I came to a recent realization lately that I'm never the girl, just the in-between girl.

A guy is never comfortable enough to get to "that point in the relationship" with me that we give whatever we are a label, but he is comfortable enough seeing me naked. We talk everyday, whether it be through text or Snapchat, and hang out more than normal friends do. But after awhile, the texts stop coming and the communication is lost with no explanation. Then, two weeks later, he's on Instagram with his new girlfriend.

That's when I realized I'm not the girl, I'm the girl before the girlfriend.

I'm a safety net, a place-holder if you will. I'm the girl that guys go to when they are in-between serious relationships and need something safe and consistent. Which is what I am, consistent.

I like to think that I love wildly and largely. When I care for someone, I give them my all and then some. I go completely out of my way for them to get nothing in return. Maybe a reply to my text if I am lucky. I bend over backwards to never be met in the middle.

But it's because boys just don't see me as the one.

There are a lot of labels for this type of relationship: hookup, friends with benefits, rebound, I-don't-know-what-we-are-but-we're-not-dating, "just friends." The possibilities are endless. But none of these resonate well with me because it doesn't ever match how I feel.

But I don't think my feelings are ever considered.

He'll touch me, hold my hand, hug me, kiss me, go out with me.. But don't question it, we're just friends. He tells me he's afraid of commitment, or isn't ready, or just doesn't want a relationship but will act like my boyfriend until it becomes time to call it "a boyfriend."

I press on, hoping that he'll see that I'm willing and open for a relationship. That my feelings are there and that they are valid. He asks if we have to define the relationship and "why we just can't have fun?" So I lie and say that we don't have to define it because I don't want him to leave.

And then one day he's gone. I don't hear from him again. My texts are left unanswered and my Snapchat arrow is no longer a solid color. As far as I'm concerned he's not even alive anymore until I see him and his new girlfriend on Instagram a few months later.

Then the self deprecation begins. I sit and I ponder where I went wrong and what I could do to be better. I wonder why I wasn't good enough for him and what she was doing better than me.

What did he see in her that wasn't in me?

What was I even to him? Were we friends? More than that?

What did I have to do to make him stay?

I tried giving him my whole entire world. I was offering everything that I had and it just wasn't enough. Why wasn't the world I had to offer enough?

And eventually I get the half-hearted, "It's not you, it's me" explanation on why he left followed by some other excuse.

But now I know that he's right. It really isn't me.

I have spent so much time wondering what is that I'm doing wrong. But it isn't me. I'm not the one giving false hope to a girl just to get into her pants. I'm not the one using someone else's feelings to their advantage.

And there will finally come a time where I will finally get to be the girlfriend and not the temporary placeholder. And that time won't come for awhile, and that is okay.

So I will remain as the girl before the girlfriend. And for now, that is okay.