Hi Reddit, I have been in a four-months situationship with the most wonderful girl I’ve ever known but now that I need to make official I don’t know if I have the strength to do it or if I should even do it.
Her name is Alice and she’s from Vietnam while I’m from Romania and we met while on exchange in the US she is everything I could ever hope for (I don’t wanna say too much but I literally admire everything about her).
I honestly am so stuck. In the beginning all was well and joyful. We met in the US and started casually dating, neither of us thought it would last long but we couldn’t let go. And at the end we continued to keep in touch online over the summer and she even visited me in early September.
The problem is that my parents kept saying that long international marriages don’t work and even in the best case it’s gonna be miserable for me and her, and that it’s so easy to switch relationships and that I will love them equally, why would I not do it now? This kind of got into my head.
The gimmick of what they are saying is although everything might be going smoothly now, I cannot see it for a few years and the real problems come when people are both thirty and she will want to go back to Vietnam. And so she will leave Romania and leave me.
Its important to note that one of the core non-negotiables for me is that I want to live my life down in Romania since I’ve got all my friends and everybody there and Alice isn’t opposed to the idea but she didn’t say she’s up for it either.
She says she’s willing to continue to study and I’m just afraid that she doesn’t really know what she wants and even if we do a one-year master’s in Germany and then we try out both living in Romania we’re gonna keep dragging the situation on and this hits different since my parents are always saying that I can just switch relationships and find a better more suitable one.
This is my first relationship and maybe this is why I’m also idealizing her but I just feel like Alice is a special person because she’s giving me unconditional love (like for real)
She’s writing me letters and she’s making so much effort for me that I dont think anybody ever did this much. It basically terrifies me that I can’t really like map out how she will feel in 30 years and I don’t know what if we have like full on kids and a great life and then she regrets it after a while. But I also want to trust her in her current state as she has never lied to me and has always been trustworthy. Never gaslighting or manipulating me or anything.
She gave me two weeks of no contact to figure out whether I want to be in a relationship or not since if I can’t say yes then it’s probably better for us to leave each other and not waste each other’s times.
I keep just keep spinning circles and I haven’t come closer to an answer, the deadline is 48 hours away and I’m very afraid that my inexperience in relationships and my lack of self-confidence is clouding my judgment. But I do realize that the kind of selfless self-sacrificial love Alice shows me is probably once-in-a-lifetime stuff and I would hate not to give it a real try.
I wanna make the best decision I can, how would you advise I do it?
TL;DR:
I’m a 21-year-old Romanian guy in a 4-month situationship with an amazing Vietnamese girl, Alice, whom I met while studying abroad. She’s shown me deep, selfless love and even visited me in Romania. Now she’s giving me 2 weeks of no contact to decide if I want a real relationship.
I’m torn because I want to build my life in Romania, and while she’s open to trying that, I worry she might eventually want to return to Vietnam. My parents say international relationships rarely work and that I could find someone more compatible locally.
This is my first serious relationship, and I’m scared my inexperience is clouding my judgment. But I also feel like Alice is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of person. I’m struggling to figure out if I should take the risk or let go before things get deeper.
Comments
If you think she’s great, try it. She can decide for herself about the living situation.
I think it’s a bit silly that your parents are telling you not to date someone because maybe it won’t work out a decade from now. You’re 21, you really dont need to be worrying about settling down permanently.
Ask yourself which of these seems worse to you – trying long distance and maybe it doesn’t work out but you tried, or spending potentially a long time wondering “what if I took the chance?” every time it doesn’t work out with someone else?
Maybe neither of those happens and you move on and never think about it again. But in my (old person) experience, the second scenario is pretty common in these situations.