I am entirely new to the Red Pill thought and I am not sure if I understand it well enough in order to know to what extend I agree on it. However, many of the thoughts I read here reflect results of my own thinking. I think I don't need to tell, how difficult it is to sort all this out in times where gender roles are so diffuse and every interaction that takes place among two human beings is obscured by illusions and expectations. It is not only violating to men, it is also violating to women.

My basic approach always was to try to imagine walking in the shoes of somebody else. This has helped, but of course I am not perfect and I make mistakes. So it took years. It became more complicated after I have met someone with whom I was really in love and who was recklessly using this for his own interests without considering the effects it had on me. Which has left me vulnerable and fearful of similar happening again whenever I trust someone enough to allow him to influence and shape me. It took years for me to rebuild myself. I am willing to trust again, in fact I do not want anything more than that, however the consequences of trusting the wrong person have left deep traces.

Now I have met someone whom I think I could truly like again. It is not clear in which direction it will evolve. Partially because I had put my guards and defenses high from the beginning and was demanding proof of sincerity too early. I have to admit that our life situations are not the happiest right now and that we both also have some things that we need to sort out ourselves. This requires a lot of space that we give to each other and I am willing to respect this. In fact I couldn't do anything else than respecting the wish for more space if someone needs it. It is my understanding of balance that people have needs and in order for anybody to be happy he needs to know that his needs are respected.

The difficulty for me is to communicate my needs without making the other person feel pressured. I have refined my abilities in that but it also depends a lot on how well-meaning and conscious the other is. So, yes, I fully understand that he is different from me and that he wants to have days of no contact, in fact I want and need them as well. The problem here is that due to my past experiences the no-contact immediately triggers fear in me that the other might have just lost interest. This is partially a consequence of the relationship I described above, where the man at that time always tried to make me aware that he would leave as soon as things would not work out in the way he desires them to be. It was emotional blackmailing in many different ways for many years. I am not blaming, I just want to describe the dilemma in which I find myself in. The fear that rises is so powerful. I really don't want to experience something like that ever again and it can happen so easily when you trust somebody that isn't interested in reciprocity.

On an intuitive level I can feel that he is trying to lead. I can also see that my fears have caused quite some confusion and he does not have the experience necessary to easily understand and compensate for that. I also understand that it is not his task to calm my fears. Trust is the only solution to this. However, on the real level of our encounter, we are just not there, yet. I don't have enough trust to let him lead and he also has done few things that make me question if he is really sincere.

However, I know that if we were to be in a LTR, it were the best that could happen to both of us. I know about myself that I would not disappoint him and I also know that he wouldn't disappoint me. I know it because whenever he tried to ensure his borders to be respected there was never even the slightest notion of negativity. He never put me down. I hope that I also managed to do the same. I hope that in my attempts to communicate what I need, I might have been clumsy in a similar way as he is sometimes, but never negative towards him.

He says that he enjoys that I understand what he means instead of giving things my own twist and that this is a rare experience to him.

Anyway, at the moment we are not talking to each other. He said that he was in love in the beginning, but that now he doesn't want a relationship with me anymore. I know that he has his reasons, I know that I have shown some red flag behavior, but I also know that what he has seen is not the real me. It is that part of me that is scared as hell that anybody would use her trust and openness in a similar as it already happened.

He would continue to meet for sex. He knows that I fell in love with him and I am quite sure that there is more than only sexual attraction on his side. He just doesn't know how to interpret my behaviors. I never tried to hide my feelings. To pretend that I would also want to only have sex with him would not only be a plain lie, but it would also destroy everything that could evolve out of this. Despite me being quite open about my feelings he remains in the conversation. My experience is that there is nothing that makes a man who really only wants sex run faster than letting him know that you have sincere emotions. Yes, it could be just exploitative, but that I don't see and don't sense in him. On contrary despite my general fear and trust issues there is this deep feeling of "this is somebody whom you can trust". And yes, I would love to continue to have sex with him, but I also don't want to be used again. Yet, at the moment, sex is the thing that he wants and probably it is the only stage on which we could reestablish our connection.

I think I lost him. I think I did everything wrong. I know that he is one of the most beautiful human beings I have met so far. I want him on my side. I want to be on his side.

What should I do? Leave? Wait? He has started to understand how the previous relationship has influenced me and it seems that it was good that I told him so he could make more sense of my behavior. Nevertheless he is not "reaching out". He remains silent and distant. Nevertheless he sends signals in the sense of "not now", "not yet", while at the same time he seems to not want to see me anymore. So I don't know, if he is playing on my hopes because he wants me to be in place for a weekend when he feels lonely and bored, or whether he is testing whether I have really understood and whether I really respect his lead. If it were for the second, my trust is big enough that I would gladly wait until he has sorted things our himself. I would ask, but I guess I have asked already too much. On the other hand I also think that maybe he is just to certain about me liking him, while he has already made his decision. Then I should probably just learn from my mistakes and move on, even though I cannot imagine to meet anybody similar to him.

So I kind of would like to understand how I can open up a new stage for both of us that would be like a new start. How to break the silence friendly, easily, how to make him relax and feel safe again. How to have a new start for both of us without explicitly talking about it.