Around the start of this year, I moved to Japan. Due to that, I had to enroll in a school, of course. Since I joined halfway through the academic year, I didn't attend the opening ceremony business like everybody else, I was just given a quick entrance exam and an orientation with things like introducing me to my potential classmates and a tour of the school. During the "introducing to the classmates" part of the thing, I was by myself, my parents both talking with teachers and what not. Since my orientation was on a school day, everyone was all in their different classes, and I followed my guide (a teacher) around. It was break time, so we ran into a few students here and there that were from my class, and I greeted them as casually as I usually do, with a sprinkle of good manners, as per social etiquette. Near the end, though, I was brought into a classroom with only a handful of students - four or five, probably. It was the EAL (English as Additional Language) class, for the less capable English speakers. In that classroom, there was a girl that caught my eye.
She was wearing a medical mask - not an uncommon practise in Japan if you have a cold or similar - but even so, her figure, posture, hair, skin colour, everything I saw about her physical appearance was flawless. We shook hands, and even that was attractive.
Okay, let's move aside the fact that your reason for meeting her was totally shallow. Let's talk about... why was she interested in you? What traits do you you that make you appealing to the opposite sex? What physical traits, what mental (skills and such), and what others like honesty or kindness?
Afterwards I left the school to go back home, and then come back when the term starts after Winter vacation. Throughout the while, I often caught myself analysing her through the corner of my eye, and began becoming attached to her. While not exactly friends with her, the friends I had made were on reasonably good terms with her, and we had a little indirect contact and conversation from time to time. I discovered she liked anime, which was great. I did as well. One of her favourite series was even one of mine. While the two of us didn't directly communicate all too often, we were no longer total strangers.
Fair enough, common interests are good.
The next step was realising that I was falling for her. I began to think about her more often than my other female classmates, and this soon became an
obsession. I spent hours conversing with one of my closest friends from Australia every now and then to discuss the possibility of her having a boyfriend, and me becoming hers. I saw things like a keychain with a male's face on it attached to her bag - her boyfriend, perhaps? I discovered that it was an idol. I saw her lending her boots to this other guy at our school for fun, during a school social - her boyfriend, perhaps? No, it turned out to be nothing more than the guy being pretty stupid. Through group Skype calls with her and one or two others, one night the topic of discussion was past *gag* relationships. Through indirect questions and others asking, I discovered that she currently did not have a boyfriend, much to my pleasure. I also discovered though, that she also happened to have around six previous boyfriends, much to my dismay.
Moving past the poor choice of words (obsession is the desire not to love, but to own another person), there's a bigger problem. And that's your jealousy. What if I told you that very girl was one of my former girlfriends?
Despite that though, I told one of my more trustworthy friends about my "situation", and he was all for helping me out. He didn't really do anything, but just by having him knowing the situation, it would be extremely demeaning to back down. Perhaps that was my own way of forcing myself into a corner. In any case, I'd managed to work up the courage and ask her out. She was shocked, at first - we barely knew each other. After gathering her thoughts, she told me to give her some time to consider. I agreed, and we went off, and resumed our previous relationship (proper usage of the word) until a few days later.
Dammit, why is it always about the guy making the first move? If she doesn't want him, he's a jerk but part of being "polite" is to humor him. Or there's the chance you work all that nerve, and get shot down. Show some initiative here girl, much like me, many guys wonder if the girl is even into him.
Being anxious and nervous, three or four days after I'd agreed to give her a week to consider, I called her out after school. I was afraid that she would turn me down, and that asking me to wait was just a polite way of declining. I told her that I thought so, that if she didn't want to, she should just say so. If she wasn't going to decline me immediately then and there, I was willing to give her the rest of the week to continue pondering. To my surprise, however, she said "actually, I will go out with you." There was one condition, though. She told me that she would agree to be my girlfriend, but she didn't have any feelings of love for me at that point in time. Euphoria taking me over, I agreed and said "then I'll have to work hard to make you love me."
Oh God. Look, she wanted to do what would be effectively called a "pocket veto" (that is wait around long enough to say no without actually needing the guts to say no, just by hoping you'd figure, rightly that she wasn't into you). So then you force a confrontation, and she has no choice but to say yes or somehow work up the nerve to say no (based on these underhanded things with FB and skype, I don't think she has any of that). "I will go out with you, but I don't have any feelings of love (at this point in time)" means just that, without the parentheses. This is not to say she hates you, so far anyway, but it is to say that there's nothing there beyond common interests. The only hope of changing her mind is... well, her. The decision to loves you comes from her. You could have just said "Okay, that'll have to do (at this point in time)" or something. Instead, you said you'll work hard to "make her love you." Make? Are you even listening to yourself?
For the next three months, our relationship was
pretty awkward. We were never able to converse properly, partially because we didn't have much to talk about, and partially because she didn't even make an effort when I tried to talk to her. This wasn't all the time, though - sometimes we could manage to call over Skype for hours. But most of the time, we never really talked much. I asked her out once, and we went to the movies. She seemed really tired and bored that day, but when I asked about it, she kept assuring me that she had fun. I didn't really believe it, but I kept my mouth shut at that point. We never really went out again, with just the two of us after that one "date". We did go on a, I suppose you could call it a double date, but it took a lot of convincing for that to happen. She also invited me to dinner with her friends once, but that was only because they were all going in couples. Overall, the relationship wasn't that great, but I didn't mind too much. She was my first girlfriend and I (possibly wrongly) treasured that.
If you've been reading above, you might be starting to see how "pretty" is an understatement. My sis once told me, that I didn't really love the person, I loved being in love. Overall, I'd say your relationship wasn't a relationship. It was a friendship that you turned into a dating scene because you were trying really hard to get her to love you. The talking slowed to a crawl right after you proposed this plan? Perhaps what you should've talked about instead was this awkwardness, and how you thought it'd be fun to have her as a gf, but it seems like you pushed too hard. Just being aware that you're coming on a bit strong is way better than trying to act like everything's fine.
Over time, our relationship grew more and more iffy, and we got into occasional small scale disagreements, which are mostly because she just randomly picked times to ignore me for no reason. One time, we got into a slightly more intense argument, after which she didn't tell me she'd break up with me, but she did change her Facebook's relationship status to single. Cowardly and sneaky, but it sent the message. She was a total ***** for the next couple of days, but then afterwards she messaged me back and we started talking again. I asked her how she felt breaking up with me, and she said she just felt really sad. She asked me if I would continue being her boyfriend again, to which I agreed. At the time, I had the mindset that I truly loved her, and truly wanted her to be in my future.
Now this is when things get weird. Luckily, I have a frame of reference. This one girl in college I knew was on and off again, whenever I got too close I had to tell myself (and her) that it was better to try just being friends. Of course, everyone here knows I have poor impulse control, so that usually lasted for about two weeks, and then I needed to apologize for being too obsessive. I think this is the key, she wants you around, cause you're fun to talk with, but you don't really either know what you want from being around her, or perhaps don't want quite the same thing.
Again, after a while, she asked me to break up again, right after the Summer holidays started. She didn't break up with me, she
asked me to break up. I told her that if she really wanted to, then I wouldn't argue. And so she did. A few days after that, we were still messaging fine, like normal friends, but maybe I was too clingy or still acting like she was my girlfriend. I'm not sure, but she'd since never come on Skype. She'd also deleted me off Facebook, though she'd done this multiple times throughout our boyfriend/girlfriend term.
So, yea, as a result, more of the same. Figure out what she wants, and just go with it.
From then 'til now, near the end of the Summer holidays, we haven't spoken a word to each other. I saw her come on Skype maybe twice, and stay online for a while, but then log off after a few hours, throughout the whole 3~ish months, when she normally logged in daily, which made me suspect she blocked or deleted me, and had second thoughts a couple of times. Maybe.
In any case, she wasn't really the best girlfriend. She blocked me on Facebook heaps of times, called me a stalker a bunch of times, accused me of stalking her profile on Facebook, made no effort to hide the fact that she was lusting for a bunch of other guys, both inside and outside of my school, and for the most part, treating me like ****. I kind of sucked it up, and it wasn't as bad as I depicted, but thinking back, it was pretty stupid of me to not do anything about it.
So? Have we learned anything, or are we content to blame her for problems? You are a stalker. You love women, but you don't really like them. Learn to not be a stalker. Listen to problems, get some actual female friends so you can connect better with women, and learn to listen rather than just talking all the time. The whole other boyfriends thing? If the relationship was healthy, it generally wouldn't exist. Sometimes it happens because one party is lonely, or the other has jealousy issues, or because the one is trying to make the other jealous because he/she doesn't show their feelings much. And sometimes, it's just a sign that despite what's been said, it isn't really a relationship. No point in trying to stop it then, it'd just create a scene.
You can decide this is all nonsense, and I don't blame you. But this is from two really (2-3 years each, with no progress) long term "relationships" that were further complicated by the fact that I was the second guy. You can listen at least some now, and accept some responsibility, and make some changes (maybe even still have some time to apologize and salvage the friendship, at least. The way you've been going, you'd have to try about as hard to repair things as a friendship as you were trying to win her heart). Or you can decide it's all her fault, and by the second or third time this happens to you, I'll be laughing hysterically.