lol cakeman, us women aren't that bad!! :-)

Don't necessarily close him out of your life, but in the meantime do the following 'therapeutic' work so that you can bear in mind how valuable you are. This will hopefully prevent you letting him or anyone else treat you like s**t:

Get out there and socialise. Follow your interests and join clubs. Be open to other humans that you think you have something in common with. If you fancy any of them, don't immediately get romantically involved or show your interest or tell them you're single. Become friends with them so you can work out if they are evil or not, if they're involved or not, if they are worth it. Friendship is a lovely thing anyway. Then having a few new friends will make you more confident and in a position to wisely accept or reject the original chappie or someone new, but with a foundation of more happiness and wisdom and self-esteem, having shopped around a bit.

If people really like you they will make the effort and won't want to rush you too quickly anyway.

(up)

Hope nobody minds me upping this but I just happened to be reading across it... well things have changed , as they do. Haven't seen him since, have been in contact, asked if he wants to meet up but he's always busy.

Not a problem, have been out meeting other people, enjoying life. He still wants to meet up but he really is busy at the moment. I have no intention of waiting around.

Let's all party like it's 1999!

Good, you're young, free and single. If he's too busy, that's his loss and your potential gain. Not to put a negative spin on things, but if he's always too busy now, it might be logical to assume that he's always going to be too busy in the future if anything more serious were to happen. (up)

Exactly. Life is too short for that anyway. Besides I really like your attitude about asking him for a direct answer. Why not... I probably wouldn't be able to do that but I still think it is the right attitude. If everyone acted that direct, there wouldn't be this much bull$h1t around.

Nice to hear that you have been getting out and not waiting around. I am sure you are a catch and for him to keep saying "I'm busy" might be too little, too late.

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PS: If you DON’T want to spend a ton of money, get hit on by guys you are not interested in, be in awkward situations than online dating is for you. Just sit back in your chair, put the key board in your lap and get chatting with men you’d love to meet!
ebook ebook Dating

Link removed - broken

Hi Dan, online sources sound good. Can I offer some advice that I've worked out for myself over the last 18 months (I was in a relationship for 13 years before that and a marriage for 5 to 7 a couple of years prior to the last one).

So I'd forgotten some of the things and rules that I had worked out for dating, boyfriends, and fwb when I was young and single (before we had a term for fwb) and before these other long term relationships began and ended for me.

So I got caught up in a bit of a 'hot-cold' situation with a colleague and was really finding this hard to deal with. I finally did the 'upfront' thing and called him on it (because the hot cold stuff was driving me crazy and I had lost faith in my intuition about these sorts of things after having been in a difficult relationship for some years).

I spent some time emailing and being friendly to see whether I was imagining things and then requested some private time so that we could discuss things. I found out during this time, being fairly upfront (God it was hard!!)to find that when put on the spot he admitted he had been a bit interested but was in a 'break' and had now resumed his relationship with his long term partner. Before he could start to go on-I called a halt to all intimate discussion about his relationship difficulties as in inappropriate (for all of us including his partner), determined the extent of our interactions in the future and exited with dignity feeling pretty awful really. He was concerned about this and emailed, etc and while I chose not to discuss our interactions with regard to relationships on a person to person level again-we did sort it out in writing. I distanced myself-sometime later we resumed friendly interactions-because I liked him and I think he liked/s me but nothing very close.

But what really got to me was the on/off hot cold thing...it hooks you in and renders the vulnerable romantic part of your personality really open to quite a bit of hurt. I decided to review my early life rules-where generally I could spot a player at twenty paces so to speak- and that is to avoid ambivalent or ambiguous people. Generally when people like you and are able to engage in a relationship or commit, they don't go hot and cold.
People who do are not available-either emotionally, or physically or for some other reason. And why would you want to waste your time on anyone who is not available (your valuable time)- mentally have a list of little red flags-and when these go up-you say 'next' and move on. (I'm not talking about friendship here-but relationships. As it happens, I still have a friendship with this person and would be one of the people he likes and trusts on staff but the friendship is nothing that would come close to interfering with his relationship or to preventing me from developing one with someone who truly is available and interested. People who are interested-really interested in you- they let you know. After some time, there is no doubt, particularly if you are open to a relationship-people can tell this sort of thing. (PS- sorry my post is so long but it has been therapeutic for me writing it and hopefully someone else gets something out of it as well-if they can be bothered reading it all that is).

Is someone talking to themselves here? DanB? Danielbrown? (sprout)

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thank you pjlu, I did get something out of your post and you are very right. I have never been any good at spotting players etc, but am learning now, I think...

I seemed to hit it off really well with a guy on the train a few weeks ago. Turns out he works at one of my teaching unis and he seemed really keen to meet up again, gave me his email address and said to get in touch next time I was around - and asked for my email address, which I gave him. I liked him so I did, but no response - so I've been thinking, maybe his address didn't work etc etc. and I should give him a call at work next time I'm in the vicinity, but really he could have contacted me by now, so perhaps I should hit the NEXT button...