Ethan and I have a complicated relationship at the moment. We don't really know where we're at. Before college, neither of us had had a serious relationship, so we have no idea what we're doing. We knew each other for literally a week before we started dating. I didn't even know his major 2 days into our relationship.
Within the first two days, I had a huge panic attack. Everything was moving so quickly. We had just been on our first date and we were spending all our time together. My whole world was turning upside down and everything was so different. I was scared. Piper and Meredith ran to get Ethan when they saw me burst into tears. Ethan came in and was totally okay with slowing everything down. He did everything right. He told me we didn't have to do anything I wasn't ready for.
So I thought I was okay now. Okay, I've had a small panic attack, now I can move on. A few days after that we went to his room and hung out. We had some really deep conversations and talked about boundaries we would set for ourselves. We both agreed we could kiss and hold hands, but we were going to wait until marriage for more intimate activities. I was really happy we were both on the same page with everything. I felt like everything was going so well.
After a while, I told him I was really tired and needed to go to bed. So he walked me up to my room fifty feet away, and we said goodnight...and something else. He said it. That four letter word. We had only been together for four days. I acted like everything was fine and went into my room where Piper was laying in her bed and Meredith was sitting on the desk chair. They asked me how everything was and I said it was good. Of course they wanted details, so I told them what happened. That's when they told me that they also thought all of this was wayyyy too fast.
Of course I burst out into tears...again. So Piper and Meredith called Ethan and told him we needed to talk. Now. He came upstairs, and Piper and Meredith told him everything I had told them. He completely understood and said we could really slow it down. Both of us just had no idea how any of this is supposed to work.
He ended up staying in our room until three AM. I still didn't feel like we had really fixed everything though. I thought that maybe it would be best to just sleep and everything would be better in the morning. I was wrong.
I went to class that day and everything was fine. A few hours later though I was not okay. I started thinking about everything all over again. Meredith and Piper could tell something was wrong. After much conversation, Piper came up with an idea. Ethan and I could start over. Because we skipped over so much of the friend stage, we could go back and try again.
So I texted Ethan again and asked him if Piper, Meredith and I could come talk to him. He said of course and let us into his room. We talked about it, and he told me that he was totally okay with this. He said it would be hard, but he was willing to try it if that's what I wanted. So we both agreed we would start all over. We still obviously wanted to hang out together, just not as a couple per say.
I actually felt really good after that talk. I felt like we really could fix everything. Later that same day, he texted Piper asking if we wanted to play pool in the main lobby. We did go, but I made the mistake of staying on my laptop the whole time. This sent him the message that I didn't want this to work out and it made it awkward for both of us. He eventually left to go do homework because of this. After this, Piper texted him to get his butt back up here, and Meredith took my laptop away from me. I sat next to him, but it was still extremely awkward. We couldn't make small talk at all.
Eventually Piper, Meredith, and I left to do other things. While we were were out, I texted him asking if we could talk without Piper and Meredith. He agreed that this would be a good idea, and we met up in his floor's lounge an hour later. We had a really deep conversation about what we thought about our relationship and forgot about everyone else's opinions. I won't share with you the details of this conversation because I believe it to be personal between Ethan and I, but know that we both really believe that we can make this work.
So now we don't really know where we're at. We're trying to go on group hangouts with Piper and Meredith to learn more about each other and it seems to be going pretty well. I guess we'll just see where that takes us in the long run.
<3 Ellie