Em asks :
Hi Lucy,
I recently started dating a guy who was widowed a few months ago following a long marriage to his wife who died from a terminal illness after 18 months.
It was all moving very quickly and we were having such a lovely time. He was very responsive and we spent a lot of time together. Then after about a month he asked me to meet his daughter the following week. That was on the Sunday and by the Tuesday he had gone cold on me and put his profile back live on the dating site. We talked about it and he said he wasn't ready for an exclusive relationship to which I answered that I was too far in emotionally to be in an open one. We decided to stay friends and I am trying not to contact him - he randomly messages me for no real reason. He said he felt that I was more emotionally involved than he was and that he was "trying to love me" I'm confused because when I catch him looking at me in a very loving way when we were together! Am I just on the hook or does he still like me and just needs time?
Hi Em,
Agony Aunts on Female First
Perhaps the reason he messages you is because he misses your company- if you developed a strong bond quite quickly, then he may feel a void in his life since you decided to dial things back. It might not be a romantic thing; however he might hope that you have changed your mind about being exclusive.
If you are ready for something more and he isn't then you could wait until he is ready to commit, however this might put you at a disadvantage. You could hang around and find that he never wants an exclusive relationship again, while putting your poetical to find someone else on hold for an unnecessary amount of time.
It sounds like he may have a lot of things to deal with since his wife died- perhaps the guilt of thinking about finding someone new, what his dating life means for his daughter as well as learning the whole dating game again.
It seems like he finds it difficult to express how he is feeling- as he changed his profile status as a way of telling you he doesn't want anything exclusive. Maybe he needs time before he can feel comfortable enough with someone to tell them how he actually feels as he is feeling it.
If him messaging you is setting you back then maybe you could ask him not to do this. So you can at least have a chance to get over him if he won't reconsider being exclusive with you.
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