My biggest two concerns are about honesty and integrity. I can not blame her for any actions - we weren't official.
Yet the facts that she hid things, told me she never felt stronger about anyone else, yet ran into this arms any chance I was away make me question her integrity. Further, he was only here for 3ish weeks, and flew back to Europe - hence why they split. I feel like the only reason I "won," was because he left. I feel like had he came back to the States to stay, she would've booted me - I was just the fun moment. But because he is no where around - NOW I'm back to the greatest things that ever happened to her. That makes me question her honesty.
Why post - why am I torn up? Because the moment I saw her, I felt something BIG. The hours living in our first date, I felt it grow. After I walked away from her that first night, I felt like I've known her for years.
It may not necessarily be about "honesty" and "integrity" but how mercurial she might be.
My sister's ex was exactly like that. Early on in their relationship, he sweet-talked her majorly, made her think he was interested only in her long term. And then when she went on a previously-planned trip without him, he went on dates with someone else. They eventually worked it out (she said he was very contrite and genuinely felt bad) and were together for 4 more years, but yeah. In the end what ended their relationship wasn't about romantic commitment, but his mercurial nature and complete lack of self-awareness. So really, that's what you might be working with.
It wasn't that he was out to mislead her. He's the type of person to say exactly what he's feeling RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT. He doesn't stop to think about what might be useful to a discussion, or how things might be down the road. He says exactly what he feels, right now. And not only that, but he lacked the self-awareness to know that he might be inadvertently hurting people because of what he says. Which included my sister, who tends to react to complaints with "I have to fix this right now!" That's what broke them up, in the end. He didn't see how he was hurting her.
So you have to figure out if she's really lacking honesty/integrity, or if she's the kind of person who lives in the moment only and doesn't think about how her words/action mean down the road.
The truth is, how we feel about someone may not be how they feel. And that's just life. It's not a Hollywood romance most of the time. You have to work with what's in front of you, not what you imagine things to be. I was "meh" about my husband for at least a year, while I think he had settled on me pretty quickly. He took down his POF profile almost right after he met me and was telling his parents about me pretty early on, while I was wondering a year in if I was settling.
Things just happened to work out between us, but it wasn't like we were on the same page at first.
But what both me and my husband do very well is that we think very carefully about how we feel and how to verbalize them, before we say things to each other. It helps a lot. And we're super-realistic about things. We've never promised each other the moon. But that's just the kind of people we are. If someone had sweet-talked me the way my sister's ex had, I would have run for the hills.
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