Slow burn or nothing at all?

LegacyUser

So I met a girl in a few months back. We met at a bar; started dating; things started going along quite nicely.

I'm mid 30s, she's late 20s. It's quite incredible how much we have in common. Same taste in music, we both love to party and adventure but have our sh1t very much together, similar life goals, both highly misanthropic and very ambivalent towards children

She's kind hearted, intelligent, perceptive and very accepting of my many character flaws

- but -

Since Christmas I've been completely freaking out about where our relationship is heading. OK, nothing shocking so far but, there have been some unusual issues that have been causing me a lot of grief:

First and most fundamentally - on the couple of occasions in which I have been fortunate enough to be in love in the past, it was around the 3/4 month mark that I started to feel those most wonderful pangs and twinges. I just don't seem to be feeling them in the same way this time! Is this an age thing?? Could my ever increasing cynicism and world-weariness have dulled my love receptors? As mentioned, she is just wonderful (and beautiful to boot) but I just don't know if this is some kind of slow burn love situation or if my feelings have plateaued already.

As mentioned, she has many , many amazing qualities but - one thing that's been a bit of an annoyance for me (and it will probably sound like an irrational one) is that she's not a native English speaker. Her English is pretty much perfect but I find certain things seem to get lost in translation, especially my quirky/surreal sense of humour. Humour is incredibly important to me. My friends are all complete weirdos and I love them but they won't be around forever to provide a sounding boards for my own weird sense of humour. She's very funny in her own way but it's just not the same. Is this something anyone else has experienced?? Can something as fundamental as this be overcome??

On the whole language/culture thing - she only arrived in Ireland last year. She came over with her then boyfriend to start a new life - but he ditched her after a month and left her alone in a strange city. it's been hard for her to make friends. I'm getting really, really worried that she will build a life around me and they if/when I realise that this slow burn love thing isn't going to materialise, I'll leave her all alone again. She just doesn't deserve to have that happen twice in one year.

I care about her so much. If she has the slightest sniffle I'm over straight away with grapes and lucozade. She likes me - an awful lot. It seems to be very much normal in her country for men-folk to drink heavily and treat women like dirt. I'm just a normal 21st century guy who cooks, cleans and is in kind of in touch with my emotions - she's always telling me how much she appreciates these things about me. I'm absolutely terrified I'll hurt her - and I feel it has obscured all rational thought and judgement. I tried to raise these issues over the weekend but it came out in a completely ham-fisted way and now she's very upset

If I'm not sure about how I feel at this stage, in spite of all her wonderful qualities, am I best just cutting our losses and ending it? I hate to say it, but my instincts are leading me to believe this would be best for us. I would hate to be having a break-up conversations with her in a year or two years and leaving her high and dry again. I want someone I can spend the rest of my life with but I have so many doubts on this one.

I know there are many unanswerable questions here but I would REALLY love to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences or has any insights.

Danke schön in advance

zoobizoo

The older you get, the less the intensity of the infatuation I found.


As for humour, that would be and has been the sticking point for me in the past.

You can't get over it, or I couldn't.

Even with partners with whom everything started well, if our jokes didn't develop or evolve beyond, then the relationships stagnated, I got frustrated and ended them.

I'm married now and luckily to someone who gets my humour, works with it and that works for us.

I've only ever gone out with one other woman like that in my 25 years of relationships.

See how it goes and if it grows into something then great.

Don't hang in there because you don't want to hurt them though. Because it'll be harder to split up in the long run

power pants

Perhaps she actually does get your humour but doesn't find you funny at all

Bambi985

Yeah I think you hear the fanfare a lot less as you get older but your gut instinct or intuition stays the same no matter what age you are and in this case it sounds like you kind of know she's not the one for you in the long-term.

Some relationships can exist without both people having a similar sense of humour but it sounds like that won't work for you, and you need to acknowledge that now instead of brushing it under the carpet. Maybe you have a weird sense of humour but love is about finding someone that shares your weirdness as corny as it sounds.

It's hard when someone is everything you should want and more but these small niggling things are getting in the way. But that's just life sometimes. I do think that her being entirely dependant on you because she has no friends and literally noone else to lean on in the country is going to cause big problems too, it's probably putting unnecessary stress on the relationship already. Probably not the most advisable thing to go head-first into a new relationship so quick after her previous one ended so badly too, it sounds like she could do with some time to create a life for herself that's not entirely dependant on the guy she's dating.

Jasper_

Be equally as "terrified" of wasting your own time, than you are of hurting her.

The gut is very rarely wrong.

LegacyUser

power pants wrote: »

Perhaps she actually does get your humour but doesn't find you funny at all

Really don't know why you felt the need to say that

Anyway - there is some trace of a good point buried somewhere in there. As the other posters alluded to, a compatible sense of humour is very important in the long run. I make her laugh, she makes me laugh but I still feel there's a whole area there where we just don't really click. Whether either one of us is objectively funny or not is completely beside the point.

So we broke up this evening. Both in bits but hey, she's resilient if nothing else.

Thanks for the posts guys - much appreciated.

PrincessPoutyP

I was going to point out that her English would improve the longer she lived over here and as she got to know you better she'd better be able to pick up on your quirks of humour specifically. Honestly it just (to me, based on my personal experiences) sounded like you panicked at the thought of her being emotionally and socially dependent on you so early into a relationship when you weren't sure about it 100% I don't think basing past experience of younger relationships is a great idea as we tend to get a bit more discerning as we get older and thus feelings can take a bit longer to reach full bloom. I know I'm a bit late now but these are my thoughts. But if your gut was telling you an emphatic no then you've made the right choice 100% and please disregard the above.

PrincessPoutyP

I was going to point out that her English would improve the longer she lived over here and as she got to know you better she'd better be able to pick up on your quirks of humour specifically. Honestly it just (to me, based on my personal experiences) sounded like you panicked at the thought of her being emotionally and socially dependent on you so early into a relationship when you weren't sure about it 100% I don't think basing past experience of younger relationships is a great idea as we tend to get a bit more discerning as we get older and thus feelings can take a bit longer to reach full bloom. I know I'm a bit late now but these are my thoughts. But if your gut was telling you an emphatic no then you've made the right choice 100% and please disregard the above.

LegacyUser

Thanks for that. That's absolutely bang on really.

So things took a big turn for the worse after. Realising that I may have made a somewhat panicked decision, that I was absolutely insane to throw something like this away I contacted her last week. I didn't straight up ask her to give me another chance as I knew she was going to be very hurt and wanted to see how she was feeling first. There was a bit of tension at first but we ironed all that out. Fast forward to Friday and she came over. She basically just lobbed the gob on me, Hollywood movie style, straight away. We talked for a long time, ironed most things out and agreed we'd pick up where we left off. Of course, me being me, I had to throw a spanner in the works. I lay awake most of the night panicking and playing out worst case scenarios again. The next morning I said, quite unequivocally, that there was no way I could see her again as I am just a mess of uncertainty and contradictions and there was no she could have any kind of happiness or security with me.

I've really jerked her around this time. I hate to say it but I've been crying like a little girl all weekend. The funny thing is, in hindsight, my fears about her being dependent on me etc. were overblown in my own mind. Could my fears have been old fashioned commitment-phobia masquerading/rationalising as something else? I'm just an idiot, this is really something I could end up regretting for a very long time. There's no way in hell I can/should contact her again. I promised her I wouldn't this time. If I did, how could I guarantee something like this won't happen again? I just can't, despite really appreciating her great qualities more than ever. Suppose I could take some time go get my own thoughts together on this one but she will be snapped up very quickly, I know. She can't even go to tesco without someone asking her out.

Don't know what the moral of the story is here folks.

Bambi985

The moral of the story is leave her alone, you're obviously not into her enough to commit to a relationship and no matter how hot she is or how many things you have in common, that's not going to change.

Ursus Horribilis

As a rule of thumb, when you find you're trying to talk yourself into something but have something nagging away at you in the background, it's better to back away from it. I think you've been trying to ignore your gut feeling on this because this lady is great in so many ways. She's almost right for you. She ticks all these boxes and you obviously care deeply about her. But when something's not right, it's not right.