Is He Waiting for Me to Do or Say Something?
About five years ago, I started dating this guy and, sure enough, we fell in love. After about a year we ultimately had to call it off, amicably, because the time/distance between us just wasn’t working. We had been really close for a long time, and even after the breakup we were very vocal for many weeks about the feelings we still had for each other, but within several months of our split we quit talking regularly and he started doing hard drugs. However, after completing rehab for cocaine, and despite having a girlfriend of three years now – who hates me even though I tried to be her friend – he began contacting me every few months to say he’s sorry “for everything that happened,” that he really wants to be in touch and close again, that he misses me, and to rehash details of the “good ol’ days.” It’s all really suggestive, but he never says anything forthright about still having a thing for me, AND he never follows through with his desire to keep in contact. To this day I don’t think I’ve been able to get completely over him, and part of me wants to be with him. Recently he made one of his every-so-often calls to me and, before telling me he spent the day looking through his “me box” (with stuff from when we were dating/close, like letters and souvenirs and stuff), he told me that he had been trying several times to break up with his girlfriend but she refused. A few weeks later, he proposed to her and now they’re engaged. He just moved to Florida for a 2-year film program and she’s still here in Ohio (so much for too much distance, right?)… what gives?
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: I asked this question before, and one of my answerers made a strong argument for forgetting about this person. But before I write him off, I’d like to add a couple small details. The film program is a part of Full Sail University, so no, it isn’t a non-accredited, non-university institution. I know he’s an ex-drug addict, but that’s sort of the point…he’s an EX-addict, who DID give up coke, albeit after several “tries”, and I feel that he’s attempting to put some kind of order, some kind of initiative more importantly, into his life, and I believe him when he’s told me again and again that he wants to settle down. Yes, I believed him when he told me he tried to break up with the girl and it just didn’t fly. The girl is a miserable, stubborn psychopath, although the possibility that he can’t kick her because of simultaneous involvement with her and with drugs is legitimate, because she too struggled (continues to struggle with, actually) the drug problem, with him. I just don’t get what it is he wants from me, and I think I’ve been putting my life on hold trying to figure it out. What should I be doing or telling him? Why the other girl? By the way, I know she doesn’t deserve to be with him…I witnessed her trying to kiss another guy at a party here back home, right after she removed her engagement ring and told him that [the guy I’m asking the question about] was “in it for the long run…but I don’t think I am.” They’ve been engaged for months now, but as far as I know no wedding plans have been discussed.
One more thing that I almost completely forgot about:
(Keep in mind, throughout our entire “friendship,” I’ve reciprocated his actions of suggestiveness without admitting I still have a thing for him.) Right before their engagement happened, I told him that I was finally over him and falling in love (I wasn’t over him, but I was beginning to fall in love with someone else…it didn’t end up that way, but I was excited at first) because I thought that’s what he wanted, for me to be done with him. Immediately after I told him that, without reacting to what I had told him at all, he blurted out “I’m asking [his girlfriend] to marry me.” And he did the following weekend. She didn’t have a ring for a while at first, and I kind of think that if he had BEEN planning to ask her, he would have had the ring ready.