I'll just start from the beginning. The first three paragraphs are not related to the breakup but serve as a background to the start of our relationship and a pattern this may have come from. She is 25 and I just turned 29

I had met a girl late last year, I thought she was cute, funny, and just genuinely enjoyed her company. I knew she had a boyfriend though so never pursued it. I spent time with her when she was out of town (her boyfriend lived 3+ hours away and she'd visit often) because I just really enjoyed my time with her. I never had any plans to make a move or illusions of one day being her boyfriend.

For whatever reason we started talking more outside of our social circle (we share lots of the same friends from a close knit bike community in our city) and we would start hanging out on our own. She was still with the guy, but I saw a light at the end of the tunnel from time to time. Eventually I got an inclination she was into me but decided to not act on it for two reasons. 1) if I misread it, it would screw up the dynamic of the group, as we were organizing a ride for all of us, and I felt it would be unfair for her to feel uncomfortable on the ride if I misread the situation and 2) boyfriend.

Before an early morning ride once she decided to stay over, as she lived quite far from the city as well. She slept in my bed and wanted to 'cuddle' but I did not make a move outside of cuddling back. I told her I wasn't going to do anything while she was with the guy she was with. We stayed up all night talking and flirting and touching, needless to say we missed the ride. The next day she asked to stay over again, she insisted I cross lines I said I wouldn't, I did, and the next day she ended things with her boyfriend.

So now this girl is essentially mine. She's not going into nursing school until the fall and still looking for a job in the meantime, so she has a lot of free time to 'hang out'. We're together basically all the time from this point forward. She tells me she doesn't want to jump into another relationship because she had just done that the previous year (came from a 6 year relationship to the guy she was dating before me, whom she dated for a year). I agreed and told her I'm happy with things exactly the way they are now. We were each others but it was only our business and nobody else's, they could only speculate. Eventually she kept hinting she wanted to be my girlfriend a few times so I asked her if that's what she wanted and of course it was. We started a boyfriend/girlfriend official status around April 1st, but we didn't make it public knowledge until almost May to protect her exes feelings.

March, April, May, June and early July were some of the best days I can remember. She started working a job as a cocktail waitress at a local bar, just to pay the bills in the meantime, and we would occasionally bump heads about her coming home drunk, or if she said "I'm having an after shift drink and heading over" then showed up 2 hours later I'd be rather annoyed, especially since this was happening on weekdays and nights before rides. They seemed more like disagreements instead of fights instead of one time, when she legitimately got mad at me and left (she got an apt of her own in late may) but came back over shortly later and we made up. I was always trying to get her to curb her drinking, as it was basically the only conflict we ever had. I know many times I was being controlling and possibly manipulative in order to get her to stop drinking, I didn't realize it at the time, but now I can see it. She drank when I first met her, in fact it played a big role in us getting us to know each other, but once she started working at this bar it wasn't sipping on a beer over an hour and maybe having 3 during the night, the girls there were really into mixed drinks and shots. I felt it made her crankier and having her come home smelling like whiskey was a huge turn off, and I told her as much. She would complain about my apt being messy (mostly boxes and bike ), which I always felt was valid but didn't do much about until it was too late.During one of our arguments I asked "is it really so hard to not have a drink when you get off", to which she replied "yes ___, it is, it's so hard. i feel like i have to have one". To which I replied that she had a form of alcoholism and she has no business working in a bar. She was in denial but knew I was onto something, sadly, we never addressed this again while we were together.

Despite the problems with alcohol, the time we spent *together* was always incredible. People would always tells us they loved us together, we regularly had photos taken of us (something I wasn't used to) and in those photos I could see what I always felt, this incredible affection she had for me. Over these few months she would constantly tell me how she was happy I pushed her fitness, called her on her bs, how happy we were that we both had long term goals and that she was so happy I was the person she was going into nursing school with. I felt the same and actually couldn't wait for her to start school because I knew it'd eliminate our major focal point of our strife, the 4am nights and alcohol.. if she wanted to do well. I didn't court her the way I should've but I always had her and what would make her happy on my mind. If I knew she liked X I would order it and surprise her a few days later, if she needed something for Y, I would do the same. I wasn't making her feel like a lady all the time, which I should've done, but I never made her doubt that she was #1 to me. I didn't kiss the ground she walked on or become a doormat but I showed her attention and affection in a way I've never been able to in previous relationships.

Oh I forgot, there was another thing that bothered me at the bar. This guy. He was hitting her up when they weren't working together. She told me she could never be into someone who was "just a bartender" and had settled with that being his life's end point. She told me she told her friend the same to which I asked "why in the world are you even talking about him to her?" - so I had a bad vibe from the beginning. We had two fights about it. The first time she told me he texted her on her day off and another time when I stopped by the bar on my bike and saw his bike in the back of her car. She would regularly give people rides who needed it, but she knew how uncomfortable I felt about him and felt like she wasn't respecting that (this was my argument at the time), so even if he had a flat, which he apparently had the time to walk to his friends house, it wasn't her problem. When I showed up though she was incredibly happy to see me, she didn't feel like she had been busted doing anything. In fact when I talked to her about this afterwards she got emotional and said "I want to be with YOU, why can't you see that. I don't like him, I don't care about him, I only want you". It made me feel like a jerk about it and I dropped it despite the whole situation feeling really weird to me. She had been at a friend's house swimming all day and then her phone apparently was dead following that, so I had asked how he asked for a ride with a dead phone (apparently he asked around noon and she said she couldn't get him until later), why he couldn't just walk from where she got him (a mile from work), why if she got him at his friend's house why said friend couldn't take him and how she knew where to get him without her GPS or a way to be told how to get there. I never got an answer that made sense to me. She told me she didn't care if things added up or not, that's how it happened. She later told me (post break up) she had been to the friend's house before is how she knew where to go (something she denied at the time)

Anyway on Wednesday the 17th she calls me after work in tears. So upset that they kept her later than they were supposed to because they knew she had a test the next day (she was in 1 summer school class). I asked her what I could do, nothing at 12am y'know? But I told her the next day when she was done we would go out (I also came over the previous day and helped her study flash cards). She goes to class via the rail, I drive there to pick her up so she doesn't have to take her back home, I take her to dinner, to a bar afterwards, we come home watch a movie and make love. The next day she goes to work, tells me she's going to come by after work, earlier than normal, because she doesn't want to miss the ride in the morning. I don't ever message her while she's at work so I just wait to hear from her that night and never do. Around 3am I start checking in and get no response, around 4 I know she's got nothing left to do work related and am getting upset but also worried. I call her, it rings but no answer. I text her asking if everything is okay, that I'm worried and want to know everything is all right. No response. This is uncharted ground so I'm worried. It's about 4:30AM and I decide I need to head towards the bar or her apt, which are in opposite directions. I choose house first, she's not there, I drive towards the bar, just before the bar is a taco cabana, I see her car, I slow down enough to see her inside, eating, with another man. I circle back the other way to a light to make absolutely sure it's her car (from a safe distance). I then text her that I'm on my way to her bar to see if she makes a move, nothing. I then text I see her at taco cabana (still wish I had gone inside), nothing. I see them eventually come out (trust me, spying like this felt weird enough, grief me all you want) and so I start heading back into town instead of following them or anything.

I drive to her place, she doesn't show, I drive to mine thinking she might actually go there, nada, so as I'm heading back to hers she calls me. It's almost 6am at this point. Tells me we need to talk, I agree. We agree to meet at her place. I ask her what the heck is going on, she says a group of them went there afterwards, she was just giving him a ride home. Again we had just had a conversation about how uncomfortable that made me feel a week ago so this was pretty ty I felt again. She tells me I'm too controlling and she doesn't think she can do this, isn't sure she can love me. I tell her no problem we have is big enough we can't fix it. She suggests we take some time away from each other, I tell her breaks never work and she says not a break, just give each other some space. I don't disagree. I stay over that night, she sleeps on my shoulder, we wake up, have breakfast, do a puzzle. Before she goes to work the next day I tell her, whatever problems we ever have, never to handle them the way she did last night, she agrees. I hug her and kiss her and go home, she goes to work, I tell her to let me know if she's coming over later then don't message her again for the rest of the day/night. While she's at work I go and I buy her flowers, little things she had pointed out she wanted last time we were at target and whole foods, a few records and have her roommate let me in so I can lay them out for her to come home to. I go home and patiently away for her to go home...

Around 4AM I receive a text "I'm not coming over. I want to go home tonight". I let her know "I understand. It's late though so please let me know when you make it home safely", expecting her to want to go home and excited to show my gift. An hour goes by and nothing, I of course have a bad feeling about it all because of the previous night. Message her again about being home, nothing. Now I'm really feeling like something is up. I hop on my bike and pedal to her place, it's about 5:30am at this point and she's still not home. I pedal around the general area for 45 minutes or so before heading back by to see it's 7am and she still isn't home. I go home, try to call her a few times, then go to bed. Stress wakes me up at 9, I call, nothing. She calls me around noon to tell me she got blackout drunk last night, a friend drove her car the previous night and she slept on some girls couch but she had "so much fun", I'm desperately not trying to lose this woman who had previously given me nothing but good times prior to the last two days and spinelessly say that I'm glad she had so much fun but we had just talked about keeping me in the loop. She asks if I want to come over before her shift at 2, I told her she needed her space and I would see her when she got off (2pm shift normally meant cut early), she doesn't come over until about 12:30 in the morning.

She talks about ending it again, I'm resistant again, open up about how I evaluated myself the last few days and can see her point on many things. That I would work on them and how I've shown that I do work on things that are destructive to our relationship (would've mentioned them if they were significant, just things I'd say or her being uncomfortable with my ex texting me, which I cut off right then and there). I tell her I said my peace and we watch funny videos for a while. I walk her to her car, she says thank you for talking to me tonight, then kisses me a few times and goes home to have some time to herself.

I don't message her the next day until she messages me, trying to be respectful of her space. She asks if she can come over after work, I said that'd be great and if she'll let me buy her lunch I'd love to do that as well, she declines. I agree to see her after work. Meanwhile one of her friends asks me if I want to get coffee (the one who let me in her apt). We do. We end up talking about her a lot and how her friend was told she tried to break up Friday, we go into all sorts of details and her friend agrees with my thoughts that her time at this bar has finally got the best of her. That she was acting like the waitresses she always said she didn't want to be like and letting them convince her that 'drunk ____' is 'fun ____' and anyone who disagrees doesn't deserve her type . Her roommate tells me it's affected their friendship to and they never hang out now. We end up going to a bar afterwards and talking all night. Around 10 my girlfriend texts me that she doesn't want to come over after all tonight. I ask how's brunch tomorrow then, she says that'd be great. Meanwhile her roommate and I foolishly plot on a way to get her out of her job earlier that night. I suggest that she asks if she wants to meet her for a drink at a bar down the road (where I wouldn't be), her roommate agrees. She asks "hey ___, i'm at this bar, do you want to grab a drink and have girl talk' to which my gf replies, 'shut up, i'm at that bar!' feeling caught the roommate says something along the lines of 'cool, i should be there soon. I wanted to go to there or XX' to which my gf replies "I just left XX!". So she never went to work. I feel like but I can't say anything about it because of the circumstances. Luckily though she had an unread fb message from me that she read at 7pm, a time she would've been working. So I asked her about it, she told me they let her go home when she got there, so she went to the bars with a friend of hers'.

We don't want my gf to know me and her roommate are hanging out all day because we don't want her to feel ganged up on when we both approach her about things later. I ride the roommate home around 2, because it's a big city and she's a woman but also I wanted to see if my gf was home at 2am on a monday. I ride her home, see my gfs car and feel at ease. I go home, straight to bed and look forward to brunch in the morning. I show up at about 10:40 (the plan was just before 11) with coffee for her, her roommate and myself as well as a fresh ground bag, all from our favorite place, which is a bit out of the way. I show up and her car is in a different spot than last night, can't let her know that though because she doesn't know I rode by, but I have such a weird feeling about it. I ask her rooommate if she noticed, she said she did, that she even listened through the walls last night and when she heard her get up this morning, and when she got in her car, she peeked out the window, mind you I didn't ask her to do any of this. She said she didn't see or hear anyone else with her, but my gf waking up at 8am on her own to simply drive to the store for a coconut water is like seeing big foot hit a home run at yankee stadium, it doesn't happen.

Of course instead of wanting to go out she wants to talk. We do a bit about the same and I'm like enough, we've said what we need to say. Let's go out, let's have a good day and fun. She agrees. We go eat, go shopping at her fav places, she only lets me buy some things, eat tapioca, take her by a job interview then home. She essentially breaks up with me then and I of course try to talk her out of it. While this is going on her mom calls and is so loud i hear her say "are you still breaking up with him?". I confirm it's what she said after. I do what I can to convince her she really seems to be throwing away a healthy and beautiful relationship for not a whole hell of a lot and that she hasn't even given it an opportunity to see if things will improve, that she's running at the first bump in the road and that had we tried to work on things and failed I wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I walk her to her car, ask her if I've knocked any doors down and she says I don't know. We kiss, say goodbye and she goes to see her parents who are in town to get her drunk again. I go out again that night with her roommate, feeling heartbroken, her roommate tells me how frustrated she is with the way I'm being treated. Towards the end of the night I call my gf, nada. I text her if we can talk when I get home, not a lecture or ball busting, just a real talk, she agrees. I go home and call

During this call I admit my faults and her not wanting to be committed now. I tell her maybe we should take a step back, work on ourselves and that I will help her with whatever she wants. That we repair ourselves from the outside in, by improving ourselves first. She says that'd be wonderful. Somehow the line of questioning got more serious after that where I asked her if she cheated on me, she said yes, I asked her if she slept with him, she says yes. I ask her when, she says Saturday night (the night she didn't home home) and Sunday night (she says she took him home just before I got there). She's unapologetic outside of the fact that she was WITH me when she did it, won't say that she regrets it. I'm hurt and confused and am asking questions I don't want the answer to. Eventually this goes on for an hour and she's had enough, hangs up and turns off her phone. I'm going crazy, eventually go to bed. I avoid name calling somehow through this.

She works wednesday so we agree on thursday she will come get her things before class. She comes over and I lay down the truth. I sit her on the couch, I go over her alcoholism, how I ignored it and shouldn't have. How she absolutely can't work in a bar. How she has a self destructing pattern with relationships and a cut & run method. That she's mirroring her mother and her 6 marriages, which is something she never wanted to do, that she's turned into the waitress she never wanted to be, and that now she's sleeping with a guy that has 'nothing' going for him (no offense to bartenders, her outlook) the same way her previous ex from years back didn't and why she left after years. That she had told her friends and family how when we're together it's the best and even her roommate many of these same things and that she's just sank deeper and deeper into this 'lifestyle' that she hated 3 months prior. She's agreeing and nodding her head to everything, meanwhile crying and throwing her arms over me. She talks about how she's got to fix her and she doesn't know how she let it get the best of her, but that she ultimately wants to do it alone, no matter how much i offer my assistance (I put my pain as a backseat in this conversation and worked on her deeper seeded issues that led to behavior like this). She leaves with her things. As she leaves I foolishly message one of her friends about the circumstances, that she needs a support system in place and since I cannot be that person right now for her that she will need her friends now more than ever. Her friend responds in the exact manner that get people into these situations, tells me to let her live her own life, to basically go away. I apologize for involving her if she didn't want to be involved but explain I was just looking out for this girl and that because I've agreed to be hands off that I wanted the friend she listens to the most (not her roommate who she ignores) to know the circumstances. I leave it at that

Later that night I text the roommate, she's the only one who knows me and this girl on a pretty personal level and I wanted to tell her about the one man intervention I attempted. I invite her to whole foods and she doesn't say anything. So an hour or so later I go home and another friend invites me to the east side of town, I'm on instagram and see the roommate at a bar on the way there. I text her I'm heading to the east side and I'm going to swing by and convince her to come with me (I was feeling very comfortable with this girl after two 8 hour days with her, on top of our previous friendship). I show up without a bike lock and she texts me she's inside with friends, so I'm like oh damn I'm already here, come outside and say hi at least, no response. At this point something feels weird but I also realize I'm just insecure because of the circumstance. I go to put my bike between two outdoor tables so I can run in real quick, in the corner of my eye I think I see my girlfriend. so I do my best not to look inside and grab my bike, ride across the street and call my friend waiting for me on the east side, I look around the parking lot and don't see her car so I'm still not sure. I tell her I think i saw my girlfriend at a bar THE DAY after she cried to me about a drinking problem basically, i tell her i don't know what to do, whether i should go inside or not. i decide I'm upset and I'm just going to go home. this bar is in downtown so you have to take one way roads to get out. I circle back around the bar (away from the entrance and start heading west again). As I'm waiting at a light two blocks away, my gf, the guy she cheated on me with and her roommate are walking towards me. In order to not look like a stalker I don't just book it away, but I ride up next to them not knowing what to say. I feel very betrayed by the roommate and say something along the lines of thinking she had my back, i say something to the guy along the lines of not bringing my ex gf to a bar when she's going through stuff and all my ex is saying to me meanwhile is "you need to stop" over and over again. Eventually they walk away (turns out they took the rail there, a first), I don't pursue and decide now I need that drink after all. I ride to the east side, get drunk and ride home alone sad and alone at 3am.

The next few days nothing really happened. I message the roommate about the situation and s he tells me all this bs about how she's still my ex's friend and all that and I try to tell her that all of our conversations were about letting her know that behavior like that wasn't acceptable. That her roommate agreed with her drinking problem and to take her to the bar the night of me texting her of what happened was just reenforcing negative behaviors. Basically I looked for help in the wrong places completely and just made things much much worse, meanwhile not even addressing the cheating on me thing for whatever reason (denial).

We don't really talk all weekend. I spend the weekend doing things that will keep me busy. I ride critical mass Friday and go to an after party, pictures are taken and fb'd, I go out Saturday night with our mutual friends to a soccer game, more pictures, I go out Sunday evening to play soccer and then a pool party in the later evening of only our teammates. Basically trying to make it seem like 'life goes on' for me and show her the she's missing. I texted her three times during this period, Thursday night to tell her that wasn't planned to run into her and screen capturing my conversation with her roommate to try and prove it, then on Saturday to get the rest of her things/return my key then on Sunday again to do the same. She tells me to come over Monday morning to do so. I agree

On the way over Monday morning she messages me, oh by the way the guy I'm with now is here. I turn around, call her and tell her how insensitive that is. And it later comes out she only told me because her roommate told her she needed to, and I almost walked in on that to a surprise. We reschedule for 2pm before her work, she doesn't show and reschedules for after work, I said fine as long as I'm not waiting up all night, she texts me she's leaving soon at 10, shows up around 12:30. When she shows up I have her stuff and a card waiting for her. The card was a note of positivity, it was about the things I knew she and I were capable of before all of this. That I didn't understand her decision right now but in time I might be able to. That we can all learn from mistakes but I choose to see the person she wants to be and has been to be previously to these actions rather than to see her for only these actions. It was completely heartfelt and genuine and didn't drag in the fact she cheated, which at this point she feels off the hook for, and I didn't expect it to make her want to be with me or apologize profusely. She showed up ready to grab her things and be out the door in 5 minutes. She wouldn't accept a gift I had with it, there was no contact doing our short conversation and she did not want to be there. She looked drunk and tired and annoyed. She left and I asked her if I could walk her to her car, she vehemently said 'no'. During our conversation she talked about how we both handled things wrong, I told her it was my goal for us to at least end on decent terms because of our close group of mutual friends and the fact that ending things badly makes it harder to have any positive outlook for the future. She brings up that I'm spreading our personal to her friends which I have no business doing and that nobody needs to know the circumstances of our break up, only that we're broken up (how convenient for the cheater to think this way).

I watched her walk away, didn't say anything and that was that. Foolishly all I want for her is to feel remorse and empathy for what she did to us. It was literally the most insane week of circumstances I can recall. Things went from a 9 or 10 to a 1 in a matter of a day or two and why I don't know or for what end game I don't know. It's as if she literally just woke up one day and decided to hate me. The cheating to me has much more forgivable, if someone wants to be forgiven and is willing to prove that it was a mistake, than her actions AFTER her cheating where she showed no care about doing it or respect enough to not have him around in public places, her home or THERE when I was coming over. Her excuse for the last one was 'i treated our exchange too casually'. I don't know how she lost all the care in the world so quickly. I'm concerned now drugs are involved in some manner. She's definitely already ignored our entire heartfelt conversation about alcoholism and man jumping after she said 'i handled my business before you were around and ill handle it without you around' when getting her things (unprovoked mind you).

I'm so hurt and confused. I know the answer here will be, live my life, never look back and be happy this happened nearly 5 months in instead of years, but the person she's been the last week and a half has been SO UNRECOGNIZABLE that it's even hard to accept it without always making excuses for her. They say don't focus on only the positive after a breakup, but literally the only real beefs we had were this dude and the alcohol and to me those now feel like VERY VERY legitimate fights to pick. There's nothing quite like being told you're the crazy jealous type then being proven right is there? That's sure going to remove that urge in me going forward*

*normally I was the 'too trusting' type, until last year my other ex went on a road trip with some friends and a guy who flirted with her. Tl;dr, she cheated on me and I told myself I'd trust my gut after that.

I love to read but am not going to read 24 fairly long paragraphs. Please summarize and is there a question in all this?

I can't read this either. I couldn't even finish the first one. We don't NEED background and truthfully, it's boring. We don't know either of you. If you want advice, summarize.

I was with the sweetest most loving man in the world (for YEARS) until the day he fell for someone else at a new job. He dumped me in a moment that felt like the proverbial fall off a cliff. What is different, when someone dumps us? NOTHING. Why are you different? You aren't. Get busy with your friends and life and work and new things to do. It hurts, it's awful, what more is there to say?

Is this the lost copy of War and Peace?

No one changes over night, it is just that you did not want to see the changes happening.

She wants her freedom. Jumping to the next guy seems to be easy to her. Ask her which she wants a relationship with you or her space. If she says a relationship with you your going to have to accept what she has been doing because her freedom is more Important to her than you are. If she says her space your going to need to do no contact.

Geez guy what did you expect but a rollercoaster ride from someone that had someone already when you met her? She did you the way she did the other fellow she had, and probably will do the same to this new guy too.

It was fun while it lasted for the most part, but fun has been over. YOU crossed the line giving your heart to a stranger (cheater, when you met her), and expected pie in the sky forever. You really screwed up when you went along with her program just to have her, so don't be all surprised and shocked when you discover you had nothing and had no control over her, just intentions.

She obviously wanted different, and now you know. SAD, but it happens when you find a shiny object and think its gold, even after it stops shining. Its simple now, have no more contact with her and pray for the dumb fool that fell as hard as you did. She is destined to leave a trail of broken hearts and already has a good trail of them already.

You can't fix people, don't try. And yes I read every word of this Bikes and Bars saga.

This girl has a history of going from one guy to the next before actually breaking up first, she also has a drinking problem. All of this middle of the night riding around on your bike looking for her is crazy. Leave her alone.

I definitely handled the rejection poorly and wish I could take it back. If she was on the fence Friday night, my anxiety and worry likely just pushed her away. I didn't display any value in myself by going bananas when she didn't come. Seeing as I had seen her earlier the day and the night before and everything was good, when she didn't show up on a night she planned to stay over I was concerned, it's a trait I've picked up from my mother I believe, I tend to think the worst, even when they don't know. If I hear of an accident I immediately hope 'my god I hope it's not someone I don't know' - my anxiety issue was something I wasn't fully aware of until this year.

I know the girl has a lot of faults and problems and I can't be the one that fix them, but I spent a very escalated 4-5 months with her. The amount of time I spent with her during this time was probably close to the same as I spent with my previous girlfriend over the course of a year. I realize that's unhealthy at times, but I also feel like it made me feel like I knew her quite well and I was able to roll over her short fuse in a way guys normally can't and would snap back. I argued a lot as a kid and teenager and as I grew older I just didn't let it be part of my life and try to only choose the battles worth snapping back at.

She offered to get an apartment for me very early on as well. When she was apt hunting she was asking if I'd sublet my place out to get this home with her. That she knew it was early but felt very sure about our future. I considered it but she found a bigger place that had an opportunity for roommates after the landlord of the other place dragged their feet, so I thought it was best if I at least saw the rest of my lease play out before we did anything that big (I still had 8 months left on mine).

Her ex before me was a case of the obvious rebound to people and for some reason I thought it was different with me, from her words, from our interactions, etc. She went from a 6 year relationship to her last boyfriend, and not that looks are everything but her ex was short, fat and had a 'tiny penis' according to her, so while she said there was moments she loved him, she knew from the beginning that she could not be with him long term and constantly told him this when he would joke about marriage.

Looking back now I can see to myself that I was controlling at times and there's nothing less attractive than someone insecure and controlling. She's a beautiful woman who is also tall, so she sticks out, I was coming out of a relationship where I was cheated on and she was out on her own until 2-4am. I handled all of this more poorly than I wish I had, and I see them as reasons for her to start to lose attraction with me, I just didn't understand why they caused her to lose so much that she had her mind made up of me of who I was as a person based on those battles. She had the nerve to say things like she deserves better than what I give her, even after she cheated. Not only did she rip my heart out by just walking out instead of dealing with the problem, which is something she admitted her co workers constantly urged her to do, but she really has shown no empathy or sadness for the end of it and has treated me as if I was the one who cheated. It's been killing me to see our interactions go from constant affection to feeling like she despises me. We both messed up and my mess up may have been what led to hers, but I don't think anyone deserves to be treated like that and it's almost at the level of a sociopath

She wants her freedom. Jumping to the next guy seems to be easy to her. Ask her which she wants a relationship with you or her space. If she says a relationship with you your going to have to accept what she has been doing because her freedom is more Important to her than you are. If she says her space your going to need to do no contact.

I've started no contact since the last time she got her things. It has only been a few days though and even if I go to bed feeling okay, I wake up feeling like we just broke up that morning, I'm struggling. We saw each other close to everyday, so there's co-dependency issues I'm dealing with as well. And I really hate that we now live in the same neighborhood and I could just run into her everywhere. I feel like I get a rush of anxiety anytime I decide to go out now

It's frustrating because if she had told me 'i need x or y' from our relationship or I'm out, I would've at least made the effort. She is the kind of person to hold things inside until they boil over and it seems like it happened here and it was just easier to jump into a new 'puppy love' phase whether than to tackle the real meat and bones of our relationship, and I had foolishly told myself I was different I guess because of the way she treated me up until this point.

Whether you were controlling is beside the point. Lesson learned. It was bound to come to what it has because she wants her freedom, she wants her nightlife. Some girls don't get attached because they are just looking for the experiences, adventures and memories only to move on to the next. Your fault wasn't so much about being controlling, your fault was expecting her to change.

Her roommate was with me tonight and told me that the new guy hasn't left the apt since we broke up (not even two weeks but still) and now she wants to get a matching tattoo with him. I'm devastated by this

GOOD, now you have someone to talk to.

Well now you know for sure. This girl was bad news from the beginning. A lot of red flags you ignored.
I have no doubt, she will do the same thing to the guy she is with now. I know this is painful but be glad you are off this roller coaster.

She will probably be off with the next guy by labor day weekend.

Here is what I have been thinking. I have known 2 girls un my life that jumped guy to guy, staying anywhere from 1 to 6 months and didn't get attached to the guys. They basically role played, being the perfect partner. One guy 'the suburban housewife, then the next the disco queen, the next a biker chic, the next a quiet life with an artist, musician or photographer, and then on to the next.

Definitely role played with me. She got really into cycling with me, told me how she wanted to train and get serious about it and eventually start racing. Bought a $2000 bike just a week prior to stepping out on me. When she picked up her things at the time I pointed towards the bike and was like, don't you see, you were thinking so differently and clearly not that long ago, there's no way you make that purchase if you think you're going to leave me. But like anything else I said at the time, she didn't want to hear it. She's basically become a recluse since it happened, especially since I'm out every night now making sure not to show how much pain I am in, and with our mutual friends to boot (who by nature also take a lot of photos).

$2, for a bike she left! Maybe for her next act a lion tamer, sword swallower or sky diver ?

This lady sounds like a piece of work. You need to stop wallowing over her. The beginning of your short relationship was a big red flag. If you are going to kick yourself, do it for ignoring all the signs that showed she was trouble from the start.

I'm finding this whole chat room flavor irritating. You got dumped and not even as horribly or after as long as most of us, yet you have written an encyclopedic sized memoir, and continue to add to it.

Yeah what she said!

(Oops! You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to joypulv again.)

I tried to give you a greenie!

Obviously my problem is that I cannot get myself to see the things that I need to see. That I shouldn't be with someone like this, that I potentially dodged a bigger bullet later, that her patterns would've led to some form of destructive behavior in other ways if not this, etc.

I have "pockets" where I feel better and can move past, but I'm having a hard time coping with the fact that what I thought this person was, my life was and my future could be is gone and maybe I didn't focus my question down to be specific but it obviously would have to do with how to move on past this, how to focus on the negative, so that I can stop wanting to be with her.

I've been full no contact since she gave me my key back on Monday, I've been out next to every day, trying not to be at home at all because my mind races and I can't avoid social media or what feels like depression. I know the purpose of it is to improve myself with her out of my life more than it's supposed to be to get her to contact me, but I constantly look at my phone wondering why I haven't heard a peep, it's destructive and I may have overstepped my comfort level in this relationship forum with dealing like moments of weakness like that. The first thread I read was about the guy chasing his ex after they were engaged and she left the state, etc - so I guess I got the wrong impression for ways this forum could be used.



I'm finding this whole chat room flavor irritating. You got dumped and not even as horribly or after as long as most of us, yet you have written an encyclopedic sized memoir, and continue to add to it.

I understand that, but I don't understand if you didn't like the way I approached the thread (I'm new here obviously) why you don't just avoid it instead of just adding equally useless information to it? Comparing levels of pain or how horrible a dumping was seems really silly to me. I feel like I could argue the longer relationships had a chance to crop up with more problems, more opportunities were had to fix them (and weren't) and that signs are more present in relationships like that than figuring out shorter termed ones. I'm not comparing them though, just saying. I think it's the first time I've had a relationship end where I was at the tip of the mountain for how I felt with someone and our relationship and it came crashing down so fast and furious that I've handled it poorly in a series of ways (my memoir for example). I've had bad breakups before and been cheated on before, but it was much easier to step back for me on those and realize what I had done to lead to those things

You need to separate how you are looking at things. Don't take how she treated you on as your problem. See things for what they are, lesson learned and move on. She is the one that is messed up. Falling for her deceptive ways isn't your fault. Don't try to figure it out or make sense of it.
Stop beating yourself up!
Just pick yourself up and move on.

You think too much! But writing is therapeutic, and physical activity is better.

I have "pockets" where I feel better and can move past, but I'm having a hard time coping with the fact that what I thought this person was, my life was and my future could be is gone and maybe I didn't focus my question down to be specific but it obviously would have to do with how to move on past this, how to focus on the negative, so that I can stop wanting to be with her.


You focus on the negative by remembering the stunts she has pulled, by remember these late night rides o your bike looking for her while she was out drinking and out with another guy. The girl played you. Think on that.

THE more I read the more I am sure its not so much he misses her but that he is puzzled how he could have allowed himself to fall for her

Broke NC last night. Talked to her in depth today. I felt like at the time I was getting some sort of closure really, but in reality after the fact I realize my satisfaction was purely because she was responsive to me (her new guy is out of town) for the first time since it happened. I left her with a message about not wanting to be with her, but still caring for her and hoping the best for her and hopefully one day she will wake up and be remorseful and realize what she's done, etc but until then I will at most be an ear for her for when she's falling, and that I knew she was falling but that it was no longer my problem

She told me she realized we weren't at the same level she wanted to be at and tried making it seem like she had been checked out for a while. We slept together the night before her first infedility and again days before that, her initiation. I realize she's starting to truly believe these things now, whether they're true or not and there's nothing I can do to get her to realize these things right now, only things to push her further away or down the hole she's in. so for both of our benefit I will not contact her again, hopefully. I will not ignore her attempt of contact should it ever come though.

Still heartbroken and she's on my mind all day and night but it feels so out of my hands I try to remind myself of that. Luckily my friends have kept me out until 4-6am the last two nights, but last night I slipped anyway, in front of them, but at least it led to today's dialogue.

You need to avoid her. As long as she knows she has you lingering in the back ground to fall back on she is not going to learn her lesson. Your being there enables her and she will not hit rock bottom to figure out what she is doing wrong. As far as closure, personally, I have always felt that that is nothing more than a false sense of feel good.

What do you call a guy who bang his head against a brick wall and asked why he has a headache?

Start No Contact over from scratch and do better. Don't allow her to contact you either. That's false hope you can save her from herself.