Let's try this again, Our {love} story, part 4

Ok I'm such a bad blogger. Seriously.
Back in May I tried to start telling you guys our love story.

I got about halfway through, and then I never finished it!! Incase you never caught the first three, be sure to catch up! {part 1, part 2, part 3}

It is such a long and drawn out story that it was a little daunting to tell! But I'm going to try this again!
We are going to be on vacation starting tomorrow so I'm gonna get these all ready to post while we are gone! Look at me being proactive!

Let's review:

• Alex and I first met at "Life School" which was a small discipleship program through a local church that Alex had grown up in. I had never set foot in this church until I applied for this school.
• We instantly had some sort of connection, though it was more in the form of gazing into each others eyes from across the room.
• At a Christmas party, a few months after we met, we got the "marriage bears" in a white elephant gift exchange.
• After that party Alex asked me if I liked him, and I told him that, "I really loved hanging out with him, but I wasn't ready for a relationship yet". He agreed (although secretly wished I had answered differently.
• We decided to be friends.

And that brings us to today's post!

After that conversation in the coffee shop, Alex and I didn't bring up the whole "do we like each other" conversation for awhile. We just focused on being friends. I was constantly being asked what was going on with us, because it was blatantly obvious that we liked each other (at least according to our friends).

But the answer was always, "Yes, of course I like him, but we are just friends for now," and, "No, I'm definitely not ready to date yet!"

And then there was the, 

Random friend: "So, I was talking to Alex about you the other day!" 

Me: "Really??!!? What did he say???"
Random Friend: "I said that you looked really cute in your dress yesterday, and he did this [...makes some sort of face that shows that he is in agreement...]"
Me: "Seriously??? OMG!!"

Even though we had talked and Alex had told me that he did like me, I still didn't believe it. As time passed I was just waiting for him to be interested in some other girl, or just completely forget that I existed. Which is why I had told him I wasn't ready to date. Because I was afraid that as soon as we did, his feelings for me would disappear. Or he would figure out that maybe I wasn't the kind of person he wanted to be with after all.

I've been that girl that guys go crazy over... and then get bored with. One second they're saying how they couldn't live a single second without me, and the next second they were breaking my heart. I didn't want to go through that again. I was determined to wait it out with Alex, eventually all his feelings would fade and this way we could at least be friends for a long time. Or that's what I thought was going to happen.

For a long while, there were never any girls for me to be worried about... until one day this new girl started going to our church. Her name was Kayla. She was super friendly and beautiful and everyone was talking about how cool she was.

Everyone but me.

Sure, she seemed nice, funny, pretty, and all that, but she decided to make friends with the guy that I had a huge crush on. I distinctly remember one night after church Alex ended up leaving some church event early, with this girl. How dare he hang out with another girl while he is supposed to be sitting around waiting to date me! The nerve of this guy!

I was so pissed. And very hurt, and extremely jealous. I was sure this girl was just going to swoop right in and steal him from me. And worst of all, it would be all my fault because I was the one that told him that I wasn't ready to date.

To make matters worse, we all went out the next night for his and another girls birthday, and him and Kayla rode together! I was beyond jealous and basically ignored him all night even though he kept trying to talk to me. I knew I had no right to be jealous because he wasn't my boyfriend, but I couldn't help it. I really thought that he had liked me and then he started hanging out with this other girl.

I went home from that dinner and cried to my roommate at the time. I didn't understand what was going on. One of the worst parts was that I did like Kayla. I thought she was really nice and cool, and she was a couple years older than me so she was really mature. How could he not like her? It had been months since he had told me he liked me, his feelings must have faded by now. And in my eyes this whole situation was proof of that.

I couldn't give up that easily though. So the next morning I texted him and asked if we could talk.

[On a side note, this girl actually became one of my really good friends. Kayla actually has a blog of her own and she was basically my inspiration for starting my blog to begin with! I later found out that neither of them had any interest in each other, Kayla was just new to our church and was just trying to make some friends!]

We met up at his apartment and the conversation basically went like this,
Me: "I'm tired of all this dancing around the issue, do you like me or not?"
Alex: [after some hesitation] "Yes, I do, I like you a lot!"
Me: Well, then what do you want to do about it?

We talked for a long time about our options. Do we date? Do we just be friends? Should we just wait until school is out? Should we wait longer? If we do date, is this something we could see being long term? Would we be dating just to date or is there a real possibility of marriage after this?

We didn't know what to do.

With as much as I was crazy about this guy, I was so scared. What if this isn't the real thing? What if he breaks my heart? What if we ruin this amazing friendship we have made? We left that night and said that we would pray about it and see how we felt in the morning. I also made arrangements to talk with my mentor that had been assigned to me by our school to help me figure out what to do.

But when the morning came, I knew what I needed to do. I still wasn't ready.

I knew that God was asking me to wait. There was still something left unsettled in my heart. Something that I needed to heal before I could be in a healthy relationship. I had so many past hurts and had we started dating I knew that I was going to carry all of those things into this relationship too.

So I told him I couldn't do it. I needed to wait.

Alex kept saying, "we should just think about it longer, let's talk to Jason and Cassandra (my mentor and her husband the director of the school) and see what they say."

And I told him no, that I wasn't going to consider it anymore. We were waiting and I knew that was what I needed to do. There was nothing that he could say to change my mind. And that killed him. It killed both of us. The only thing we wanted was to be together. The timing just wasn't right.

We did end up talking with Jason and Cassandra, and they encouraged us to set a time frame for when we would begin to consider dating again. We thought just a couple of months, but Jason encouraged us to wait longer. He suggested January 1st of the following year, which was 9 months away. Without fully understanding the implications, we agreed. January 1st. The day when we would see if we were ready to date. The day we were both hoping and praying would arrive quickly. The day that we hoped the other would still have feelings for us.

Along with the commitment we made not to date, we also knew that it was best if we didn't talk much during this time. We needed to have our space, because if we kept talking all the time and hanging out together, how would that be any different than dating? It would only be denial of what was really happening.

I asked Alex to write his story down also and here is some stuff he had to say:

“I really want to date you right now, but I think we should wait too,” it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to say. At that point we both committed to wait roughly 9 months, until January 1st. As soon as the conversation was over, I bolted straight outside and as soon as I was safely hidden behind a row of cars, I burst into tears and cried for several minutes. I’m not a crier, you can ask Tanya. I don’t cry often, but when I do its pretty pathetic. I don’t just tear up, I ball. Full on snot dripping down my nose, loud, gasping sobs, alerting everyone in a two block radius that I am upset. 

I knew that from now on I wouldn’t get to talk to Tanya pretty much at all. Our interactions at school was cut back to only the essential. And our texting conversations stopped completely. It was horrendous. 

It was especially hard until school was out, then I didn’t have to see her every day. We were trying to see if our feelings would wane. Mine never did.

So there we were, at the end of March, fully committed to waiting to date until the following winter.

Many, many, many, people asked me if we were crazy. And the answer is probably, yes.
That was one of the absolute hardest things I have ever done.
But it was also so worth it!

Did we actually stick to our commitment?

I'll have the next part up for your reading pleasure tomorrow! :)