Expert: Julie - 3/29/2009

Question
"Hello, I'm 20, my long distance girl of 3 months is 19 and is not sure if she wants to take a break from the relationship. I'm in Japan, she's in US.

When I told her "if that's what you want, then let's take a break", she replied "I don't know what I want .. maybe I'm just tired." She has also suggested we pick up the relationship and start over when I go back home in about 4 months. I've told her "I have zero intention to beg you to stay. We will always have what we shared together. Just do what makes you happy"

So now we are at this stand-still.
I've told her i will call from time to time to see how she was doing. Today was the 1st time I called and she seemed a little cold, excusing herself out of the conversation saying "I'm going to go take a nap" when I apologized for not being there for her for the past 2 weeks when it was especially hard on her. Perhaps my fault for trying to talk about mushy, relationship stuff with her when her feelings about me are mixed as it is.

So my course of action now is to not contact her for a while. I believe that she will contact me when she is ready and me calling her at a regular interval or me doing anything in general won't change her mind.

I know this relationship is almost over but I just wanted to hear your take on this. Should I keep some kind of a time deadline and say like "next sunday at this time, let's schedule a skype conversation so we can sit down and talk about where we are at so we can decide if we want this break or not?"

thank you so much

P.S

one thing I'm worried about is the fact that she is even contemplating this break is because I did not call her enough for the past 2 weeks. She does not have international calling, so I was the one always initiating but after she didn't pick up a couple times and she started declining skype conversations, I took it personally and stopped trying although it was just her crazy exam schedule. So I don't know if not calling her even more will help this situation at all. Does the NC concept apply differently to LDR because if I don't call, I see no reason why she will miss me when she couldn't even see me anyways.

Answer
I think she would still miss you because even though in the last two weeks you haven't been talking much, she'd still be wanting to hear from you. I would back off for now and not contact her, especially since you did initiate contact and she seemed cold. Let her have a chance to cool down and think about things, she will contact you when she feels ready. Otherwise, the only thing you will end up doing is possibly pushing her away even further.
Once she does contact you, then arrange a time for talking, whichever suits her schedule.

Good luck

Julie