for disaster and it would affect my health, especially given what I was going through before personally; having feelings for someone who doesn’t reciprocate them, if they’re around you all the time was gonna be bad news. Eventually, I messaged her and said that it probably wasn’t gonna be good for me, if she’s dating someone else she should probably be staying with him, and that she had given me mixed signals. I just didn’t understand why she was still sleeping with me and doing things with me if she had already begun to move on and see other people. She was upset, anxious and said she was relying on me, however said that if she is dating this other guy, then yeah – perhaps he should accommodate her. I hesitated and said to her that she could stay with me, I’d felt bad about how I acted and just wanted to help her have a good trip. Maybe i could salvage somethign if I was lucky.Because I was so stupid and insecure, she then turned around and said that she had begun to look for other places to stay. So obviously, she had begun staying with him. Shortly after she arrived back, we made plans to catch up and have a drink on my birthday but her BOYFRIEND didn’t want her to meet me. So she was obviously in a relationship at this point. I was crushed. Eventually we did meet for a quick drink while he was out of the country but it was quite obvious to her that I wasn’t over her at all. We met two more times in December; I took her out ahead of Chrismtas and showed her some parts of the U.K. she hadn’t seen. Her boyfriend knew I was with her as she was posting pictures of where we were on Instagram and he wasn’t responding to her messages. i could tell this made her anxious. Understandably for him – she was out and about with someone she used to be intimate with. At the end of the day, she said she would see me before she went back home in february – this never came around, probably due to ehr bofriend saying he ddin’t want her to see me again or she felt guilty about spending time with me while she had begun dating him properly. Eventually before she went, I asked her if everything was okay with her and she said she can’t talk to me as frequently as she had – she had a boyfriend and she respected him and couldn’t see or talk to someone she used to be with in one way or another as frequently. Over the coruse of the winter months, she was uploading pictures on her Instagram stories of both of them taking city breaks. This was horrible for me – she was obviously having more fun than she ever did with me and this guy could obviously afford to do exicting things with her, whereas I never really could. I started to foolishly compare msyelf to him – he’s a good-looking, accomplished doctor, knows more than one languages, in great shape, earns well. I’m a skinny, tattooed, musician that works in an industry that never guarantees any lucrative earning, and I had had trouble with anxiety and insecurity.

To back track a bit, afetr she had come back from Australia, when I asked her if they were in a relationship – she said neither of them wanted a long-distance relationship and they were going to date for as long as they could and call it a day when she went home. I foolishly saw this as my chance – I was gonna move back in with my parents, save some money, quit my job, and go to Australia for a year. Change my lifestyle and improve msyelf before I went, and maybe, JUST MAYBE if I got to see her, if it felt right, after some time, I would probably get to ask her out on a no-pressure date. Although, the whole time there was a voice in the back of my head – YOU KNOW she’ll get into a long-distance relationship. You know she will. She looks so happy, she’s with someone who wants to be with her whereas you let your own stuff get in the way and realised too late and she’s with someone who’s quite possibly better than you in every way. But I still did it. And I’ve finalised it all. I’ve moved back in with my folks, saved some money, bought a working Visa, insurance and flights and I’m going there in six weeks time for a whole year to explore and work. I’m actually doing it. She knows I’m coming out there and was really happy for me because she always told me to visit and enouraged myself to travel more. Even though I was crushed about not having her in my life the same way anymore and a lot less while she had fallen in love with someone else, I’d started to work on myself a bit more. I exercised more, finished my music and released a whole EP and a single to good reviews (although she’s on the cover and the songs turned out to obviously be about her; guess that’s catharsis for you) and I had started dating other people. Although I realised anyone I was sleeping with wasn’t because I genuinely wanted to, it was just a rebound in a effort for me to get over her.

Only a few weeks ago, she messaged me to see how I was doing. We caught up over a couple of messages. I was late getting back to her last one because of work and things – she read it and didn’t respond. 20 minutes later she uploaded pictures of her and her boyfriend on a city break on both Instagram and Facebook. She’s not listed on there as ‘in a relationship’ but she was obviously happy to start making it official with her posts and was clearly just checking in on me to see if I was okay before she did so. So now, we hardly talk.

I’m still going to Australia, staying with friends and working and I know it’s likely I’ll hardly see her if not at all. It’s been almost a whole year and I STILL FEEL EXACTLY THE SAME. And now, only just yesterday, she posted an Instagram story of her and her boyfriend on the beach in Bali on an exotic holiday. So now he’s obviously travelling far to see her. I was devastated so I just deleted the app off of my phone. I’m gonna try not to look at it or downlaod it again for as long as possible.

But for some reason – I feel if someone was in love with you at some point, for a fair while too even if you had your own issues, then is there even a slight percentage possibility that they could ever feel like that again? Coudl their long-distance relationship not work and would I ever be in with a shot again if she saw how different I was? If he didn’t make a good impression and pissed her off on their first date, does that mean I could ever, EVER have even the slightest chance? I’m not like this when actual relationships end but I can’t stand the fact that my insecurity got in the way and I can’t stand having not fixed something.

I know everything above looks so negative and it looks like I’m doomed – but I’m very persistent, don’t give up on things easily and I’ve been feeling exactly the same for a whole year. Can anyone pelase give me some advice on what to do, how to play this?

Thanks very much guys. Looking forward to your responses.

Thanks, Rich