Decide if she’s worth waitng for

Dear Carolyn:

I have been seeing a woman for about four months and we’ve been dating maybe once per week on average. We are in our 30s.

My girlfriend has recently started back to law school as a full-time student. She says she does not have time to see me AT ALL for the next three months. She said she will be able to communicate by e-mail or text.

I understand she is very busy with law school and her part-time job. She lives only five miles from me. I asked her if she would not mind seeing me weekly for a half-hour walk in her neighborhood, just to keep in touch. She said no.

I want to know if her behavior is reasonable, or am I being selfish in thinking that she should make some small amount of time for me? She says nothing has changed between us. I can’t help but think that I might be losing her. – Nearly Desperate

Even if everyone agreed that she’s being unreasonable and “should” see you, what then? She has decided not to see you till her semester ends – so there’s no way to win this.

You can choose to fight her on it; to deem her explanation insincere and treat it like a breakup; to keep polling others like me on what her behavior means; to take her at her word, bite on a stick for three months and see where you are when she’s finished; to conclude, “This is the way she handles stress/pressure/the need to compartmentalize/my feelings? Maybe she’s not as wonderful as I thought.”

Viewed in terms of spending time with your girlfriend, they’re all bad choices, obviously.

But when you view them in terms of building on the facts, the last two stand out: make peace with waiting, or judge from her actions that she’s not right for you.

So take the facts you have, and decide: Either she’s worth a disciplined, three-month wait for the rest of the facts, or she isn’t.