Scarleteen

I've had a few experiences in my life so far where I come close to dating someone but I always feel too scared of commitment. I either never talk to them again, distance myself from them or end up breaking up with them within hours.

For example, a boy from my cadets/JROTC expressed that he had a crush on me and asked me if I liked him back. I said I didn't like him as more than a friend at the moment but was willing to give it a go and after that we haven't spoken since. We used to be good friends and I feel bad I couldn't give him a clear answer.

A girl asked me to date her and, out of fear (she was super nice, even I don't understand what I was afraid of because dating someone is even scarier to me), I said yes and then made some silly excuse about how I had to focus on school and then broke up with her after a few hours. She cried in the cafeteria and I felt so bad. I think her friends hate me now which is a shame because some of my friends end up dating her friends every now and then and it's always awkward.

Another girl and I talked a bit, she was pretty nice and I was fine to talk to her. I met her through cadets once and hadn't seen her in person since so it seemed easier for me. It fell apart when she was trying to figure out the logistics of booking on a cadets camp together. She also wanted to sext and stuff and I'm pretty apathetic to sex in general. I don't masturbate or stuff so I think that's why I turned away from her.

I actually don't understand why I give people the false hope that I can be with them. The silliest thing is I do want to get married someday and have a family in stuff and I have this weird idea of that being special so I want to save my first 'relationship' for that and the two girls consider me their ex (I know this from mutual friends) but I don't consider them anything to me.

How can I stop leading people on and is there a reason I'm like this? This is total word vomit lol

Welcome to the boards, diode.

You know, if you want my opinion, really big things like marriage and having kids aren't usually wise things to do without at least some relationship experience -- if not quite a lot -- with other people. As someone older, I have seen so, so, so many people who got into serious things, and in some cases, legal contracts like marriage or creating kids with someone, without that experience and who that really screwed over.

There are things we both experience and learn in relationships that tend to be really important when we're doing things like figuring out what we want in a long-term relationship, knowing what issues or challenges tend to come up for us, having a sense of what feels good for us in relationships and what doesn't, knowing how to communicate well before making giant commitments, and so forth. I don't think having life experience ahead of those things makes them any less special. If anything, I'd say it might make them more special because you're more likely to choose who you do those things with much more carefully.

One thing I think I'm seeing in the examples you've given here is that I don't see you saying that you had particularly strong feelings for anyone who has pursued you so far. People being really nice and being interested in us doesn't mean that we feel attracted to them or that we want very much to be with them, and when we don't have strong feelings, it usually is better not to move forward with dating, so I'm not sure that, so far, this is about you being emotionally available so much as not yet meeting someone you're really into, you know?

It does sound like you might be having a hard time saying no, and that's pretty common for people, especially people as young as you are who won't have had a lot of practice with that yet. We can talk about how to do better with that if you'd like.

It might also help to know that we shouldn't be making commitments when all we are doing is just starting to date someone. Dating is supposed to be about a period of time where we see how we are together and how we feel about the other person so that we can, eventually, decide if we want to have a more serious relationship. So, I also think some of the issue here is about people taking things too seriously too soon -- ideally, we're not even agreeing to be "dating" before we have at least gone on a date or two!

So, do you feel like this is really about you being afraid of commitment, or that this has more been about people wanting a lot of it before you even have a few dates, and also maybe about you so far not having met someone you're really into?