Backround information: I met a girl about a year ago. She's beautiful and we hit it off really well. We ended up sleeping together the first night and she was the very first girl I'd ever had stay the entire night. She was also the first girl I've ever had a sexual RELATIONSHIP with. I wasn't a virgin before her, but they'd all been one-night stands and such, nothing lasting and none of which I was in a relationship with. Anyway, within a few days we were officially together and sleeping together almost every night. About 2 weeks in though, she broke up with me and I found out why after I got back together with her. A friend of hers had come into town and she ended up sleeping with him (on my birthday no less). I stayed with her convincing myself that we were broken up at the time so it wasn't technically cheating. Well from then on, we had it rough. She's an incredibly sexy girl and knows how to use it well. Whenever I was away from her, I was wondering what she was doing. I read her text messages a few times and never found anything. I'd always confess afterwards because I felt horribly guilty. Then it happened again. I broke up with her one night and within the hour she slept with her ex b/f. I went back to her again and after hearing what had happened convinced myself that we were broken up and it wasn't cheating. Things got worse. She's in the Army National Guard and I'm in the Air National Guard. We had our Drill Weekends a lot of times separately, but she would have to stay the entire weekend where I got to come home every night. She had told me before about her "sex buddies" down there when we first started dating. She swore it ended, but it nearly killed me every time she went down there, thinking she was sleeping with one of them. I convinced myself one weekend that she was, so then I called up a girl I knew and brought her over for a one-night stand. The next week, she cheated on me for real with a couple we knew. I caught her red-handed and she couldn't deny it. But I confessed having done it first and she forgave me and I felt almost obligated to forgive her. After that, I felt like I couldn't trust her. I would read her texts and get off work early to show up randomly to her house to "surprise" her but I was really trying to catch her. We got engaged and things didn't improve. We were breaking up and getting back together. I had all my friends telling me it was a horrible relationship, I had my family telling me it was too. I would break up with her and then couldn't be without her. Every time I saw her, everything I'd felt about us not being right for each other went right out the window. I couldn't live without her. And then she got activated and was being deployed to Afghanistan. I thought, this is my chance to break free. A forced separation. She wanted to get married before she left, but I told her that I didn't trust her over here for a year without me, and that I didn't want to start a marriage alone for a year. So she left and for a little while I felt all right. Then I started emailing her and she started calling me. And then I got activated and deployed to a different base in Afghanistan. Here I am 50 miles away from her but not allowed to see her, it was killing me. I had found out her email password and myspace password not long before she left and I'd forgotten about it until I got deployed. I started using it to see how often she got on the computer and if she'd gotten to read my messages. Then I started reading other messages people were sending her. But one morning about 3 days ago I came across what I'd really been looking for. An email confirming she was in fact sleeping with someone else. It was a graphic email telling her how much this guy enjoyed having sex with her and her stripping for him and such. It was the kind of email I'd sent to her before. I shut down. I didn't know how to deal with it, deal with someone else writing some of the same things that I'd said to her. I couldn't help but picture this guy with her, and both of them laughing at me as they had sex. I almost killed myself. I wrote her and told her everything and that I didn't know if I was going to be able to make it. About the time I finished the email, someone showed up to my shop where I was working and just happened to want to stay for the rest of my shift. He didn't know he really saved my life. Well she told her lieutenant about my suicide threat and it eventually got over to my base where I was found later that day. I've been seeing a therapist here, but it helps to talk about it with as many people as possible. I've been ordered to go home as well.
My question is why. Why did I go back to this girl? What was it about her that I needed so much? Why am I still secretly admitting to myself that if she emailed me to apologize or whatever, that I'd say, well we weren't technically together and take her back? What makes me so crazy that I have to check her email and things like that? She's the first girl I've gone that far with my trust issues, but not the first time I've mistrusted beyond what was actually necessary and healthy. My therapist mentioned co-dependency but I'm not sure I understand. I just want help. I want to not get so crazy. What can I do to not let this happen again? This is the most serious I've ever been like this, but it's not the first time I've had symptoms like this. Not being able to let go. Not being able to trust. Always apologizing and coming back after an argument or something. I don't like the way I am, but I don't know how to change. I hate being alone and stuff. My friends tell me that you just have to not care what girls think. Be an to them and they come running they say. I've seen it work, but I'm just not that way. It's not the way I was raised and I can't do it. I just want to change myself so I don't get so attached so quick and hurt myself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually over a girl. Anyway, sorry this is so long, I've got little else to do but type on the internet until I go home in a few days.