Not sure about this girl & why she cut off the relationship

[silentfruit]

Okay, so I don't normally put much stock in forums but it's free so I'll give it a shot. I'll try to thin down the story, but particulars are important for this one so it's going to be a little long.

So I'm a guy, and I'm in college.
My roommate and I started hanging out with a new group of friends that he semi-knew from some before-school program. Anyway, we get invited on a spring break trip. There is one girl in the group I'm interested but I'm not crazy interested yet. So I go on the trip, make a rad first impression with lots of jokes and etc. I slowly start to like her a lot because has a great personality and is pretty funny too, and we have some similarities but also differences which I think is good. So I hang out with this girl every day after spring break with our mutual friends. She leaves me some subtle hints that it'd be okay to ask her out and that she's interested, but I'm a little nervous that asking her out could negatively effect the friend group. I talk to her often on AIM at night and daily via text messages from classes and such. So I wait until 2 weekends until school lets out for summer, only because I didn't want to not ask and then have her meet someone or something and then feel bad about not ever asking. I make it obvious that it is going to be a date, because it is normal to ask to go to a movie or dinner within our friend group. She says she'll think about it and let me know, which I immediately think is her way of letting me down softly, which I'm okay with mostly because I'd rather have her as a friend than not know her at all. So later she talks to me alone and says she wants to wait until after summer, which I'm cool with because that was my original plan anyway. A fledgling relationship wouldn't work over the summer because she lives like 5-6 hours away from me. So she leaves for the weekend to take some stuff home and I talk to her a little via texts just like normal. We hang out again when she gets back but then she texts me and says something like "when did you want to go on that date?" so I'm like "Anytime this week." So we decide to see a movie, and it is set for tuesday night. She pushes it back to friday because she has a test on wednesday and I have a paper due friday so I have to work wed/thurs.

So some of our mutual friends kind of rope me into this cheesy-romantic dinner type thing before the movie, which I think is going to be okay because the idea came from her roommate. So I borrow a car, pick her up, and I notice her hands are like, shaking. So I kind of bump out of date-mode and into friend-mode to easy the tension before dinner. So we have dinner at this like picknik table but then the bugs come out so we drive around for an hour before the movie and talk. We go to the movie, talk about it as it is going on etc, then I drive her back. She has a headache (which is normal for her) so I leave and go back to my dorm. At no point did I try to kiss her or make physical contact or anything because she seems like the take-things-slow kind of girl to me. Anyway, the next day she tells me she doesn't think its going to work but she wants to talk about it in private. So we talk in my room, she is tearing up and says she didn't feel any "butterflies," which I'm guessing is her way of saying romantic spark. So I'm pretty passive and am like well, it wasn't really a date so maybe we should try again in august and we can still be friends, which she agrees. Anyway, afterwards she talks to one of our mutual friends about how she likes me but isn't she if she does or something for like 2 hours. I never really saw her as the dramatic type, or the not-too-slow type. I still think I did the right thing by not trying to kiss her or anything like that, but otherwise I can't really understand why she cut off the relationship before even a 2nd date... and after this, we pretty much immediately resumed our friendship with the texting and AIM and daily hanging out (though less because of final exams).
Anyway, I'm not feeling totally torn over it, but I can't quite understand exactly what she wanted on the first date? especially since I might have a second chance / re-first date in the future.
Do you think I was too slow for her?
Did I ease too much of the tension by going into friend-mode?
Do you think she just can't decide what she wants in a relationship?
Do you think she cut it off because of summer?
And do you think the stress from exams and stuff (she doesn't take stress very well) had an effect on her decisions?
Any other insight is totally cool, I'm a little confused and its pretty early to be up writing haha. There is also some more stuff to the story so feel free to ask a question about anything.

-and wow it'd be super embarrassing if she somehow saw this lol

Thanks for reading that whole thing...

[Cbrider]

Haha, don't worry if she saw it, it would only make you look better because you are actually concerned about her. My ex was stalking me on here after I broke it off, reading my posts where I was trying to figure out what happened...she never did get it.

I'm willing to bet that everything is fine, shes just nervous and doesn't know how to handle it all. Long distance is near impossible to maintain, and WONT work in a relationship that would form that close to splitting ways.

Try and Relax, you didn't do anything wrong. Yes you need to be assertive about your intentions, but also empathetic when needed...you did fine.

My guess is that she does like you, but knows that she could let herself fall for you knowing that summer will split you up. It doesn't sound like shes no longer interested, just confused. Go your separate ways for the summer and keep in contact. Live your life, have fun and watch what happens when you come back for the fall semester.

[silentfruit]

Thanks for the response! My dad and my older brother said pretty much the same thing, but it means more when it comes from a stranger here.
Thanks again!

[Cbrider]

Thanks for the response! My dad and my older brother said pretty much the same thing, but it means more when it comes from a stranger here.
Thanks again!

Thats how it works - family is almost always spot on, but you don't believe it till you get affirmation from an outside voice.