My Insecurity. Your Insecurity.

wrote the following:

In a few months, I'll be graduating from college. I haven't done much in the way of graduate school, though I'm dying to get my Master's in Public Health. I just don't think I'll get in anywhere right now. So I'm checking out job opportunities for now. What does this have to do with relationships?

I'm in love with a guy with whom I've had a stagnant friendship for the past year now. He graduated last year and didn't know what he wanted to do, so he stuck around for a year and got a job in a bigger city 30 minutes away. Next year, it's almost guaranteed he'll be in seminary at BU. The job that's the most appealing, and the one for which I'm the most qualified, is in West Bridgewater, right outside of Boston.  It would be great if we were actually dating for me to be so close my year off and then I'd most likely attempt to go to BU for grad school after that if we were still together.

Well, our feelings have waxed and waned, battled obstacles and everything, and we still keep coming back to one another. We are so obviously wonderful for each other. Last year, I had the emotional maturity level of a three year old, and he got me to finally change my thinking after a decade through just a talk. Because he was jilted by love at the start of his sophomore year, he's been a whore for the past two years and is finally changing his ways because of me, and we've never even been intimate. Something about us makes us want to be better because we know we deserve it and not just for the other person, you know?

However, for the past year we haven't been able to get anything together. My fears and insecurities blocked his advances in 2007, and now his are blocking mine this year. The first time he attempted to take me home, I was afraid (because I was/still am a virgin), and I didn't want to get my feelings hurt when I knew he would have sex with me and never talk to me again. After that, when I confessed I loved him, he confronted me about my emotional immaturity and said he could never date me seriously until I was more mature. So I changed. Mostly for me, but he was the jumpoff point. The second time, eight months later, I was completely willing and had decided to give him what no other man could claim as a thank you for helping me overcome years of baggage, but he had seen my transformation and, though it was in his nature to try, didn't want to have sex with me because he wanted to be better for me first. His fears and self-hate had caught up to him and he finally wanted to be rid of it. Soon after, he told me that he was giving up sex for the year because it was the part of him that made him hate himself, and he didn't want to do it anymore.

The most frustrating part about all of this is that he is currently holding me in limbo when it comes to the prospect of a relationship. He has the same mentality I had last year: that while he changes, the world will lie in a Sleeping Beauty state, and as soon as he's transformed, he can enter back into it and no one's changed but him. In the meantime, he'd had two girlfriends, and I nearly lost him for good. The second girl is what actually made me realize that he wasn't sitting around waiting for me to finally get it together (I absolutely knew the first wouldn't last, so somehow I wasn't worried even though I was jealous). I asked him if we'd ever be anything more, and he said that maybe in a few months he'd would get enough sense to go after me. Since I haven't dated anyone this whole time, it's in his mind that I won't, and I'll be available for whenever he finally gets himself together, but I'm getting tired of being alone. Even though I love him. I'm tired of nothing and him or I always in the way of us. But because I love him, I can't just go. I need him to tell me that it's okay. I need the confirmation to move on. I had planned to make him promise me something or let me go, but then he quit his job, and I can't kick him while he's down with something else that's also stressful.

So therein lies my dilemma. If I get the amazing job in WB while he's in Boston, and I'm both not dating anyone and he denied me or keeps me in limbo, I'll be utterly miserable. Because until he lets me go, I'll just lead on someone else until he wants me. Why can't we get it together? They're for great reasons, but I just want more. It's definitely not my first choice to move on because I know he wants to be with me eventually. But he's trying to deny all his passions and thinks that'll work when I know firsthand it won't. And meanwhile my heart is starting to just ache dully over the thought of waiting anymore when there are so many guys who like me and I deny them waiting on him.