Audio Mailbag: Insecure Girls

January 20, 2009

This one was interesting to me, because both one of my best friends and I have dated girls exactly like this.

My friend, Tom, is a sophomore in college. Almost every time he is on break back at his parents house he spends a lot of time with a girl whom he went to high school with of the same age. I believe they did formally date for a while back then also. Anyway, he would go out and see her an awful lot – I’m talking taking her to a musical, out to dinner, at her house late into the night, etc. They do have sex but I don’t think they really acknowledged that they were in a relationship until recently.

This is because while he goes to an east coast school she goes to college in the midwest. Still, though, this email is not about maintaining long distance relationships. That was just background. The problem here is this:

Tom says that occassionally the girl texts or calls him from college with stories about awkward situations she was just in, like denying a guy a kiss or a guy telling her that he loves her when she does not love him. The stories bother him because he doesn’t know why she allows guys to pursue her so long before breaking the reality of the situation to them. Although it sounds like jealousy, he insists he’s not worried about the guys getting anywhere with her and I believe him.

He says that often when she tells him these stories she asks him why a guy would do that and he explicitly explains to her how guys think and how some stuff she does (like taking rides from guys and going to parties with them) might lead them on, and yet it keeps happening. From what I can tell this is the fact that seems to be bothering him. It seems to me that there is probably a feeling within this that is the real cause, but I don’t know what it is.

Another part of the situation is that he and the girl have known each other for a very long time. When they dated in high school, he felt that the way he felt for her was far greater than what she felt for him, so now there is a slight fear of doing anything that might push her away. He knows that she doesn’t really like discussing the stuff I’m talking about here so he doesn’t really want to bring it up. While that seems like a problem in and of itself, it’s not the focus of this email.

So my question is this. She recently texted him that a guy told her that he loved her. He knows she does not love him – the text was… an interesting factoid, to her. How should he respond to this? What are your thoughts on the situation?

Keep in mind that this whole thing took about 45 minutes to an hour for him to tell me, so I might have missed something in this email. Feel free to email me back with questions about the situation or to clarify something I said.

I’m very much looking forward to your response – I come to you because you’ve helped me so much in the past with your blog and everything else. Thanks for taking the time to read all that and I hope you’ll email me back.

Your “friend”, eh? Lol… I actually do believe you and I hope that this advice makes its way to Tom.

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Posted by Christian | Filed Under Women And The World