Should we go for it or am i just clinging on? please help.

garibaldi1

Hi guys, I'm new here and any help would be much appreciated.

I am 20 years old and almost a year ago now met a girl on a 'sex forum' whereby you could talk and learn about sex as well as being a place to start talking casually or naughtily to anyone on the site. I went on there purely for confidence reasons, insecure over my sexual inexperience but ended up talking to a 17 year old about general things, occassionally dirty talking (which i guess was inevitable due to the way we met) and sometimes the content of our typing over a messenger was sexual, sometimes casual. Neither of us had gone on there to meet someone but after talking for around a month, on a messenger, then texting/skyping etc. it felt like there was a 'connection.' (obviously this is quite hard to tell over an internet based interaction.)

We met up for a weekend, which was rather sexual in between getting to know each other better and just hanging out. After that weekend it was quite confusing where to take things and for the next few months the 'relationship' flitted between stages of friends/friends who experiment sexually and a feeling of actually being together...of love...there was always a feeling from my point of view at least that i wished i could be with this girl at many points over the summer. We met up in person about once a month and every time it was very intense, intimate even in the 'friends' stages but we never had sex. She lives in Wales and I go to uni in the midlands. It was the closest i'd ever felt to someone, i felt addicted to her, couldn't go a day without speaking. After missing each other so much when on a family holiday, we met up in August and despite it again being intimate, afterwards we decided this attachment either had to turn in to something or not...and went with the latter on the grounds of distance/age/her not being ready to be part of my world etc. (this may have been another point at which i just got scared.)

We drifted apart a little as 'friends' over the next month or so, but it didn't feel right as friends...and after a month or so we missed each other and fell back in to a pattern of talking everyday. This time it seemed more sexual and less of an attachment. However we met up soon after and i felt a lot closer again. As you may have guessed by now I am (as is she) sexually inexperienced, i'm a virgin with no prior relationship...only really had a 'thing' with one girl plus got with a few, but not a one night stand kind of guy - actually a romantic, which may seem quite contradictory to the way we met!

It seemed set that we were going to have sex if we met up over Christmas, we were 'going with the flow' not talking about anything afterwards, and i think we were both seeing it as a no lose thing, lose your virginity to someone special to you, who you're sexually attracted to and comfortable around. She said that she wouldn't be able to meet up over christmas due to sixth form work revision and family stuff, i felt crushed. It felt like my life was based around the next time i was going to see her...and to be honest i was looking forward to the prospect of sex with her so much by this point. In this moment of confusion i pitched the idea of a relationship despite being very unsure myself. From that point on it couldn't be casual, i noticed she had deeper feelings for me and that she liked the idea...i felt horrible that i may have just gone through with reducing 'us' to sex.

I was scared. You see we had kept each other seperate from the rest of our lives for over 7 months. Our parents knew plus a couple of mates, all of which did not know how we met. I plucked up the courage to tell a couple of my mates and parents everything. At first they seemed supportive of trying to give it a go but when i started to reveal my doubts they seemed less sure and eventually my dad associated my anxiety about the situation with her, and basically said i needed to cut her out. He's heavily advised me against it ever since, thinking i'm idealizing being with someone and trying to convince myself that someone is her. I pretty much let him make the decision for me, not sure of what to do at all.

I've always been very dependent, obsessive and a perfectionist. This makes me focus on holding on to the attachment to her, whilst also focusing on flaws and possible problems. I feel like i love her yet i feel like why did i reduce it to casual if i really felt like going for it, i'm scared of commitment to both the situation and her due to being so indecisive and insecure. I hate myself for some of my thoughts. Despite being sexually attracted to her in a biiig way, due to it being long distance i only have photos to refer to a lot of the time and have had these intrusive thoughts of 'could you do better?' as if even though i love her, is that why i'm attracted to her...if she was randomly walking along the street i wouldn't find her stunning. Should that even matter now!? Due to her being slightly younger i can see some differences in maturity between our humour (although that's also quite refreshing) and sometime i wish she'd be a bit more of a conversationalist...although i can babble on, plus surely we'd have more to talk about if actually a part of each others lives. I think due to my insecurity and caring so much about what others think, i'm scared to go for it 1) because i wonder what my mates would think, like younger 'school'girl, quite shy, and not overly attractive (despite me loving her to bits.) 2) opposing what my dad has advised, i've always found it hard to go against what he thinks, i was quite overprotected and restricted in my upbringing.

After consultation with my therapist i've brought up these thoughts and the fact i've suffered from anxiety...which has now moved on to clinical depression...and how it seems my worry over losing her was the main cause. She believes I should go for it and that my fear of hurting her, my worry over making a bad decision or opposing my dad is getting in the way of something. I've made it sound quite negative here in terms of her personality and looks whereas to me she is amazing, but i care about her so much that i'm worried that what if i'm 'settling' and going for her just because i've idealized the attachment, a someone, something to get me sexual and relationship experience rather than because it is 'her.' I've read things about people 'settling' and worried that what if a few months down the line i think the chemistry isn't there and go off her, and that if in real life i had another option i'd be less inclined to go for her, whereas it's all i've got and all i've ever had. That sounds so negative and i hate myself for it, she deserves better (and to move on and not be with me) if i'm thinking that...but part of me thinks that whereas most of me believes i love her and am just scared to take this opportunity. Maybe my minds dressing it up as that although it feels like - you can't write off something until you've tried right? One of us might get hurt somewhere down the line, but if you never go for it you'll never know...that's the feeling i get. But i don't want to hurt her, if it's set up for it to not work.

This is now a couple of months since i ended it (which was after a horrible month of deliberation.) Since that point i've transferred my anxiety to other decisions and parts of my life and hardly done any work. It's as if my mind prioritises the fact i have to make the right decision about her before it's too late yet i don't know what it is. I've talked to her a little since we stopped things and now a lot over the last week since i've been considering saying i want things to happen. She has been seeing a guy for a few weeks but claims there isn't much of a connection and that i'm 'special' as if he's filling the void i left. This feeling that she loves me basically makes me feel even more pressurised, what if i go for it and hurt her. I pretty much told her she's the only girl i've ever loved, i'm just not sure if i'm trying to convince myself things could work when realistically they don't click that well...or that due to my fear/insecurity of bringing her in to my real life i'm avoiding the positives of the potential commitment.

I know my insecurities come across as very shallow and i apologise for this and assure you i want to just love her for who she is. In fact i think i do. But maybe i just think i do, because it's hard to lose her.

Thanks.

Ickle Magoo

As this is a replica of the thread you posted earlier today here, I'm locking this one.

Please don't post the same thread multiple times.

Many thanks.