casual_until_she_was

I kept saying I wanted to keep things casual. Then she actually did.

I’m 27, she’s 29. We met in January and I was the one who set the terms at the beginning. I’d moved cities the previous autumn, started a job that was eating most of my life, and had come out of a relationship where everything got serious very quickly. I did not want another girlfriend. I said that plainly. She said she wasn’t looking to rush anything either, so we started seeing each other. For the first few months it was genuinely easy. Usually one night in the week, sometimes a Saturday. We had sex, went for food, sent each other stupid things during the day. We weren’t exclusive and we both knew that. Around May, she told me she’d stopped seeing other people and asked whether I wanted to do the same. I said no. She was disappointed but didn’t make a scene. She said okay, she understood, and that was basically it. Except after that she changed how she behaved. Not in a dramatic punishment way. She just stopped giving me relationship-level access while I was insisting this wasn’t a relationship. She didn’t automatically keep Friday free. If her friends were doing something, she went. She stopped coming over at 11pm because I’d suddenly decided I wanted company. She still texted me, but not all day. Once I asked if she could pick me up after a work thing because I’d missed the last train and she said she was already in bed and I should get an Uber. I was annoyed. Which was ridiculous, because she was doing exactly what I had said I wanted. Then she started seeing someone else. She told me because we were still sleeping together and she wanted us to be clear about sexual health. Again, completely reasonable. I felt physically sick. I spent about a week being quietly furious that she could date somebody else while still seeing me. Then I remembered that I was also technically free to date other people. I just hadn’t bothered because I liked having her. That was the uncomfortable bit. I had thought “casual” meant I didn’t owe anyone commitment, but somewhere along the way I’d started expecting her availability, attention and loyalty anyway. I asked her last weekend if we could be exclusive after all. She said no. Not because she’s chosen the other person. Apparently that’s also casual at the moment. She said she’d asked me for exclusivity when she wanted it, I’d answered honestly, and since then something had changed for her. She likes me, but she doesn’t want to reorganise everything again just because I’ve become uncomfortable with her having options. That stung, but I can’t really argue with it. We’ve agreed to stop sleeping together for now. I don’t know whether this is the end or whether we’ll end up friends or whether one of us will want something different later. I’m posting because I’ve always thought the person asking for commitment was the one creating pressure. I didn’t realise how many expectations I’d quietly placed on her while telling myself I was the low-maintenance one. I still don’t know if I actually want a relationship with her or if I just hate that I’m no longer the centre of this arrangement. That feels like a fairly important distinction to work out before I ask her for anything else.