Taken from the last volume of「娘の友達」, so please be aware of any spoilers!
After overcoming multiple hardships and basically what felt like a breakup, the main character confesses to his girlfriend (again). He then says that:
この先も君が俺と一緒にいたいと思って
俺が、この先も…君と一緒にいたいと思ってたら…
そしたら…
俺たち…この先も一緒にいようよ
I am wondering a bit about the 「思って」 in the first sentences. I remember having learned that verbs in て -form take the tense of the verb after the last 「て」, for example:
「そのあとは 自前の資金を 切り崩して生活してた」
The tense of this sentences is determined by the 「た」after the last 「て」. However, I also remember that this pattern is often used to expressed some kind of sequential order. That brings me back to what I was wondering about in the first place. Does the 「たら」after the last 「て」make both verbs (here: the first and second 「思って」) conditional, so that the meaning would be:
“If you want to be with me and I want to be with you […]”
Is it the same pattern as when linking て-form verbs with „normal“ tenses? And is the some kind of sequential order implied in this use? In the sentence above sequential order would then imply that her wish to stay with him is in sequence earlier and somewhat more important than his wish to stay with her.