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Dear Breakup Girl,

I was seeing this guy for a few months and then he fed me the I-am-getting-to-emotionally attached line. He said we would still be friends. Two years later, he still calls at least once a week to check on me. He has said that there would never be anything between us again. I accepted that and have tried to move on...as far as I can with him calling and having a major hobby in common. Now, I try to call him ask him to a movie or dinner once every few weeks and he always gives me some excuse why he is busy but let him check and get back to me...he does two days later. If we do go somewhere together, he makes sure that other people are around. I have no intentions of jumping him, I have accepted his words...we are just friends. I am letting go and I feel like he is reaching out for me. He was/is my first love. I don't understand why he can't let go or at least talk to me about what is really going on. I believe he cares about me. But I don't know what to do other than continue to pull away and let him come back to me if that is what he truly wants. I have tried talking to him. I have offered to listen to him. I told him I was very close to telling him to F#@% Off and that didn't make him happy. I can't do that because if I do that I would have to quit playing on a hockey team that he is the captain of...I don't want to quit playing a sport I love because of a guy. I don't want to be traded to another team because as one of the two girls in the league, it takes me to long to get accepted by the other guys. I like my teammates now. My gut tells me that he will be back, but because he told me we would never be more than friends he is afraid to admit he made a mistake. I have all but stopped calling him. I ask him to hang out with me...friends only stuff. We can't talk anymore because we are both to worried about hurting the other...I am at a loss as to what to do. Do I just continue to pull away and hide my feelings from him? When I do that it hurts me because I care very much for him. Of course there is a lot more that he does that confuses me...he tells me what he does, used to leave songs that have special meaning to us on my answering machine, calls me for really dumb reasons, and acts like he wants more but doesn't say anything. It's like you say...I know what I need to do but it's better to hear it from someone else.

-- Cat

Dear Cat,

You guys are in some sort of neutral zone trap: where there's nothing "going on," except there is because there's not. You know? My sense is that he likes (small "l") you and is trying to be nice, but then has occasional 45-second shifts of sentimentality, where he calls you up and plays that Chumbawumba song. So hear me on this: do not quit the team. Exes do manage to stick it out in together even in much less fun environments (say, workplaces). Also hear me on this: Cat, it's been two years. After a few-months-long relationship. And unless I'm missing something, he's doing his clumsy best. There is nothing to do, nothing to fix, nothing to tell anyone to anything-off about. As my coach says to anyone who gets distracted and huffy and personal on or near the ice, just play. Remember, hockey is about space -- where the puck or the goalie (or, in your case, let's say, the past) is not. Play there.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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