My first serious girlfriend is on holiday at the moment and will be for another week. We are both 19. We had a 3 week relationship before the current one, which she broke up, as she felt she wasn’t ready. In time, she apologised and said she never should have let me go and I took her back. It has been much better this time round, we spent time with each other’s families and have some great memories of the things we did together over this summer. When people talk about their dream girl, she remains a dream girl for a reason, she couldn’t exist. Now unlike most people I have been lucky enough to find that girl in my life. She is sensitive, quiet, thoughtful, exciting, quirky, talented and incredibly beautiful. We both play guitar and sing, we like a lot of the same music, we have interests outside of the other. She is an actor and a songwriter. Whenever I am with her, I notice other things that make me love her more. I could not ask for more in a girl. It felt like everything was going to be alright.

The other night, I texted her to tell her that it was our 2 month anniversary and rather than the text I was expecting she told me that when we were last together someone kissed her and she kissed them back. She said she can’t keep pretending it never happened and that I have a right to know. She said the guilt has been killing her, that she is really sorry and that she doesn’t expect me to forgive her. Now this hurt me, but I do love her and I appreciate the fact that she decided to tell me. But would she have been better just trying to forget about it?

I told her how I felt about it and asked her how I knew she wasn’t going to change her mind like that again. She says she doesn’t know and she hopes she will never act like that again. She has told me many times that she is not good in relationships, but also that this relationship was more important to her than any of the others she has been in. She told me that she has always cared for me and that has never changed, but that we both know that she is not good for me.

There was no build up to this, we were happy and stayed in regular contact. This just came out of the blue. I gave her what I thought was a great option, I said that from today, everything that has happened in the past, we keep in the past, that I don’t want her to feel guilty about it and that we should try to make the future as bright as we can. She said she can’t help but feel guilty, because the way she acted is still part of who she is.

I told her that I love her and that I would hate for it to end here because of something we can’t change, but the way she keeps criticizing herself, even when I have given her the option of leaving it all in the past and moving on, made me think that she might not want this anymore. After a long time, she told me that she loves me too, but that she’s not good, that there are things about her that I don’t know, things that I can’t know and that I deserve better. She said she is afraid of being herself, because whether it’s now, or six months down the line, she will hurt me. I told her that she needs to help me, help her, that I will stand by her and do whatever it takes, not to have to say goodbye again. I am now wondering whether something has happened this week whilst she has been on holiday, so I asked her and she said she’s tired and she will talk about it in the morning.

That brings us to now. I thought about it all through last night. We started this last relationship when she told me that she had never stopped loving me after the last time we broke up, she said that she regretted it straight away, but I had asked for space because I thought that was it. It will break me to have to say goodbye again. We are living just round the corner from each other next year at university, so we will be seeing each other whether we want to or not. I feel so strongly about this girl, I just want her to be happy. Recently I have also become good friends with her Mum, who obviously thinks that I will be with her daughter for a while (she has invited me to a concert with her and her son next January).

Neither of us have had sex and we had decided that we wanted to be each other’s firsts. We were working our way up to it and we weren’t far off before she went away. I had always hoped that I would meet someone who had waited for the right person, like I have, but before I met her, I was starting to lose hope that it would ever happen.

I worry that whatever I do, she will still love me but she won’t stay with me and because of that I know that I will find it impossible to clear that space from my heart. This means that I will have trouble with relationships for a long time. I really want to believe that’s something that we can change, but she doesn’t seem to want to help me, all she can say is that she loves me but she’s not good at it and I deserve better.

I don’t want to lose her.