I'm reading this and cringing because I feel like in some ways, I've been this person. I never cheated on anyone, but I have been the volatile girl who tested the men I was with only to push them away. Then I'd contact them later asking for forgiveness. It's a cycle that I don't want to repeat but which feeds off of my own raging insecurity. Unfortunately, it's resulted in my recently pushing away someone who mattered quite a lot to me (who is also, incidentally, from Tennessee...are you from the Eastern part? Because that would be just too coincidental. )

I'm not young anymore, not old, but certainly too old to still be doing this. And I'd thought I had a handle on it, which is why I started communicating with this person. We live about 8.5 hours away from each other and met several years ago on Flickr, when we were both very active on the site, and have stayed in touch since. I've known for a while that he's been interested in getting to know me better, but though I had interest as well, my walls prevented me from making that happen. Once we started talking it was like we knew each other forever, and then I happened. And unfortunately, he tried to manage it for a while and then just couldn't. The good thing is that it forced me to realize that I am not managing my emotions, stress, depression, what-have-you effectively these days but the bad thing is that I may have lost him for good. I am not the girl I used to be; this woman isn't going to stay in that little self-destructive cycle.

I mailed him a letter two days ago. Who knows if he'll respond, but he deserved an apology. Anyway, I wanted to say that I identified with your post a little bit...but from a different perspective.