What should I do?

Hi @amcee,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Not sure if you still frequent this page, but just an update! No contact is done, and we have brief conversations here and there, but nothing too drastic or forced. I’ll keep you up to date since we last spoke.

I messaged her because I knew she was finished work at this time, she has the winter break now so I’m sure that she has more time to relax. Long story short, I asked her how her work was and she said she didn’t feel like typing it out, so that gave me an opening to ask her if she was open to meeting up the next little while to catch up and whatnot. She was very reluctant and even told me that she didn’t think that she was ready to meet up yet. I’m not sure what that meant though, because she was the one who initiated the break up and everything, and yet she seems super down in the dumps still. Although I really wanted to, I respected her decision and told her I’d respect whatever time and space she needed before we could approach each other again. I told her to keep me posted whenever she felt ready and she said okay thanks.

Fast forward a week later, she messages me out of the blue and asks me what my schedule is like. We let each other know what our free time was and even made plans to meet up a couple of days after Christmas so we could just catch up and talk to each other. We made plans to have lunch and we both have plans after so there’s definitely a time limit between how long we can spend with each other. I don’t want things to be super awkward when we talk so I definitely want it to be within a certain time frame or else it’ll get boring.

Fast forward to the day before Christmas Eve, I got her a Christmas present and I told her that I had to drop by Christmas Eve. When she questioned why, I just stayed mum because I didn’t want to give the surprise away. She agreed to meet up by her place, and I felt like at this point, I’m pretty sure she knew it was going to be a present.

I briefly met up with her and gave her the Christmas present. She looked at me confused and asked, “why did you buy me a Christmas present?” I told her that Christmas was in the spirit of giving. After that comment, it turns out that she had some truffles for me and my family in exchange as well. Now I’m not sure if she’s had it for me all along, or she kinda expected that I got her a present from the previous conversation we had and she had no time to get me a present. Regardless, I just felt it was great to be able to speak in person and feel good again. After saying our thanks, she was about to turn and leave, but I initiated the universal hug sign with my arms out before leaving, and she obliged. We had a full on hug for at least 15-20 seconds before she pulled away. We said our thanks again and went our separate ways.

The next day, she messaged me stating how much she loved her present and said she appreciated the gift. We exchanged our formalities and gratitude and kind of just stopped talking after that.

All in all, I feel like it’s a good step towards the process. It does seem like she’s more open to talk now, albeit sorta more formal than friend-like. We will see what happens tomorrow after the lunch plan. I’ll update you when there’s more!

How are you doing though? Everything good on your part still? Any updates? I look forward to hearing from you again.

-kneechan

@amcee Thank you for listening! I’m glad to see you are still here and well. I understand she’s not ready, but I also don’t know if she wants to get back together. We were supposed to meet up a couple of days ago, but she wanted to reschedule the day of. Story behind this: The day before, we were expecting a snowstorm, so she said she may have to reschedule if the weather gets too bad. I felt like it was a good enough reason, as I would want to put her safety first anyway. Anyhow, the day comes, and we have no snow. The sky is clear and the roads seem fine. She messages me two hours before the meet up that she still wanted to reschedule. I tell her that it’s okay and asked her if everything was fine, and she told me that she thinks she’s just exhausted from shovelling snow the night before.

In my opinion, I think it’s disrespectful to me that she would give me such a BS excuse. I asked myself if I would accept that reasoning if it was given to me by my friend, and I would call BS on it immediately. If the weather was crap outside and was unsafe to drive in, I would understand. But for her to tell me that she’s just exhausted tells me she’s making no effort to try to see me. She couldn’t even put in the effort to make up a better excuse! Is there another way I can look at this that could justify why she wanted to reschedule? The only thing I can think of is because she has plans to go shopping with family after our lunch, she would not have enough time to go shop afterwards. But if that was the case, why can’t she just be honest with me and tell me that she just doesn’t feel like meeting up? Anyway, we rescheduled for lunch in a couple of days, and here’s hoping that she won’t try and reschedule again as we are expecting a snowstorm during the weekend. I’m going to try to make the conversation nice and light so we can just learn to talk to each other normally again!

Thanks for your update though, I’m very glad to see there’s improvement since the time we spoke! I know it’ll be hard to get past the religious background of the parents, but if you guys are truly in love with each other, the only people that matters are the both of you. It seems like you have a blueprint of your life, it’s just a matter of following through with the blueprint as we go along. I also pray for you to get back with her as soon as possible, along with a much stronger bond between the two of you! 🙂

Hi @amcee, thank you for the reassurance! I know this rescheduling is more of an emotional reaction than a logical one, but it’s just so hard to think logically when I don’t know what she’s thinking about. I’ve taken the past couple of days to recuperate and gather my thoughts. We rescheduled to eat lunch a couple of days ago, but it started to snow really hard the day before. I messaged her and asked her if she wanted to reschedule because I didn’t want her to be slipping and sliding all over the roads due to the snow. She obliged and we rescheduled for next week. All in all, this feels like it’ll give her more time to process her thoughts and hopefully get her more emotionally intact before we meet up.

I’m not entirely sure about making her something for the new year though. I feel like if I do that, it’ll imply I want to get back (Not that I don’t want to), but I want to just take this meeting as a means of getting us comfortable with each other again. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, I want to wow her, but at the same time, I don’t want to push her away by giving her thoughts of reconciliation when I haven’t even met up with her since the break up.

I really hope this progress is going better than expected, talking so formally with her every now and then makes me cringe sometimes because I know that’s how you would speak to an acquaintance, but not a friend. I’ve been improving myself, but she hasn’t been able to see it because I have yet to see her. Hopefully by the time I see her, we’ll be able to convey what we’ve both been doing to get better.

Hi @amcee, just wanted to give you an update on what’s been happening.

We finally went for our dinner a couple of days ago. So basically, she was still very timid and awkward during the beginning of the dinner. It felt like I did a lot more talking than she did. She started warming up nearing the latter half, but I felt like she was super hesitant in speaking. I basically told her how I’ve been doing and what I’ve been up to, and when I asked her about what she’s been up to, she kinda just said “not much”. And I was like, what do you mean not much? And she’s like =T just work, school, sports, hanging out with friends and family. It didn’t seem like she wanted to let me know what’s up with her for whatever reason, either that, or she actually didn’t do much.

So the first thing she wanted to tell me about was the fact that her parents bought her a new phone and she didn’t need to use the phone I gave her anymore, but she knows someone who might want to buy it, so I told her she can decide what to do with it. During the dinner, we were both not very hungry. I think we were both nervous, because she mentioned she didn’t eat lunch either but she wasn’t feeling hungry regardless. She keeps waking up at 2AM and I know that when she’s stressed over things, she wakes up in the middle of the night. After the dinner, she tells me she feels bad that she still had some of my things, so she packed it in a bag and she gave it back to me. I feel that is fair, because I felt like she didn’t want to be constantly reminded of me anyway, if she wanted time and space to herself (I think it’s the similar reason for the phone too, but I’m not gonna say anything).

Then she tells me she also has a gift for me. I was like a gift? What is it?
She says, umm I don’t know, you’ll find out! You like surprises anyway. So we get out to her car, where she has the bag of stuff. In the bag of stuff, she pulls out a small bag and in the small bag was the video game she preordered for me a couple of months ago. Logically speaking, if it were me, I would’ve returned it long ago, because the preorder was around $90. Whatever the reason is, laziness or just because she knew I wanted it, she gave it to me. I felt bad so I asked if I could just pay for it, because I knew how expensive it was. And she goes, why do you feel bad? It’s a gift. If it makes you feel better, think of it as a christmas present. I was so scared that you would’ve bought it yourself. I told her I was going to, but instead I decided to buy another game. So after that, I initiated a hug and we had a good 15-20sec hug. My head was on hers, her chin was on my shoulder, and then we let go, and she says I’m glad to hear you’re doing so well for yourself. I said thanks, I will message you sometime soon, and then we went our separate ways.

I feel like she’s trying her hardest to clear her mind of me, and by getting rid of the things that remind her of me, it helps her process. At this point, I don’t know what to think. I feel like she still has feelings for me, but she is such a career driven person that she knows it’s not the best for her. It hurts me to see her not be herself when she’s around me, and I don’t know what to do. I want her to be happy, and I want her to truly live her life to her fullest potential. I don’t want me to be the reason that’s holding her down. Despite knowing that I’ve matured and learned from the past, she doesn’t know that. I’m definitely not perfect, but I’m willing to learn to get better. I don’t know where to go from here, but I definitely want to approach her soon to clear up the tension. I want to ask her what she plans to accomplish because I don’t feel like this awkwardness between us is healthy. Is it selfish of me to ask to clear some of the doubts in my mind? What’s your opinion on our meet up?

I look forward to hearing from you soon,
Kneechan

Hi @amcee, yes, it has been quite disheartening to know that she’s trying to move on from me. We haven’t spoken since the meet up and I’m not so sure I should start a conversation if it’s going to end up with me being ignored after a couple of exchanges.

I think the gift thing was a positive also. I do have a small gift for her but I am unsure as to when to give it to her or when to approach her. As we haven’t spoken since, I don’t know how to go about this. If I don’t try to clear the air, how am I supposed to act around her when she’s acting like a stranger? If we make things clear, wouldn’t that set up the floor for us to start becoming more comfortable? Or by not making things clear, the vagueness would allow for us to unconsciously become more comfortable?

I want to try to be the best friend that I can…but if I can’t even approach her without feeling like I’m a stranger to her, how does that even work? If I wait too long, won’t she just eventually forget about me?