Mr Right versus Mr Right Now?

[janieblaye]

I am a bit torn between two men and could do with some advice.

Man A: A friend and we have feelings for each other but due to circumstances never ended up together. He is a fantastic man. We just seem to be perfect for each other. All our friends are rooting for us to get together and he's openly admitted he has feelings for me. There's so much love between us, passionate attraction, meeting of the minds. Find it hard not to think about him and he feels like he might be the game changer man for me. BUT and a big but; he has not put the effort in to begin a relationship! A lot of talk and no action. He prioritises his work /life and is a bit flaky with things with me and he knows he has been a bit "crap" but sort of makes a bit of a "I am so charmingly useless" sort of Hugh Grant performance but the reality in practice is that he is not stepping up to the plate to be a boyfriend and showing me he wants to get this thing going - so for that reason I have never begun it. That said, I know he likes me, know he really sees me as the potential "long term" one for him with the whole marriage thing etc and from hat I hear from mutual friends he keeps telling them I am the girl he wants to marry - but it all seems a bit useless if he does nothing about it!! I feel like he is taking for granted a bit the idea of relationships in general and not putting in the foundations to grow something and I feel frustrated.

Man B: Is not as perfect a match, for many reasons, and I know him not to be as good a man as man A. Man A is just a better human being. BUT Man B is here, asking me out, planning dates, wanting to actually be with me and fight for it, making himself available for a date any day/ week /time that suits me and phoning me and doing all the right things.

I know I don't feel for Man B what I feel for man A, but I do like him /. enjoy him company /fancy him (he's sexier than man A!) but most of all he is courting me, which may sound silly but with man A it feels more academic and the thing that never actually happens. Has been months since we were even in the same room as each other and while I know he is not dating anyone or interested in anyone he is also not dating ME.

Man B is asking me out, and I felt I might succumb just to enjoy being dated.

Do you think doing this would ruin things with man A?

I know man A would be very, very jealous. Quite riled up about it but he has no right to complain.

What would you do?

I can't keep sitting here on my own every Friday night waiting for him to get his act together but also don't want to blow it with Mr Right for Mr Right Now?

I am not worried about hurting Man B, as although I am sure he does like me, he is a bit of a player and I know he just wants a thrill of dating me rather than real feelings.

If his life was in utter turmoil and you were the one good thing in it, he'd be running towards you.

He's an utter bullshit merchant.

I believe you're not sharing his reasons because you want privacy / and that's fair enough! But I suspect it's also because you know you'll also get a if you do.

Do not spend any of your time dating men like Men B, so that you're available for when Men A sorts his shit out.

You will have all the shit of Man B.
Plus the hurt of Man A not getting says shit together.
Plus you'll miss out on Man C.

When you get Man C, you'll think "WTF was I think of?", re Man A. Your easy relationship with C with show you what a load of crap Man A was. That will help you get over Man A.

Yes, I've been there and hung around you long.

Man A has had enough time to sort his shit out.

Man B will stop you from getting over Man A.

It's not my privacy i am concerned for, it's his. The circumstances would be very easily identified if anyone he knew even peripherally read this they would know the situation was describing him because it's quite specific, and I am aware these threads are permanent and stay for years to come and even a friend of a friend would be able to identify from it because it's a situation everyone knows about. Sorry to be difficult on that, but the idea that any one who knew him or his children would look at it and instantly know who I was talking about seems monumentally unfair on him.

What you say is absolutely rubbish. A good man would never run towards a woman he had not even begun a relationship with and begin one with her when his life was in turmoil and he felt there would be fallout for her to deal with. He would care about her enough to not want to drag her into it. Men with such morals do exist - albeit they are hard to come by - hence he is truly one in a million in my eyes.

I thought you were talking years. Not 2-4 months.

You obviously have some deep doubts yourself to even be considering hooking up with someone else just to kill time.

I don't think you answered the question have you shagged Man A yet? Do you think he has any sex drive? I'm sorry to reduce it to such a basic level but honestly if he truly feels the way he does he'd be desperate to get his hands all over you. Birds and bees love. Sexual attraction means wanting sex, ie procreation. It's nature, innit.

That is bringing us around to the actual conversaiton I wanted to have, or the point of the question I was asking on the thread. Which was not "does he like me", which I know 100% to be absolutely the case. It is more these questions / worries I had.

I have waited for a while now, I estimate it will be a few more months of waiting but I could be wrong and it might be longer. At the end of that wait, due to the nature of the changes in his life there is no guarantee he will be the same person at the end of it and that is a worry, an open ended question.

I am worried that I have not done enough to fight to be there / let him know that I don't mind the shit storm but at the same time am conflicted because like any girl i don't want to feel like he is not fighting to be with me even if he has reasons.

I am living with the reality that I know what we both feel, but he has chosen to take the road alone and that leaves me ultimately knowing that I can freeze my life for a "guessed" period of time or try and get on with it and I don't know what the right thing to do is.

I was also wondering if in his "feeling sorry for himself" frame of mind, what he perhaps needed was a proverbial kick up the backside to realise that although everything has crashed around him he might be losing the one good thing he had going for him.

And worrying that on the flipside, anything i did to make him feel he might have lost me (like seeing someone else) could be taken from his perspective as a view that I didn't care about him as much as he thought.

Timing is a difficult situation to deal with really. Meeting the right person at the wrong time and trying to figure out whether or not you walk away gracefully and hope that if fate wills it you end up together one day OR whether or not you have to fight a little bit harder.

Thanks for asking me those sensible questions, as I feel the thread has been derailed into one trying to convince me the guy is an arsehole which is terribly unhelpful in the circumstances.

To answer that Tall, no I have not had sex with him yet, but he does have a history of a normal, robust, sex life. Also his comments and actions at first once we started romancing each other a bit was always that he was bloody desperate to sleep with me, but as his circumstances changed, that went away. I would classify him, without medical confirmation, as likely to being rather severely depressed currently which is going to have a knock on effect. He has said he still feels desperate to get his hands all over me but as he sees me as much more than that he is not going to take advantage of me unless he knows he is going to be able to deliver on the rest of it.

My advice - go round with a bottle of wine and a cheeky grin and rip his clothes off. Life's too short to be fannying around like this!

Probably good advice funnily enough!

Honestly, in this situation, I would just get on with my life. I would set a firm deadline on Man A getting his act together. If he missed it, I would draw a solid line under it and move on. But not to Man B.

Thanks the Stoic, also very good advice.

Our mutual friends are pulling their hair out, and I know that in his mind at least he believe he is keeping away from me for my own benefit and I don't know if he is right or not but his heart is at least in the right place.

Maybe Tall's suggestion is not a bad one and I should go over there with a bottle of wine and just see him as I haven't seen him for ages and would prefer to decision to walk away to be one I had made after looking him directly in the eye and at least telling him I didn't want this.

I think you might be onto a winner in going round to see him directly - it will either give you the answers you need to move on or wait longer. You need closure or a green light but you don't want to be hanging around in definetley for long periods.

So the reasons include his currently poor mental health, (unspecified) situation with his DC, and other "turmoil" in his life. Financial, housing, family, work, custody issues: whatever, you're not giving hints or even categories.

You are not "friends": you are romantically interested in each other. No contact is probably best for you in the circumstances.

You refer to a "shit storm" if you together - his ex's views? His DCs?

How long has he been separated/divorced?

I agree with you that sometimes things with people who genuinely really like each other don't work out because of circumstances, although given that you have never dated you really can't assume you'd be happy together and your feelings are likely to include a good chunk of lust and rose tinted glasses.I disagree,though, that in such circumstances hanging on (in your heart/mind) is a good idea.

Hello janieblaye!

I see what you are saying about Man A and I respect your sensitivity towards him and your situation. On another thread a few of us are reaching a point where we are wishing to overcome our fear and go for the direct approach with the man we are into. Perhaps you should indeed follow tallwivglasses's advice about the bottle of wine?

Just saying

Watch out for his 'poor me' syndrome. I've met one of these before they rarely bother to look to see if your life is also in utter turmoil. They just think everything that has happened/happening to them is worse.

It is true Thisisnow16 that some people perfect the art of living in a state of Woe Is Me for ever.

Perhaps his life IS genuinely tough right now.

Going round with wine is a crap idea IMO: the man is clear that he doesn't want/feel up to handling a relationship with OP at present.

I'm now wondering if there is an ex or somebody in his background who is ill and he waiting for them to die or he has financial issues. But OP there is no point wondering what is wrong, if he wanted to include you in his life then he would.

I respect what you have said about him but I think he is being incredibly selfish to allow somebody to wait in the wings until he decides he is ready.

I'm also wondering about you own personal history with relationships. When I was waiting around fm for my Mr Perfect, I hadn't had a whole lot of positive experiences in relationships. I put up with a lot that I wouldn't dream of doing now.

Do you want to be in s relationship at all? Do you want a relationship but only with him? Do you just want to be in a relationship with somebody who can make you happy?

There is more than one person out there for all of us. Right person but wrong time is romantic excuse making unless someone is terminally ill or in a war zone etc.

What Cabrinha said:

If his life was in utter turmoil and you were the one good thing in it, he'd be running towards you.

You think it's rubbish, OP, but it's not.

'Keeping away for you for your own benefit' is a dick move - what is in your best interest is for you to decide. Anyone who wants to take away your agency, to make a choice like that for you, is either rather immature or messing you around. Or both.

There is no ex involved and no shit storm that would be created from us being a couple, everyone around us wants that, but it is more that he feels he is not wanting to burden me. He has been divorced a very long time, he feels that because his DC are also being dragged through it that he feels like his job right now is to take care of them and not be selfish enough to think of himself an I understand that too.

His state of mind is that his self esteem is at rock bottom, he's got no confidence. One of my exes went through depression when he got very stressed and I see a bit of that at play. I am not sure he even believes I really like him or he thinks if I see him crack that I won't fancy him anymore. He said he was happy to talk to me about my problems but felt funny doing the reverse. Male pride thing, but if he feels that when then he can't have intimacy with me so what do I do.

Hard to admit, but in the honestly I can show in an anonymous forum, I am a bit sad / pissed off that he's not just said to himself "forget everything else going on, I just want to be with her", but I also get that in his mind I am better off without him right now.

I am not that bothered about being in a relationship or not, happy to be alone, but it took me a long time to feel this way and I feel a lot of frustration that obstacles have allowed their way into this and I haven't been given a fair shot at this.

Who knows anyway, maybe when he knows I have given up and walked away he might realise life is too short for all this and go for it.

I am pretty angry actually Somervile at being told what is best for me. It is for me to decide - but - without wanting to speak ill of the depressed - if you have ever dealt with someone going through a depressive episode to do tend to be very negative with catastrophic, hopeless and illogical thinking. Since all this happened, he's just been different and lost his mojo completely and maybe for that reason eh should be alone and sort himself out. He might well be right that it would be an emotional burden on me to deal with a relationship with someone in that state of mind.

As I am sat here thinking about it, I honestly don't think the circumstances (although they are awful) are the actual reason for this and I think it is more the depression. Before that kicked in, he knew everything that was happening but he was so positive about moving forward and wanting to be with me and he said the timing didn't matter. Then when the depression developed he changed and it's worse because I don't think he knows he is depressed but I can see the signs. He stopped seeing friends and going out and started saying very negative things that were not like him at all and I can see from photos that his eyes look swollen from crying although he would not admit it. He is just a bit hopeless right now I suppose and he hates feeling that way and doesn't really want anyone - especially me - to see that. As i said a past partner developed depression after losing his job and he was unrecognisable as the person I loved once it gripped him. When he came out of it a couple of years later he was a completely different person really and never bounced back to the happy guy he once was. He was forever changed really and that was very sad to experience and there was nothing at all that I could do.

Before that kicked in, he knew everything that was happening but he was so positive about moving forward and wanting to be with me and he said the timing didn't matter

What was his reason back then for not just being with you. This guy seems to talk a great deal without actually doing very much at all.

There was a few weeks of just getting in the door with me, I was less keen than he was and we were in the initial talking phases and getting to know each other and spending time together.

Are your friends really tearing their hair out because you and this man aren't together? Really? Why?