Girl! That constitutes a pattern, with you as the common denominator choosing guys who avoid intimacy. Why?

Yeah. I agree with all of the above— not to pile on, but it seems like a pattern you have. I do recall that you come from a very conservative Christian upbringing and I wonder if there was some sex negativity involved that you see these things as normal and maybe put up with them longer than you should, leading you to not being able or open to having other fulfilling relationships? I want for you to feel desired and wanted on a level beyond just emotional intimacy and just from this brief snippet it doesn’t sound as if you have experienced that. If you have never listened to Dan Savage I would 100% recommend listening to his back history of podcasts.

As far as hippie guy– I agree you need to have an honest conversation with him. At this point, you guys spending all this time together and seeing one another so frequently and in a lot of ways “dating” it shouldn’t be a hard thing, nor should it push him away. In fact, the way he responds to this will show you a lot about him and whether you want to continue down the path of dating with him. I know it has been awhile since you had this type of connection and you are afraid of scaring him away or shaking the status quo, but how long are you willing to keep this up just snuggling, hugging, and being his girlfriend except not. Maybe you aren’t as confused as all of us nosy busybodies and of course you know what is best for you and what makes you happiest and I hope you continue to pursue that, but this just seems very out of the norm.

I don’t know that I’d necessarily be calling him an abuser, or concluding that there has to be something seriously messed up with him without having talked to him about it, but…WHY HAVEN’T YOU TALKED TO HIM ABOUT IT??

If it would have been me, after a few flirty ‘butterfly moments’ – whenever they would have started to occur – had passed without anything happening, I’d have sat him down and just laid it out. Like, ‘I’m attracted to you. I get the sense you’re attracted to me, too, but you also seem to avoid touching me. What’s up with that? It’s okay if it takes you a while, but I do want to know if it’s on the table, because I really want to find someone I click with on a physical level, too’.

On an unrelated note: veritek, that’s GREAT news! So what he actually meant was ‘I’m super busy for the next four weeks, so I’ll come down and visit you the first weekend I can’? 🙂 Put like that, yeah, that sounds much better.

And KARE! 40?!? How do you even keep count?? I could always, eh…climax easily – before anti-depressants, le sigh – but I don’t think I’ve ever gone over, maybe, 20 times? And that was over a whole day, while I was by myself and very, very bored:).
I just asked my bf, and we think that our record for amount of romps in 24 hours is about 3 or 4. So…I guess you and veritek beat me on all fronts!

His actions are definitely weird, but so are hers (for a woman who WANTS to have intimacy/kissing etc). Who knows if he’s having this exact conversation with his friends right now? Why would the pressure be solely on him to make a move? From what I’m reading, they’re both giving each other hugs, etc.

I’d just want to know what’s going on with someone, from the original source, before I’d call them ‘seriously messed up’. For the rest, totally agree with you.

Oh, okay, I missed that they’d already talked about it. Yeah, that’s kind of withholding it, then.

Or at least, avoiding the issue and pretending it’s never been discussed.

Are you sure there has been a direct conversation like the one I suggested above, though? If so, yes, he’s not being a very stand-up person about this.