[Bias Logic]

Ok dilemma I want to have a huge surprise for my Ex-Girlfriend. Let me back up a little.

I had another post here in the relationship/communication forum but it got eaten by my lack of having 5 posts. Anyways quick rundown

• Dated ex-girlfriend for 4.5 years starting freshman year
• I suffered a fairly traumatic incident my senior year, a physical altercation with my dad that eventually had to get the police involved (more about this in my thread in the depression forum
• I was really upset, barely made it through Senior year at my prep school, but still graduated with an IB diploma and a State Scholarship because of it.
• Went to the same college as my X GF. I started developing depression stemming (I assume) from said incident.
• At first I do ok, but I be come increasingly Anti-social and less and less driven and motivated.
• Because I didn't realize I was depressed I was ashamed to "admit" that I wasn't going to class, or that I was being "lazy" but I did go to my Ex GF for support regarding it.
• I leaned on her a lot and she went out her way to try to get me to feel better, and to function better (coming over and trying to help me schedules, get me motivated to do all of my laundry I neglected, dishes, ect.
• This negatively effected our relationship. She started feeling like all our times together was me asking her if she wanted to have sex, or me being upset, or anti-social, or sometimes even getting snippy with her. I felt closer to her when we were having sexual relations, so I was kinda (wrongly) using it as a release. I want to make clear I never forced her to do anything, anything we did was because we both wanted to, but she just became more annoyed, and less inclined to want to because she felt that I was asking about it too often. I tried to tone back on this because thats not all I cared about in our relationship, and I think that the depression made me look for something as a release like that. I feel bad about it to this day...
• By the end of the year, I effectively had to drop out, I left about a month early from school after talking with her and thinking I needed a change of pace to stop acting so strangely (while we didn't realize I was depressed, we recognized I wasn't myself).
• At the end of the semester I went back to return my dorm key. I stayed at her place for the night. We hadn't talked much because she was busy with finals. It was real awkward that night, we didn't act like 2 people who had been away for a month. It felt like she didn't want to be alone with me.
• FFwd to one of the next times we hung out. We went to a local bike trail, something she had always wanted to do. I didn't have my bike, but rather my parents beach cruiser. Its rather hard to do these trails on a beach cruiser, and boy did I let her know about it. She got so upset I was complaining that after I said I didn't really want to do another, she said fine, I'll go do it myself, and rode off.
• One of the next times we hung out (there were only 5 at most before this probably more than a month.) I knew things were kinda rough, and I was trying to "rekindle" something. I tried holding her, and kissing her, and just trying to be affectionate. She turned away from the kisses a few times before saying "I don't want to". I asked her what was on her mind, and she said that she wasn't planning on mentioning anything, but that she didn't feel that way about me anymore. She explained on and eventually broke up with me. I cried a lot, so much so I actually fell asleep on her. I eventually only calmed myself down by managing to construct her words in such a way that this was something we could fix easily in the future, and she didn't want to completely break up.
• We talked sparingly for the next few months, on fairly good terms all things considered, albeit a bit awkward as I was having trouble letting go, I got a job, and then lost it due to my depression. Once I realized I was depressed, I decided to go get help.
• Once I knew I was on the road to getting help I tried to explain it to her. She kinda expanded on how she felt saying that, she did feel relieved last semester not having to deal with my draining her and feels free. She talked about not wanting to date anyone right now because she wanted to feel freedoms and experience new things, and when she was dating me she had to worry about so much more than herself. I tried to explain to her that she was being smothered by me because of my depression. She said that I had always been kind of anti-social, and that she wants to do things like go to party's and clubs (I suppose this is a good time to mention we were an interracial couple, I'm white and she is black, not that its very relevant) or go out fishing, things which I wasn't really into. She said she didn't want me to change these things for her I told her that I eventually had to try new things anyways.
• We also talked about her wanting the freedom to try to experience dating new people, and although she said she wasn't talking about anytime or anyone in particular, or even that it would happen. She also has been insistent about us becoming better friends first before thinking about a romantic relationship although as she has said "you have as good of a shot, probably better than anyone else trying to date me". I said that its really hard, because I feel like if I get better, and can show her that, but she wants to date someone else for the experience, but with the possibility of coming back to me if the experience isn't what she wants later is a very difficult situation for me. I want her back more than anything in the world right now. I'm not going to pursue anyone else until I know it wont work with us, and I no longer love her. I feel that we broke up because of something out of my control, but if she would rather wait to find someone else just to see what that experience is like rather than at the very least SEE if she could feel romantically about me again once I was better, than I would have a very hard time staying her friend. I made a metaphor that I'm not like clothing, you can't try me on to see if I fit, try on some more people later, then come back to me in the end. No matter how much I cared about her, I would have a hard time letting my morals have that happen. She tried to say the analogy was poor, because in the same analogy, how could she know if there was something that fit perfect if I was all she tried.
• So I instead brought up an incident where I went to great length to get homecoming tickets to another school (where all our middle school friends went to) even though the dance was on the same day as our homecoming game (we were in the band together, so we were required to go). I knew she wanted to do this very badly even though I wasn't a big dance guy and the timing would be tight. Our game got delayed by rain, and we couldn't end up going, and I was terribly upset because I had put so much work into it and it had fallen through, when I had felt all along that it wouldn't be worth the trouble. I had called her that night really upset explaining what I was upset with her about. She asked me that night if I was breaking up with her. My reply was "of course not, I just want us to get this solved" [our plans had a knack for being last minute and I had to do most of the planning, and they fell through a lot]). I said imagine I broke up with you that night, the issue was something I was bothered with you about, but not bad enough to break up about (bad at planning and keeping plans) , but was accentuated by something out of your control (lightning storm). If I had broke up and then said "I'm going to try to date other people to experience more things", but if I can't I will give you another shot. This was similar to how we ACTUALLY broke up. She was bothered by something about me but not bad enough to break up about (my slight anti-socialness and dislike for dancing in public), but was accentuated by something out of my control (depression) and now you are saying the same thing to me. She said she understood, and would kind of go with it, but she wouldn't do so without saying she was "convinced" or coerced.

• We hung out a day later, she just came over and we watched a movie. She's normally a rather outgoing touchey feely person, not only with me when we were dating, but just with close friends, guys and girls alike. Ever since we've been done dating, besides the occasional, fairly brief hug ,our time together feels its like we're acquaintances stuck together in an elevator, rather than friends or people who dated for 4.5 years. Part of it is i'm used to being able to put my arm around her for so long, but part of it is her awkwardness I think.
  • Afterwards I sent her a long long long list of questions about our relationship, why we broke up, and how she feels going into the future of our relationship. I'll hear back from her soon, but she is doing volunteer work starting this morning for a week and isn't sure if she will have internet access.
  • About 4 hours before I got this far into writing this gargantuan story I woke her up with a phone call because I was having a mini panic attack (I had a full fledged one when one of my buddies came over to my other friends house for his birthday with his girlfriend and spent the night, and I was kinda overwhelmed that night as we all went to sleep and they went to sleep together, I was thinking about how I cant do stuff like that anymore and I had a silent panic/crying attack where I had trouble breathing. Not pleasant) We talked some, and I tried to explain how sorry I was for all I put her through, because I had never really said it, and tried to stress that I am getting help. We talked and she said that one of the main things that made her not want a romantic relationship with me is because she still has a hard time enjoying being around or talking with me because its always so negative feeling, or we're talking negatively about how I feel sad we aren't together. She was tired and said that there was still some more to it that she had explained in the questions, but she wasn't done with them yet. I did ask her if that would at least get us on the right path towards that type of relationship, and she said, yea, thats a part of it. I then asked if the "more to it" was something that I could bear any influence on, and she said its hard to explain, but she thinks so. This has made me feel a lot better, and I think that if I'm just more positive and try to enjoy myself with her, it maybe hopefully in the long run could end up with us being back together. I'm not trying to get my hopes too high, and understand it could take a while. But that has at least given me some assurance of a direction

To the main point of this post:

Up until the night I decided to join this site, I was unsure of a sort of path to at least put me in the ball park of getting back together. Our relationship has been kinda awkward, but not "bad" on by any means. She would really ambiguously say she wanted to become better friends any time I talked about getting back together. I kept saying that you broke up with me because of my depression, (which I had to kinda pry out/ decipher in the months after the break up [before I knew it was depression we referred to it as "how I was acting at college"]), how can you not at least want to be back with the non-depressed me, even if it takes time for you to feel romantically about me (because she says she still "loves" me, just not romantically). We talked and almost everything directly related to the breakup was caused by my depression, sans for one particular incident I better explain in my depression thread.

She's currently out of state doing a Habitat for Humanity project for the week up until her new semester starts. The morning she left, I was up all night so I called her. We talked for a bit (much to her dismay as she had to leave to catch a bus in 3 hours) and she basically told me that one of the reasons she didn't yet want to even start thinking about building back a romantic relationship, is because every time we talked, I was still being negative, or sad, often talking about how upset I was we weren't together, and wanting to talk about the break-up which she would insist, she had nothing NEW to say on. However, me being an analytical person, would always pick up new things with every time we would talk about it. However one thing I couldn't understand, is why she didn't WANT to feel romantically about me (I understood why she didn't feel romantically about me). When she said the bolded statement I understood.

From my perspective, I've always recognized something was wrong with me, even before I knew I was "depressed", heck its why I left school. For me, this is more than half the battle. When I left school, I knew there was a rift between us over the way I was acting, and I thought the change of scenery would fix it, as I couldn't seem to shake my lack of motivation at school. I felt I was on the way to recovery. Well, my mood didn't improve very fast, and well, it was too late, and we broke up, the very thing I tried to avoid by attempting fixing my state of mind, and subsequent behavior. Flash forward to once I realized I had depression and made the decision to get help, I instantly knew the end result being me getting back to as normal as possible (assuming all goes well). I always see myself in that light in regards to what I have to offer her. The fact that I'm addressing the problem to ME makes me feel like the problem is now a non issue. However, because she still didn't show that much explicit interest, merely stating that I had as good a shot as any, if not better, in having that type of relationship (in my case again) with her, I was getting more and more upset over our relationship because I couldn't understand how to get on track. This led to me being negative, and being more beg-ey, and more why-me-ey. I realized now that "become better friends" was really "show her that you aren't the negative person from College, show her you are better, or are getting there, then you are at least on the TRACK to get her to look for any feeling of romance, where as now, she doesn't even want to look for it. Because I'm analytical, the fact that the solution to the problem is in place makes me confident enough that its fixed. She being more about feelings, and face value, doesn't see any change, and doesn't WANT to want a relationship.

My hope is that once I can get her to WANT to want a relationship, my infinite charm and stunning good looks (also known as the fact I can make her laugh and the fact that she happens to be attracted to pale skinny white guys) and our previous relationship can take over and I can win her back. I know that me showing her I am on the road to recovery isn't an instant fix. I know there are some additional feelings and factors that must be overcome, or changed. I just hope that she wont go ahead and just date someone else just for the "experience", because that will bother me to the point where I don't know how I could have a good friendship with her.

So, my main thought process right now is:

I talked (am talking) with her best friend and roommate about what I was (am) thinking about doing, but I don't know if logistically would be possible, or would be too invasive. I was planning on hitching a ride with her back to their apartment/dorm thingey. Then when my Ex got back from the Habitat from Humanity, I would surprise her by being there, and we would hang out, because it would be their first week of classes, so they wouldn't be too busy. Talking with her roommate though she said they may or may not be busy and was worried I'd be bored at the very least when(hey all I do is stay home, surf the internet and sleep now anyways). The other issue, is she doesn't think my Ex would want to drive me back here at the end of the week as its a 2-3 hour drive each way, and I don't really have another mode of transportation, though I'm thinking I might buy a greyhound ticket back if I can try to scrape up enough to afford it. She also said she didn't know how she would feel if I "sprung" it on her like that. From what my Ex had said to me, she feels like I never do things by the seat of my pants, and that the best things at life are just kinda random and spontaneous.

Her friend roommate thinks that its a good idea, but is really worried about a possible backlash if I don't ask/warn my Ex about it first. She said she doesn't want a bad vibe to start off the semester be cause she herself has kinda been going thru different emotional things. In general, knowing my Ex, I think she would be excited, surprised, happy, and would feel good about the spontaneity of it, especially because of my most recent conversation where she expressed that even though I said I was on the road to recovery, she doesn't see any of those things, but rather a lack of drive, negativity, and she doesn't feel excited about seeing me. I think as long as I didn't act negatively, and tried to use my meds to help me stay positive, not only would it be a possible step in fixing our romantic relationship (not something I can bank on), but will almost certainly help our friendship, and probably help me feel better about myself in general too.

Her roommate (who I've known as long as I've known my Ex btw) just doesn't want a possible bad backlash, and warns that I can't overhype my expectations of what will be the product of this, or even her reaction. She says the surprise can either go REALLY well, or REALLY bad, and she has a point. She wants me to mention it to my ex and ask her if its ok, but I feel as if the surprise represents too much metaphorically and emotionally.

I need a general opinion, and an opinion on the possible surprise.

Sorry I just wrote a short novel also.

[Yoda]

I cannot say whether you should or should not pursue the relationship. Time will tell. But I can say that I think it is a bad idea to surprise her by suddenly appearing with no warning or discussion of what she would like or how the two of you could spend time together. If she is in agreement to your visit then do it but I know I would feel awkward if I had a surprise visit. But that is me. I don't even like family or friends stopping by my house to visit without calling me first.

Good luck.

[Bias Logic]

Yea, I think after thinking about it, I would call her first. Im going to talk to her about it. I don't think I'll be able to go though because I'm very strapped for cash until my student loan comes in.