illustration of a man confused over his long-distance relationship
In this week’s Sex Column, the experts advise someone in the midst of a lot of drama (Picture: Neil Webb)

I spent a lot of money travelling to see her and she has done this once before too.

‘I still have feelings for her. What should I do?‘

It sounds as if she found someone else and dropped you like a stone.

‘But now that relationship is over or she’s having doubts, she appears to be bringing you back into play,’ says James McConnachie.

So do you want to be played? Do you want to continue in this chaotic, exhausting drama?

‘You are both locked into a very damaging cycle of testing and torturing the other with lies, evasions and grand gestures that all amount to emotional blackmail,’ says Rupert Smith.

The clear lack of trust between you both has been illuminated further by these recent events.

‘She has ended things one more time and the very relationship she feared is the one you fell back into,’ says Dr Angharad Rudkin.

Living in different countries is also exacerbating the ways you each manage insecurity and conflict.

‘When you can’t see each other regularly or be involved in each other’s lives, the buffer that protects the relationship from niggles is far more limited,’ Rudkin adds.

So your choice now is to either lean on your feelings or on your judgement.

‘Your feelings will call you back to the past and you seem quite prone to this — you’re in relationships with an ex-fiancée and an ex-girlfriend — but your judgement, by contrast, will look at the past and use it as evidence for the future,’ says McConnachie.

While you’re looking backwards, Smith suggests you continue all the way into childhood.

‘You must be getting something that’s important enough to outweigh all the pain, expense and danger of what you’re doing, and I can only imagine that you’re repeating patterns, perhaps in relation to a difficult, capricious parent, which I suggest you explore with a counsellor,’ he says.

Ask yourself, how does this relationship feel when it is not at a high or low?

‘If it feels boring, this indicates that it’s the intensity and passion of a complex relationship that drives you,’ says Rudkin.

But has this been good for you? And will things change?

‘My advice is to not trust any feelings here,’ says McConnachie. ‘Use your judgement.’

The experts

Rupert Smith is an author and counsellor

James McConnachie is the author of Sex (Rough Guides)

Dr Angharad Rudkin is a clinical psychologist


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