Can you help me with the whole story?TTT

Sorry its so long, i just need someone to tell me what is what, because this seems very comlicated and not clear cut to me.

I was 16 when we met at work and we were both attracted to each other. He lost his job and we didn’t really see each other till about a year later when we bumped into each other and exchanged phone numbers. We called each other occasionally and caught up that way, and eventually I ended up going round his house to see him one night after id been out on the town.

The attraction was still there and it was slightly awkward as we didn’t know how to handle it. We are both a bit shy. He sat on the opposite side of the room to me, on a completely different sofa, and we talked for a while before I said I had to go home. In the taxi on the way home, he sent me a message asking me why I was sat so far away from him, and why nothing had happened. I mentioned that it was him who walked over to the other side of the room and not me so if he had wanted to sit closer, he easily could have. Skip forward a few weeks, and id gone round a few times to watch a film at his.

We were talking more and more frequently through texts and calls each/every other day and things started getting flirty like they used to be at work. Well eventually we ended up sleeping together and it turned into a fairly regular thing pretty much every Friday and maybe another night too. I found out after the first time we slept together that he had a gf, and, honestly I didn’t think much of it. I knew it was a sh8tty thing to be doing, but I was young and if im honest didn’t really care. It intermingled between him inviting me round to stay and then changing his mind later on that night, or me leaving early the next morning.

I started getting closer to his sister and we ended up going out as friends drinking with one of her other friends on a regular basis each weekend. Id make excuses later on in the night, and head round to his to spend some time with him and normally stay over. I do remember him specifically asking me one night why I always leave early, and asking me to stay the next morning so we could spend time together the next day. All this and he still had a gf. That year I received a happy valentines off of him despite him still not being single, and after an argument over him cancelling a day to hang out at short notice, and following a friends advice I gave him some space.

I asked him for all of my stuff back, (he has a lot of videos that I had taken round to watch) and he told me to come round to pick them up that he had put it all aside. When I got there, he was distant, obviously it was awkward following our argument, and there were empty cases, and videos all over the place. I got the distinct impression that he was trying to fob me off with only some of my things so he would have to see me again, this was strengthened by seeing him pick up a video corresponding to the empty case we were trying to fill, and put it behind a load of other videos on his shelf. Needless to say within a week we were talking again, and things had started up again.

> My feelings for him had started to change, I was getting attached and I decided that as I was due to go to university, I would choose a university far away to get away from him and the feelings I had for him. A week before I was due to go to university I went round his and I told him I had developed feelings for him, that I didn’t know how he felt but wanted to be together and knew that couldn’t happen so I was going away to get some time apart. He had tears in his eyes saying to me that he didn’t like what he was doing by cheating on his gf, and that he loved me, but as a friend and didn’t want to lose me and hoped we could still be friends. I said fine, and went to university the following week.

> Literally a week after I had gone, I got a call from him, he was really upbeat and bubbly as he told me that he has finished with his gf, but he didn’t say anything more about us etc etc. I played it cool and said, well sorry to hear that etc and tried acting not bothered by the news. After that we started texting each other again a lot, and after a while it became apparent he wanted to start things up with me again. I told him matter of factly that he had made his bed by choosing his ex over me, and now had to live with it…. His reply to me was “we all make mistakes”. I came back that xmas and spent a lot of time with one of my close male friends who he had always had a hint of jealousy over (j had answered my phone one day in the pub, and told him I wasn’t available as I was at the bar, and D then called me back saying “if J wants a fight with me, then all he has to do is say so”, I overheard the conversation, and the above is literally what J had said to him. Nothing more and nothing less.)

We bumped into him that Xmas, and he saw me and gave me the biggest hug and told me that he loved me. Then he walked away with his friends. He constantly was calling and texting me when I went back to uni, and wanted to meet up when I was back for easter which I agreed to.

When I got home at easter2002, I found out that he had another gf..P. I went and saw him, spent some time at his house watching films but nothing happened. There was one night he called me on my way home asking me to come back because he was thinking about me and was turned on, and I just reminded him of his gf, and that I was not going to go round because of that. I yet again told him that he had a choice, and chose someone else, and said if you want to be with me, then you will have to be with me without anyone else. He told me he wanted to be with me, had feelings for me, but wasn’t prepared to end things with his current gf to see if we could work. Yet again I left him to it.

> They split up and got back together a couple of times, but the following xmas they were having big problems. and We had stayed friends all though this time, talking to each other, but hadn’t seen each other the summer I had gone home, now we were getting back into the flirting routine etc etc. I was due an operation on my shoulder, something ive been having problems with since I was 18- I was now 20 and my mum had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer over the xmas period. (she had lung cancer when I was 11, and went into full remission).

My dad was working abroad, my sister was at university, and I was also away but waiting till the next summer for an operation so I didn’t miss any uni. Well I decided after xmas that I was not happy with my mum being on her own going through chemo for a second time, so I asked her to arrange for my op to be brought forward so we could look after eachother, and id just repeat the uni year. The weekend that I came home from university, my mum had a stroke.

I’d been out with my best friend and her bf the night before, and he had wanted me to come over after around 9pm to spend some time with him. It got late and we all decided just to stay out instead. He called me at 11pm asking where I was and I told him I was just dropping JA home to his town. He asked me to call when I was on my way back, but I got into a convo with my friend and it was 2pm by the time I thought of calling him-so I sent a quick text instead. The morning my mum had her stroke (Monday), and I was at the hospital waiting for my family to come and be with me, I got a text from him (not that he knew what had happened) “I hope you got to c*m last night”. I was devastated at the timing of that text and screamed down the phone at him to his voicemail.
> That night he apologised and asked me to come over so he could make sure I was okay. I said no, then he very badly decided that he would cheer me up with some dirty text messages. They went down like a lead balloon and we had another argument. By sat morning 15th feb, my mum had died and my world had been turned upside down. His timing, always impeccable was to call me to apologise and ask how I was and my mum was, 10 mins after I had said goodbye to her. I put the phone down on him.

The next week, I had my operation as planned, (my family thought it best) and I was let out for the day of my mother’s funeral, the week after that, my sister went back to uni, and my father decided to go back to work abroad, even though I had just had major surgery, and had my operated arm strapped to my body. That week I turned 21. D called and text me a few times over this period, but not every day like we had been contacting each other before. He told me he was really worried about me, and he didn’t know what he could do to help me. I think like most people in this position, he was just giving me space. Eventually the contact started back up again, and we were spending time with each other hanging out. I found out he was still semi seeing his ex, and I reminded him that nothing would go on- despite him still saying he wanted it to over that period.

> Anyway 3 weeks after my mum died, my dad brought back a woman he was obviously having an affair with over where he worked. (my mum had expressed a concern about this to me a week before she died) he denied for 9 months that there was anything going on, and twisted everything I told my sister to make me look like a bad person who was lying.

This woman was a complete and utter b*tch to me during this whole period. She had no compassion for what my family had been though, and spoke to me like I was dirt in my own house. She made up lies about me to my father, and our relationship suffered severely because of it all. He was married to my mother for 31 years. I found that disgusting. He finally came clean to my sister about them in the September when I went back to university. I never got an apology for all the lies he told, or him turning my sister against me during that period. D however supported me a huge amount through this time, and he felt like the only person I could talk to about what I was going through.

> I went back to uni, and just couldn’t cope with the workload and the depression I had slipped into. Around jan the following year, I found out that D was still with this gf of his, and I laid my heart on the line. I told him through text that I loved him, and that I wished he felt the same way but as he didn’t, we shouldn’t have any more contact with each other. He contacted me back straight away saying he wished he has known how I felt, and asked why I never told him before now. I replied that it doesn’t make a difference as he is with someone and that meant we couldn’t be together. I then ignored his attempts to contact me for 3 months until I got a withheld number on my phone one day. I answered and it was him, in a really quiet, sad voice he said to me “you can’t just say something like that and walk away”, I said yes I can. “I haven’t done anything wrong though”. I then tried explaining to him, that I loved him, and he didn’t feel the same so it would only cause problems between us if we kept talking. He didn’t seem to understand and asked if we could remain friends. I said yes and gave in
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> Before I went home in summer, after flunking out of the year not being able to cope, but wanting to be around the friends I had up there, he went on holiday with his friend, and called me during the night, (drunk) he said “im just phoning to tell you how much I love you and it’s not cause im drunk” , I said, I love you too, then he asked me to text him through the night…. I didn’t as I passed out. When I got home that summer, we spent time together with nothing happening. He invited me out to his birthday drinks and I went, but with a male friend of mine (I have a lot of male friends). Later on that night I saw him drunk, but kissing another girl. I asked him why he would do that to me, and he said, he was sorry, he was drunk and she didn’t mean a thing to him.

> It was a big deal to me. we have never really kissed. he has kissed me on the cheek, on the forehead, etc etc, but never had a smooch. Ive initiated kisses on occasion (3 to be exact) and each time, he has been somewhat unresponsive to me and not really kissed back once we first started out and he was cheating on his first gf with me, I overheard him on the phone to someone saying "we don’t kiss because she isn’t my gf". So you can imagine that I was hurt seeing him kiss someone else. I once again told him that I couldn’t see him anymore, because it was hurting me. I left the pub that night, and he called me the next day, saying things hadn’t happened between us in a long time, and he couldn’t see why I would be so upset. He told me again that she was just someone he knew though a friend, and that he wasn’t with her, and wasn’t going to see her after that night it was just one of those things.

> A couple of weeks after that he asked to talk as he wanted to see me. I agreed and we had a conversation about starting things up again. We agreed that it was too soon to have a relationship, and label something as a relationship, but that we would be exclusive and be seeing each other if we had to explain what was going on. It was then that I asked him why we had never kissed, knowing that he kisses his girlfriends, and had kissed some random and he told me he was not really a kissy person, and that he was grateful that he could be himself around me and not have to do that which he felt he couldn’t do with other people. I don’t know if I should have accepted that or not, but I did.

> By the time we had decided all of this, I was in a deep deep depression and waiting on what was to be, my 5th operation on my arm. Things were good between us, but I had completely lost my sex drive as is apparently normal. He still turned me on very much, but I was not fussed about getting anything or having sex, that meant that as I enjoyed it so much, and so did he, I would go down on him, and that would be enough for me. That was all he got from me over the entire time we were “seeing each other”.

> I cant describe how I felt here. I was happy that we were together, we were spending 3 nights a week with each other and going out for drives or chats maybe another night a week. We were constantly on the phone or texting each other and he was supporting me thought everything that was still happening with my dad etc etc, I already knew his mum, sister and brother, but we had specifically gone up to see his dad on a few occasions, and we had gone out to lunch just the three of us. I was also introduced to his little sister during this time (she was 7) who kept on calling me his gf when I met her. She went into the cupboards, and got out a box of chocolates and gave them to D, saying your girlfriends lovely, these are for her. I didn’t want to say or make a fuss about it, but when we got back into the car and started driving off, he said “oh I forgot your chocolates, do you want to go back for them” he didn’t correct her, and at the time I thought awh that’s sweet, but was aware that she was a 7yr old child, and explaining that I wasn’t may be to much hassle. I left it.

> We did a lot together, all the time. As I said I had no sex drive, so it was mainly getting into bed and just cuddling that happened. I felt safe with him, and he would hold me all night. My arm was bad, and he fussed over me something chronic. Making sure I had enough pillows so I was comfortable etc etc. if I rolled over in the night, he would get up, and walk around the other side of the bed so he could carry on cuddling me and me still be comfortable.

He did little things for me for example, I had had a conversation with him about a year before, where I said I hadn’t seen the day of the triffids for absolute years. I picked him up from work one day and he handed me the film on dvd, saying that it had come into the shop as an exchange item, and he had made sure he bought it for me, just to say thanks for everything I do for him. Or for example I was supposed to go and see the second lord of the rings film with my mum the day she had her stroke, so I was boycotting seeing the film. He sat me down one day with a huge box of tissues and said, I think we should watch this, your mum would have wanted you to see it, im here for you, if you need to turn it off at any point just let me know.
>
> but it just was not enough. I was reaching out to him to fill the void left by my mum, which he couldn’t possibly do, and I wrongfully resented him for that. I didn’t realise I was depressed at the time, was losing a lot of friends through my irrational behaviour and was driving everyone including him away from me. I resented him for not being there enough for me, but he would never have ever been able to have been there for me like I needed him to be.

My head was being twisted by my father and his gf, and I couldn’t tell who was against me and who wasn’t. first in my abuse list was D. He took so much verbal and mental abuse from me that looking back I can’t understand why he ever wanted to talk to me again. He started distancing himself from me which made me even angrier at him for pulling away. We didn’t see each other for about a month, then we met up finally, we had a long conversation about how I thought we were together, which he said we were. I said, I thought we weren’t seeing other people and he said we aren’t, we went back to mine, and all night he kept telling me how much he had missed me, he didn't want anything to happen, but just cuddled me tight all night long.

> I didn’t know what to think. He had gone off for a month, reduced contact and had not given me any explanation. The next morning I snuck a look at his phone. Lo and behold there were texts from a girl called S on there. I knew he had to go to work that morning, so I hid his phone so I could go through it properly. He left without it asking me to please find it.

> At the time, filled with rage about him cheating on me I only saw one thing. Messages of a sexual nature from her to him, messages that suggested they were meeting up and messages from her saying she loved him and would move across the world to be with him if that’s what he wanted. I checked his outbox, and there were message from him inviting her to tell him what she would do to him, and messages from him saying that he liked her.

> I saw red. He called from work and I answered the phone and we had an almighty row. He told me it was not what it seemed and asked me to read through the messages again, that she was just a friend and although they had been messaging, nothing had happened. He asked if I could meet him after work so he could explain everything and clear it all up, but I had work so we agreed to the next day. We had 4 arguments in the space of 3 days as he then kept putting things off saying he was throwing up and being ill.

We eventually met and he told me that he has met her earlier in the year and they had slept together once, but that it was before me and him had gotten together ,that she liked him and had decided she now loved him after having known him only a few months and having one night together. I asked him if he had met up with her since we were together and I expected some form of excuse or lie… what I got was that he had wanted to meet up with her at times, but that he hadn’t because I meant so much to him, that I was constantly upset with him and was always making him feel bad with what I said. He told me that she made him feel good about himself when he spoke to her, but that he hadn’t even seen her in the 5 months we had been together as he was with me, but that he cared a lot for me, and didn’t want to hurt me, because hurting me was hurting him.
> To me, this was all bullsh8t. I was angry, and hurt, and so on so forth. I called things off and told him again, that I didn’t think we should speak to each other. That was just before xmas in 2004.

> Invariably we both calm down, and both start speaking to each other again, but don’t see eachother for a long time. During this period, I got into a rebound relationship with a guy I knew from my work who bought me dinner a few times when I did the late night reception shift at a hotel. When I told D about this, he asked all manner of questions, his age, what he looked like, how often we saw each other, what he did for a living, where he worked, and then he asked me if it was the same guy who bought me dinner a few times at the hotel (we split a company meal voucher between us that he was entitled to, so he wasn’t actually buying me dinner). He was obviously jealous which I must admit I got some satisfaction out of.

> A couple of months later I found out that he was now seeing S but wasn’t with her. He told me matter of factly on the phone that it wouldn’t last because she lived too far away, he told me he had met up with her over feb and they had started seeing each other from then (over 2 months since we had “split”).

> The relationship with st ended when he hit me one day out of the blue because I said I wouldn’t spend a week with him while he moved jobs. Don’t worry, I pressed charges. it was may when I spoke to D about it, and he was shocked, and shouted at me for not having told him straight away. He offered to come to court with me for support, but I just couldn’t have him there whilst I was going over the details of what had happened.
> I was angry at finding out about him and S, as far as I was concerned it confirmed that they were sleeping together when we were “together”. it was a couple of months after this I re-read the texts that I had copied down that day, and realised there may have been some truth, or all truth to what he was saying.
She was indeed sending dirty texts to him, and he seemed to be asking her to tell her what she would do, but she was saying I love you if move to be with you etc etc, and his replies to those texts were things like “ and I LIKE you.”. or there were texts from her saying il see you tomorrow night, can’t wait., but a text the next night saying “thats a a shame, I was looking forward to it, but I get to see you next week so no problems” then the next week etc a text saying the same etc etc. so what he was saying about wanting to meet up, but never actually doing it, may have been the truth.

I actually started to see that the way I had treated this guy, was wrong. That I had hurt him a lot by pushing him away from me when all he wanted to do was support me and help me. That I was actually speaking to him on a daily basis like he was worthless and being nasty to him. I even remember him texting me one day after saying he had had a particularly nasty day at work saying “please just be nice to me, ive had a very hard day at work and am feeling very down right now”. My god! He HAD to ask me to be nice to him. And even after that, I remember starting an argument with him about it!
>
> I decided that I would start reading some self help books and try to pull myself out of the depression I was now realising I was in, and to try and salvage what was going on with me and him. I went on various forums online and started to realise just how bad things had become for me, and how badly I had treated him and put him down. I asked him if we could spend one day together so that I could say thank you and sorry to him in the same shot, and he reluctantly agreed. I took him up to London for a picnic in green park, we went on a Thames boat ride, and then went to a geeky film memorabilia shop. He was overwhelmed with me in the park, and that night on the train he gave me a huge hug and told me how much he appreciated the day we had had, and that nobody had ever done anything like that for him. I didn't know how to take that, am quite bad at being humble and accepting lovely compliments like that, so kind of shrugged it off which spoilt the moment. Then his gf, S called!

> A few weeks later I ventured back to university to start up again. I sent him card saying that I loved him, and that I hoped in the future we could be together, but for now, I needed to go my own way and focus on myself. I was hoping to get some form of reply from that, but I didn’t. I went back up to uni, and started seeing a councillor to get over my grief. 2 months later he contacted me out of the blue saying that he missed me, and was thinking of coming up to visit me at university. He was still with S, and I said that’s fine, but on a friend’s basis only. He called me to “let me be the first person to know he had been accepted for a mortgage and bought a house”, and a few weeks ;later he called me and said “please don’t shout at me, but I need to tell you something, ive been ill recently and coughing up blood”. I asked him if he had been to the doctors, and he said no, I asked him to go for me, and he agreed. I asked if S knew and why she hadn’t made him go, and he said he hadn’t told her about it.

> That xmas we spent a few day times together watching films, and when I went back to university in jan, he sent me a message saying “make sure you come back, I miss you”.
> I had a field trip at easter, so didn’t so go back, during this time but did during that summer. And him and S had just split up All summer we were hanging out, spending time together but not staying over each other’s houses.

> When it came to his birthday, I again had just had another operation on my arm, which was strapped to my body again, and he invited me out for a drink with him and a few friends. I agreed. I met up with him and everyone in the pub and we then went into town from there.i got talking to one of his old friends who I hadn’t seen in years and by the end of the night, and I was very drunk we were kissing each other. D walked by both of us just as we were coming up for air and had this weird smile on his face that was shock, hurt, and humour all rolled into one. I said id be back in a min, and went to speak to him to apologise. (I didn't mean to get drunk and kiss his mate, it just happened. we were talking all night and were completely separate from the rest of the group, then it happened)

I walked over to him and said im sorry, he said, “if being with him is going to make you happy, then im happy for you, honestly” annoyed at that I then said to him, “no bull****ting me here D, spell it out for me loud and clear, tell me how you feel about me”…. His reply was this “I love you, I always have, and I always will. But a relationship right now would just be too hard on both of us. My work is manic, im just changing jobs and it wouldn’t work”. I said to him, “what makes you think that im am asking you for a fully fledged relationship? I thought we have been getting on really well and that has been leading somewhere, but we would need to take anything we do really slowly”.

> He said to me look, this is important to both of us, how bout we get out of here, go back to mine and we can talk about this properly. I agreed, and he said let me just say goodbye to my friends stay here. Well, yet again it was great timing, because the club then started kicking everybody out, and all of his friends decided to go back to his house with us, including the guy I had been kissing earlier.