Hi Sars,

I can’t stop thinking about this and it’s making me feel crazy.

I met a guy at a mutual friend’s party late last summer and began an intense relationship with him, very quickly. We exchanged “I love you”s after about six weeks, saw or talked to each other every day (on days we didn’t see or phone each other, we IMed for hours), had all of the requisite goofy in-jokes, affection, long revealing conversations, et cetera et cetera. We felt couple-y very quickly. We talked about the future a lot — he started planning a trips for us to take, talked about moving in together eventually. We talked about how our families would react to our dating. There was a lot of spark. I really fell for him.

Not to say that we didn’t have any drama, because we did. He felt insecure about me sometimes, and I felt insecure about him. We sometimes missed each other’s signals and fell out unnecessarily. We were jealous of each other sometimes. He had an ex who was hanging around on the edges, whom he complained about sometimes but could never quite find a way to shake off. I didn’t worry about it too much, because our relationship was pretty new and he had been with her for quite awhile. On the scale of things that bothered me, the ex didn’t rate too high.

At about the four-month mark, with no buildup, he cut me off. I was shocked. Up until the day he cut me off, he was seeking me out daily, talking to me for hours, and telling me he loved me. Yes, we had had our little dramas, but they weren’t all coming from me — some of them were instigated by him — and I always thought we had resolved them.

Now it seems obvious that he had had some reservations about me (even though he said he didn’t), and that our relationship had run its course for him. Maybe he got back together with his ex (whom he said he had left), and had been stringing me along. I really don’t know what happened.

I know that a guy who left me like that isn’t worth my tears, and everyone I’ve spoken to uses the same phrase: “dodged a bullet.” But I still can’t understand how someone can say and act as if they’re genuinely in love, and give no hint of trouble ahead, and then vanish like that. It boggles my mind. I’m pretty sensitive to signs of rejection, and I was not on high alert. I’m pretty self-aware, and don’t think I misbehaved in this relationship. He had once even made a comment about another guy we knew who had pulled a temporary disappearing act — he had called him a loser and said the woman in question should just dump this other guy’s ass for being such a disrespectful wuss.

I’m hoping that you can give me some insight into this behavior. I don’t need to be told to move on, because I know that it’s over. I just don’t understand how someone — someone who’s not a sociopath — can evince love, caring and friendship and then cut the person they said they loved off cold.

Colder and Wiser

Dear Cold,

Two things strike me here.The first is that I’ve been in a number of relationships of varying lengths, and in every single one, there has been a sort of emotional asteroid belt right around the three-to-four-month mark — and this is where you see whether the relationship is supposed to continue.A few times, the shuttle fell apart; a few other times, it should have fallen apart, but we held it together against our better judgment; sometimes the relationship survives that period and sometimes it doesn’t, but for whatever reason, whether it’s lunar or seasonal or whatever, somewhere between 90 and 120 days into any given romance is where the honeymoon ends and you have to look at whether it’s going to go the distance.It’s where people stop maintaining 24/7 good behavior; it’s where you figure out whether you can love the person through periods of not liking them a whole lot.Not every relationship survives this, nor is every relationship supposed to.So that’s probably part of it.

The other part is that loving someone and not wanting to continue a relationship with them are not mutually exclusive ideas.A long-term relationship, as you know, is not just about being schmoopy and lots of sex and “we like all the same movies!” — those things matter, but other things can matter more.You run out of things to say, one of you is more successful and the other can’t quite cope, you don’t agree about having kids…love is not always enough, and if the guy assessed the situation, found a major sticking point that he felt would never change, and decided to rip the Band-Aid off and get out, well…yes, you “dodged a bullet,” but at least he still had enough respect for you not to let it linger.

I’m not trying to defend the guy; maybe he got back with his ex, maybe he’s just not that into you, I don’t know and you’re probably never going to either.And I know it’s cold comfort trying to tell yourself that this happened for a reason, but: it probably did.And it’s not you or anything you did wrong, and it’s not that he’s a sociopath or a liar, necessarily, either, or that you “stupidly” “picked” a crazy man to fall in love with.It just didn’t work for him, for whatever reason, and belieeeeeve me when I tell you, if it’s not working for him, it’s not going to work for you even if you convince him to stick around and try to make it work.It’s just going to end in tears and time you’ll regret wasting.

It sucks, and makes no sense right now, and you should let yourself wallow in that for a while — but take it from one who has, in the past, not accepted the facts in a case like this for far too long: “everyone you’ve spoken to” is right.Be sad, be mad, be sure you’ll move on.

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