Relationship status: It's complicated

[MacGuffin]

This is probably going to end up primarily being a rhetorical rant, but I am open to suggestions others might have in regards to this situation.

About two years ago, I met a wonderful woman. She was intelligent, funny, kind, and had one of the most generous hearts I have ever come across...she was lots of things, and I ended up in a relationship with her within a couple months of knowing each her.

However, our relationship has always been quite complicated, for many reasons, starting from the very beginning. In the beginning, I failed to really appreciate her as I should have and, as a result, we broke up. Life was very hard at the time, for I was having a lot of problems, and I didn't really have time to focus on many things outside of myself. However, within the few months after we were no longer together, and we began talking and seeing each other once in a while, I realized I loved her, just as she loved me. And so we got back together again, happy once again. I remembered how overjoyed we both felt the day that happened, and I thought nothing could go wrong again with us.

However, this only lasted a couple of short months, because before long some of the same problems that had been present since the beginning of our relationship cropped up again, only exacerbated by my rapidly deteriorating mental and emotional health. So she broke up with me yet again. For a long time I was very angry, although I understood why she had to do it. I was more angry at myself than anything else. At the time I was feeling a lot of anger and a lot of other feelings that were beginning to quickly destroy my life. So I went and got professional help to try and save myself.

While I was getting help, we began speaking again. And though we both warned ourselves to take it easy, we got very close again very fast, because let's face it: that love for one another had never disappeared, and we are both heartfelt people who are strongly influenced by our love for others. We had wanted to be close all along, but my problems had kept us away. And so we got closer, although not formally back together, though it looked like it was going to be that way.

And then, the night before I left, a sensitive topic came up and I said something I should not have said. It completely destroyed the connection that had been blossoming. She was so hurt, she decided to remove herself from me to protect herself, and I decided to remove myself because I was mortified at how I had hurt her, and I didn't want to hurt her anymore. I decided I would rather never be with her again, and just live with my love for her, than to tear her apart like that again. Because I watched how much she twisted and turned over me, and it was heartbreaking.

A few months went by, bringing us up to this week. She wrote me an email after we had hung out for several hours gaming with some friends, and said that if I felt ready for it she would not mind moving forward as friends, so long as I could promise these problems would not crop up anymore. And I knew I couldn't, so, heartbroken, I told her I was not ready. And she was really sad too, but I tried to disconnect myself from it.

Then, Thursday night, I posted something on a networking site that truly upset her, and she asked me to call her as a result. We ended up talking for nearly three hours. We had the longest heart to heart we had had in a good long time, and we felt so close to one another again. And then today she came over to open presents, and it was just like old times. I could feel how much I loved her, for those feelings had risen from being so buried down deep, and I think she could feel the same, too.

But I am frightened. I don't want to be moving so close so fast. She told me she's got it left in her to try one more time with me, but after that she can't any longer. I don't want to "try" again prematurely. So how do I (we, really), keep my emotions in check when all I want to do is kiss her and hold her and let her know I love her more than anyone I've ever loved? The "problem" in question is better than it was earlier this year, but it's not all the way recovered yet, and I feel almost in a crunch for it to be because I know she doesn't want to wait forever for this to work. It will take therapy, but I have so many things I need to work on in therapy that I don't know if I have time.

I love her, though. I want this to work. I want to be with her the rest of my life. She is worth so much to me, and I do not want to lose something I treasure so much. I guess I just need to figure out how exactly to fix myself and how to keep my emotions in check.

Thoughts?

[Aletheia*]

If you aren't ready to move forward this quickly with her, you need to communicate this. She may be taken aback by it, but explain that in the past since you two got so close so fast, things didn't work out the way you wanted them, and now you'd like to take it as slow as possible to make sure that nothing happens again to make more problems or old problems come back into light.

If you don't tell her how you feel, you're putting your relationship at risk for ending like it;s done so many times before. Just remember, since things didn't work out the first few times you tried, it may not work out this time either so be prepared for ANYTHING. So, just take the time to get to know each other again on a friend level. And, then pursue a relationship later on after you've established this. Your chances of having it work that way are much better than jumping in before you're ready.