I think she is confused on what she wants

wow confused much? lol. I think that she likes you and wants a relationship she just doesn't like that you live out of state and that she meet you online. I meet a guy online once and we loved each other to but my friends convinced me that is was weird and that you can't fall in love with someone over the internet. So maybe she is just acting like "just friends" around her friends and family but acting "lovey dovey" lol when she is alone. I probably just confused you cause I just confused myself but I hope I helped a little bit.

I think that she has mixed feelings for you. Probably her past relationships something went terrible wrong and she is a bit scared of things repeating itself. If your 100% sure about your feeling for her, I think you should have a talk with her assuring her about your feelings and also discuss where you guys want your relationship to go.

Anyways hope I was of good help && good luck!

Believe it or not, this exact same thing happened between me and my then-boyfriend. He was from Cali, I was from Florida. He came down for two week, we hit it off GREAT. We were planning a future together, moving in, everything. But then he left.
And here is why, I think, we started to drift apart and you and your girl are drifting.
Once he left, I was heartbroken. I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping. Everything I had around me reminded me of what we did while he was down here visiting. And because he had been my living shadow for two weeks, and because we felt so deeply for each other. once he wasn't there, it was as if he had died. Or, in a sense, it was as if the relationship was over.
We grew distant - I started hanging out with my old friends, leaving him hanging all of the time. I'd send the cute little texts - only instead of *kiss* mine were MUAH ;) .
But then we finally had to call it quits. We had stopped talking - I mean REALLY talking. We'd speak but it wouldn't mean anything.
Long distance is HARD if you didn't know each other for a long time before the relationship. Trust me, I know from experience.

That's odd she'd say she needs space but still say she loves you. She seems confused on what she wants. What I would do, if I were you, would be to give her space. Don't ignore her, but let her see you're not letting her fiddle you around. Because that's what it seems like she is doing. kind of playing with your mind.

You fell into the LJBF (Let's just be friends) syndrome.

I've seen this happen so often it's helarious and younger guys end up wondering what it is all about with girls.

Let's first state that girls can love a guy without the sexual undertones while we men can not. Hell my best female friend who acts as my wing lady sometimes I look at her and I want to sleep with her.

For you to figure it out, take a look at the timeline from the day you met her to the day she told you LJBF.

For every start of a relationship, you have that attraction phase. At that phase you and her were all cute and saying nice things to each other. You also mentioned that you met online. Hence the preconcieved ideas about you. When you talk on the phone or online to a girl, she has to use her imagination to build up a character about you and as a result when she sees you, you break the image she has built up about you.

And that image she has built up about you as her knight in shining armour might not be what you project to her in person and even though she thinks you are the sweetest guy in the world, she can not see you as a boyfriend, but more as a friend.

Also getting close to a girls family should not be something you do until she's way deep into you. You always run the risk of her parents seeing you as a son too early or she sees you as a brother and it puts off girls bigtime. Or suddenly you are a potential future partner and girl gets scared.

I generally ignore cute txt messages like xxxooo, I love you, or calling me "sweet" if it's online/phone/txt. If a girl tells me while we're chatting, I tell her no no. you tell me that when we meet up, or you give me that kiss in person, your "msn kiss is not accepted. bye." So don't dig too deep into the messages she sends you.

My 2cents on this is you just keep her along as a friend, as a potential girlfriend and in the mean time there's no harm in dating other girls.

Sounds like she doesn't want to risk being heartbroken over a long distance relationship. The only two things that can really fix that (in my opinion) are moving closer, or getting her to be really secure and able to trust you completely. If the former happens, she'll always know you're near. If the latter happens, she'll know that even if you're away, you won't leave her.

It's likely a self-defense-mechanism, when you are at a distance she pretends the relationship means nothing, and when you're closer, she shows what she really feels.

If you aren't going to move closer, just keep the relationship going. She ought to trust you more and more each day so that one day the two of you can talk about the distance problem.

Good luck with it. : )


ps. remember, this is just my opinion