Do you ever feel too selfish to be in a relationship?

I'm currently in this situation with a girl. I fell in love with her when she was dating someone, because she would act nicely and would be a good time to talk to because she could make me laugh and I could make her laugh. Turned out she had a crush on me too but she didn't want to act on it. After some time, her and her guy broke up, and we had started talking romantically.

That was nice for me at first. She would be the same nice and lovely person that she was, except more affectionate and would tell me how important I was to her and what I meant to her. This made me love her, and eventually she told me that she actually did want to be a couple. After she told me, it all rushed on me, "what if I want to be alone sometimes? what if I can't handle the feeling of being drained?" It was a high school relationship, so she lived with her family, and I lived with mine. Her family was pretty controlling, and wouldn't let her go out with anyone but girls that they knew. But I decided, screw it, this girl means something to me, let's give it a shot.

It was perhaps the worst week of my life. Being on skype for many hours, after seeing her in school for many hours. I can handle being with someone for a long time in person, but over calls it becomes so tedious, I'm the kind of person that if I don't have anything to say I won't say anything, but she wanted me to talk and say something all the time. She would always talk about bad things going on, so much negativity, that weighed on me because I felt like I had to do something to make her happy, but I couldn't. She would speak with an air of disappointment whenever I told her I'm going to bed, which before then, I would go to sleep sometimes extremely early, because I just run out of energy.

I decided enough was enough, and I told her that I do like her a lot but at this time, with us being so separate and our graduation approaching, it wouldn't be healthy if we were to be dating now. So we're holding it off until after graduation when we have more time to do things and more freedom, as she'd be moving out with a friend after high school ends to get away from her family.

Before then, I never really had a relationship, despite many girls having wanted to date me, because I just felt too disconnected to be able to treat them the way they should be treated. If you call that selfish, then I guess I am.

/r/AskMen Thread