[N0help4u]

WAkE UP CALL!!!!
You are worried about being gentle and easy going on her. IS she being even half that considerate with your feelings?
SHE --IS cheating YOU --put up with it!
Get OUT asap

There should be no ''what about this and what about'' that about it!

Say she decides she likes another guy better enough to dump you do you think she is going to be sitting around asking about how to go about it??

NOPE Its going to be OUT THE DOOR BUD, MAKING WAY FOR THE NEW MAN IN MY LIFE.

[bluedog9]

WAkE UP CALL!!!!
You are worried about being gentle and easy going on her. IS she being even half that considerate with your feelings?
SHE --IS cheating YOU --put up with it!
get OUT asap

There should be no ''what about this and what about'' that about it!

Say she decides she likes another guy better enough to dump you do you think she is going to be sitting around asking about how to go about it???

NOPE Its going to be OUT THE DOOR BUD, MAKING WAY FOR THE NEW MAN IN MY LIFE.

Thank you. I've just not had the sense to do the right thing 2 months ago - and it only has led to us hurting each other far, far more.

She ed around 2 months ago. We rebuilt 'something' where she felt safe again, but in my anger I accused her of lying and cheating. She feels like whore, she's always hated that. Been badly damaged person because of that. And in trying to find a way to tell her I don't think she's a whore, but that she obviously lied about this one particular thing... she doesn't want to talk about it. She's avoiding me. She wanted to leave feeling like a whore behind in her past... and now when a 'good man' catches her ing up, she knows it...

I've found proof that she ed around AGAIN since that fight and more proof to a DIFFERENT guy saying she wanted to with him basically.

These are guys that she admitted she had kissed in the past, but always said she never slept with. Obviously when the man she used to love 'calls her a whore', she's now running and out and saying, of, you think I'm a whore? I'll show you a whore.

I'm hurt, but I'm so sad for her. I fell like if I could do anything, it would be to stop her from that self-destructive behavior. I guess I only created it by not calmly walking away 2 months ago.

I do care about her. I'm not trying to blame myself here other than for poor judgement and lack of honesty. Is there anything I should do other than just end it w/ as few words as possible now?

I can walk away, tell I *WAS* a suspicious and jealous that didn't have any real proof and my own issues with being cheated on in the past. Try to just take all the blame for everything I did... maybe she won't feel like such trash that she keeps acting out.

And then tell her that when we were happy, no one has treated me as well as she did. And that part is true.

Or maybe I just stop trying to manage her altogether. I can't save her... and when someone is this damaged, it is too easy to injure them so them just tear themselves apart.

[N0help4u]

and saying, of, you think I'm a whore? I'll show you a whore.

I'm hurt, but I'm so sad for her. I fell like if I could do anything, it would be to stop her from that self-destructive behavior. I guess I only created it by not calmly walking away 2 months ago.

This alone is enough to say it is her problem. She choose to 'resolve' problems this way so this alone is enough to show that she isn't serious about actuallu fixing anythung.

[bluedog9]

This alone is enough to say it is her problem. She choose to 'resolve' problems this way so this alone is enough to show that she isn't serious about actuallu fixing anythung.

Absolutely. I had advice a month ago to walk away and not even approach the subject with her. She couldn't handle it. I didn't take that advice and now...

I just thought if there was some way to boost her self-image back as I walk away... it's her fault she chose to do the things to me she did when we had problems. Just feel guilty for hurting her more by making her confront it... but maybe I'm looking at it wrong.

In her psychology, sex is how to deal with everything she feels deeply... how to move on from being betrayed, etc, etc.

The beginning of the end for us was when I found a journal that showed how she went and had sex with someone to basically make herself feel better because she was embarrassed publicly by the guy she liked. She ed his friend. Ed him 'loud'. It was 4 years ago. And my heart broke reading it. Because I guess that was the sign I needed... and wanted to believe she'd changed.

Well, she felt humiliated by me... as often happens in a relationship... and here we go again.

[N0help4u]

Just walk away. You don't have to justify, rationalize or anything. She KNOWS and NO words are necessary.

[zippit]

Biggest proublem here

You tried to turn a stripper into a housewife

Doesn't work

[chuff]

biggest proublem here

you tried to turn a stripper into a housewife

doesnt work

Actually not the biggest problem here. It would require reading the thread though.

[chuff]

....and here we go again.

The only person riding the merry go round is you at this point. She knows the relationship is over. She's just keeping you around until she finds something else. You on the other hand are making all these rules about the break up. I have to do this before I can do that, and she must be here before I can go there, A comes before B and it just keeps going on and on.

Just end. Just tell her the truth. You no longer trust her, she doesn't trust you, and before it gets any worse you'd think it's best for both parties to go there separate ways. It's not like everything is going perfect and this going to blow her out of the water. She knows it's not, she knows the break up is coming. So be calm but firm and do it.

You can't move forward in your life until you do this and really neither can she so in that regard you are actually doing something good for her if you need to feel some kind of justification or kindness from this, at least know that.

[zippit]

I read it
I was going to the very beginning

[talaniman]

Chuff, and Zippit are both right, The experiment failed and its time to go, as it gets more complicated through over thinking, and inaction.

[cheeseismee]

Well how about you look at it from her stand point. I was a dancer for 7 years. (Strippers make house calls) We entertain for our money. It is NOT freedom it is living in a mirror and making your money based on what other people expect you to look/act like. Dancing does bring in a lot of money the money brings some form of freedom cause you can have what you want when you want it. I started seeing a guy, 3 months in he said quit dancing or... So I quit dancing. Now I am in a relationship where he may or may not want to commit to me at all. I have given up my independce. I have to ask for money and feel the guilt of that. It's not like I haven't tried to find a job I have applied at almost 30 places from office work to fast food.
That being sad. What is it exactly about her dancing that really gets your goat? All dancers are different. If she works somewhere there are no rules that's one thing. So tell her she can dance all day and all night if that is what she wants to do but only at a club with rules no touching. No grinding on other guys mommy daddy parts because it's a form of cheating. I was the cleanest dancer around. You may not like my dance cause I didn't rub you off. But I could sleep at night and anyone who knew what I did at work knew I wasn't close to cheating.
You have to be honest. You have to know the reality that dancing is addictive, the money the attention. The lies that world can breed can be intimiating. You need to make the call, are you dating a stripper or an entertainer.

[zippit]

(Strippers make house calls) what??
. It is NOT freedom it is living in a mirror and making your money based on what other people expect you to look/act like.
.

What are you trying to say?

[cheeseismee]

When you are a dancer there is no freedom in it. You live in the mirror meaning you do nothing but focus on what you look like every second of your workday. Hours doing hair and makeup changing clothes. Wondering does this make me look fat. That isn't freedom. It is being bound to everyone else's opinion. And the thought"is she worth a dollar. Or 20"

[chuff]

When you are a dancer there is no freedom in it.

Then you leave the job. Nobody has freedom in their job, they are working for the employer.

Either way, this doesn't really address the point of the OP.

[heartbroke]

If you give a girl an ultimatem, the will take the one you don't want them to.

[bluedog9]

Update for those that have followed:

Well, I've not follow too much good advice here, but I've made some progress.

As things deteriorated throughout September... we had some good times together, I continued to stay distant and not confront her... I guess I kept waiting to see just how far things would go - as someone said, capacity to humiliate myself.

She lied about staying home and sleeping when she actually went out... sent a few more emails to some people with very suggestive language... all the while trying to convince me that we needed some distance but she needed her life back, wanted to 'date' again and do whatever we needed to make sure we could stay in each others' lives, have some fun, until we were both in a place we could be vulnerable and trust each other again.

We had a few small talks; I made several attempts to tell her I didn't trust her, allude to the damage she had done to me... she seemed to accept it w/o admitting the details.

Until I finally wrote her and told her I was extremely unhappy, our trust was gone, our intimacy dissolving, and we were on the road to being completely over. How did she feel...

Her response was... to ask if I had time to talk the next day or the day after. I asked about that very night, she said she wasn't planning for any deep discussions tonight. Then didn't answer her IM's or email, drove out of town to see a band, and came back at 4am. She called me at 4am, said she had come by my place and knocked and I didn't answer. That's ridiculous it didn't wake me up. I asked why she didn't call me when she was standing outside my door. Something about not seeing my car, blah blah... b.s.

Then she wrote me the next day: "our options are try to build a relationship with you as you are now, that still protects me from the things that you are unable to alter at this time. That keeps us from fighting and hurting and lieing and all the that has not changed over the last two years....and wont anytime soon.

All I know is I can't be completely vulnerable to you as you are now, and that is not going to change without time. I don't know if it will be the end of our relationship or the beginning of something better, I can't know.... all I do know is I care about you and I want to keep you in my life, and I want us to find some fullfilment in that, and just go from there.

It's not going to feel the same ever again, it can't. Our relationship will never ever be what it was because everything is changed, but that doesn't mean it won't become something better, hell it should become something better, that's what I'm hoping for... but if the times we are having are not enough of something for you, I'm at a loss to know what else to do."


A week passed, we saw each other for simple, light hearted fun twice. We had two very deep discussions. I basically said I can't forget the last 4 months and just 'start over' a new relationship and build. I can't heal my broken heart w/o total honesty; I'm willing to try to forgive and not be judgemental - though I just wanted honesty between us before we could call it quits. That I was too suspicious and not trusting enough to go forward where we are now. I said I made many observations, I'm smart, and that I don't think she's been honest. That I was wrong for not bringing them up and confronting her months ago. That I never wanted to get into a 'yes you did; no I didn't' argument...


She said she was willing to talk about our problems. That bringing up things months and months old would just make her mad as I thought, she didn't want any more half in/half out commitments - and that I could talk to my therapist if I needed someone to talk to about dealing with my negative feelings of suspicion...

.. if I can't handle her going to see a band, and staying at an afterparty with "Bob" and his friends and family until 4:30am. Of course 2 years ago she told me Bob was just a friend... and a year later I found out she'd made out with him but she didn't want to tell me cause she didn't want me to be suspicious cause that was all in the past. I said I understood why she lied. But if she had sex with him, or anyone still in her life, I deserved to know. She agreed. Of course 5 weeks ago she went to the after party and she txted him the next day 'next time, hotel room.. ' and posted something about 'giving in again after 4 years' on her damn Facebook!! So I'm left with... not only did she cheat on me... it was with a guy that she obviously had slept with long ago and lied about it... and now is saying that I'm giving up on the relationship if decide I can't handle her going out with this guy.

She of course justified it all because 18 months ago I had kissed my ex-wife and threatened to go back to her... so none of this counts, it's all screwed up and let's just start over now.

Asked me to have a new perspective, what if we just met right now...

2 days later I sent her an email saying I can't see her anymore. I can't do what she asked, I can't trust her. That I want to give her more of her life back so she doesn't just sit at home waiting for me as much... let her go back to work and support that... but that I can't trust her, I can't pretend to not notice things I couldn't help but notice... I would be miserable and make her miserable.

She was pissed I sent it as an email. But since I couldn't do it in person, I had to. She called me a quitter, said she'd wasted 2 years of her life for me trying to get over my ex, lying about talking to her, cheating on her w/ my ex when she knew I had fooled around w/ my ex once when the divorce wasn't final yet... that THIS was the same situation and I could be able to sacrifice my comfort to be with her the way she did for me when I was getting out of my relationship.

I was thinking, she KNEW I was in the process of a divorce of a 7 year marriage... knew I had to still see her... yes, I hurt her all that time ago... but it had been almost 18 months and somehow she was seeing her affairs and me dealing with that as the same thing.

A day passed. She said she was shattered. Showed up at 2:30 in the morning. Didn't beg me to come back... but obviously upset... she wasn't angry anymore. Just shocked and hurt and rejected... and still felt it wasn't fair I wasn't going to endure the same 'suffering' she endured. Which of course at the time she said it wasn't suffering, just things she was willing to deal with and times that we always called the 'good old days' - until now, she is equating it to me dealing with her multiple infidelities and me crying and devastated everyday for 3 months.


So now I'm trying to get her out of my life... I'm like... how is all of this a surprise to you?? The day I said I was unhappy, we were going towards a road to be finished... you LIED to me and left the city to go see a band. THAT was your priority. A month ago you said you didn't want to be my girlfriend anymore, just 'date' me - which I guess is code for see other people though she would never admit that, merely justify it, and said our relationship and history was completely over... but we can start new if I want.

I guess just justifying the whole time that since she believed I was still considering trying to get back together with my ex, putting taking care of her as my 'ex' as a higher priority than her... that until I showed I was 100% done with her, she could just act out and be compulsive. I do admit that she had reasons to feel these things. I understand WHY she did them. I wasn't always good to her... but she chose to do this... and months after there was no doubt I just wanted to be with her... she was still doing this...

I certainly don't want to start over with her... given what a mess her life is, her job I can't stand, her infidelity she won't even admit to (honestly, there's enough here I could forgive if she wanted to do the actual steps at healing and not just ignoring it).

I am heart broken. I never confronted her directly about it, just the 'observations and perceptions' and told her she's been 'made' in an indirect way.

I wish I'd had. The advice here was good to just walk away... but with her semi-emotional abusive type of bull... even with what I said it still made me feel guilty about quitting and angry that each time she said that it wasn't fair for me to do this, or be sad about this, because she was the one getting lied to and cheated on back then...


Anyway. I'm trying to move forward. We did get together to trade our 'things'. And had a nice healing talk for a few hours. Straightened some things out. Cemented reasons we weren't healthy for each other.

But I still ache and miss her. Worry that I won't find someone that makes me feel like she did... but continue to see her life for what it is. The drugs that she explains away, the drama with her kids (more obvious bad judgement)...

It is so in my instinct to bring her back to me... but there are 100 reasons she's poison... I know I can't save her... and I know that for every hour of joy she brings me, I have lived through 4 hours of misery since April...

And without years of therapy for her, that will always be so...

Cold turkey isn't working well, I'm having such a hard time feeling cold to her, wanting her to understand that I love her, do want her... but does she just understand that what she's done is unforgivable given she wants the very things still in her life, that were the tools used to destroy me?

I just want to tell her that so badly... how could I ever make her happy for her, be happy for me, when all it takes is to see or hear the first name of "Bob" attributed to someone else - a store, a football player, a guy at my job... and not just feel heartbroken from the damage she inflicted me with this guy. I was with her a week ago and got a phone call from another state 'oh, that's weird, lol' - and yet I know where "Bob" has a gig this week... is it him? I don't know, it could be a coincidence - why would he not call from his local cell phone number? But still... it stopped me dead in my tracks and I had to grieve for 3 minutes internally until I could go back into denial and compartamentalize that '6 weeks ago' is now in the past...

It's easy to just say 'leave the lying whore alone' - but I hope someone can understand that is difficult. Especially when I'm already taking too much blame for her compulsive, reackless behavior, her emotional abuse of trying to 'punish me', disrespect me... withdraw from me... demanding distance from me, defining on her own that she must have her old social life back and independence from me... just to see me 1-2 times a week for 'dating' after almost living together for over a year... then blaming me for not putting in the effort... sigh.

Thank you greatly anyone that read this.

Sitting at home alone, trying to grieve and experience loss, and hopefully recovery on the way...

[bluedog9]

..demanding distance from me, defining on her own that she must have her old social life back and independence from me...just to see me 1-2 times a week for 'dating' after almost living together for over a year...then blaming me for not putting in the effort.....sigh.

How would someone compute this?

In my mind... the difference is that she KNEW going into this the risks involved. I was willing to be open and honest and discuss the pain, discuss where I screwed up... and she wants to equate all of the hell she went through (which was never defined as more than 'difficult' to the heart-wrenching pain I've suffered, over details she's not willing to discuss or admit to me. As if dealing with infidelity... and not being up to that challenge, is "not loving me through your doubts.."


Her to me, 24 hours after the break up:

"It was NO small sacrifice, It was an INORDINATE amount of patience, and it was an INCREDIBLE amount of support....

and I'm saying it would take the same from you, for us to make it past here....

and you have already decided you are incapable, that it is not worth what you will have to go through to accomplish it, that there is NO way you can do it...

therefore you are not my match, because you can not give to me what I have given to you... and it was not easy... but now you take the easy road, and run... that is why i feel like you quit... you may just be too weak, in any case we are not equally matched.

you have the right to quit, I acknowlege and accept that.
I have the right to feel like I wasted a bunch of effort on someone who wasn't willing to put that same effort in when the shoe is on the other foot....

you can't love me through your doubts, as I did you.... and I feel like I invested a bunch of time in someone who was never truly and still isn't committed to me or the relationship.

I am not asking anything of you, you did not once ask of me.... and you can't do it....

I am shattered."

[Gemini54]

Wow bluedog. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?

I can honestly feel your pain, I can. But I feel as if you have this huge serrated knife with which you keep stabbing yourself in the heart, again and again. Repeatedly.

What I can see from your most recent posts is that both you and your GF viewed the relationship in very different ways. However, what is also very clear is that you both feel that you have made a huge effort and many sacrifices to no avail. At some level, your efforts, hopes and dreams did not intersect. At some level you were not able to communicate or to understand each other. At some level you both had very different views about what was happening in the relationship.

I don't know and can't tell from your writings what the real story is. In the end it probably doesn't matter. What you really need to do is to move away from this and heal. You have issues with women and with trust - that has been clear from the start of this thread.

At some stage you mentioned you were seeing a counselor - it is essential that you keep doing this because you need to stop stabbing yourself in the heart if you are ever to lead a happy life.

[bluedog9]

Wow bluedog. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?

I can honestly feel your pain, I can. But I feel as if you have this huge serrated knife with which you keep stabbing yourself in the heart, again and again. Repeatedly.

What I can see from your most recent posts is that both you and your GF viewed the relationship in very different ways. However, what is also very clear is that you both feel that you have made a huge effort and many sacrifices to no avail. At some level, your efforts, hopes and dreams did not intersect. At some level you were not able to communicate or to understand each other. At some level you both had very different views about what was happening in the relationship.

I think you hit the nail on the head. We define some things very differently regarding what is essential for security and trust and intimacy to thrive.

Then environment that it did for me left her feeling trapped - I understand and respect that. But she would never give me the same respect back to understand why I would feel that way.

Even yesterday she sent an email to a friend of mine, saying how it was sad but we were moving on - and how it was for the best if after two years I still couldn't see what kind of woman she was and trust that she wouldn't be cheating.

But I've seen her lies with my own eyes - enough that the truth of actual intercourse doesn't matter if you're spending the night somewhere else. And I've seen her words say 'i must admit within myself I cheated on him... ' - and while I'm not waiting for her to admit it , I know part of me is waiting for her to take some lvl of responsibility. Because part of me still cares what she thinks for some reason. She knows. She knows. She knows.

I do not understand why I'm still looking for ways to get her to take that responsibility in some fashion. I know it can't change anything.

My experience in 2 years with her - she doesn't take responsibility for but .1% of anything - regardless if it is me, her family, the utility company, etc. It's always someone else doing something unreasonable and unable to live up to her superior set of morals or logical decision making.

Somehow being a good a man as I can and saying, 'i'm not going to accuse you of anything, but let's put it this way, I've seen things that make me unable to trust you, I'm sorry' - and walking away; has been hard.

The consistent invalidation, from a psychological and emotional abuse definition, has driven me crazy for I don't know how long. Trust issues? You shouldn't trust your own feelings. If she screws up and I eventually lose my patience, I am morally in the wrong for losing my patience, not that she was unaware and never apologized for being 2 hours late. That' why I keep doing this... fighting for validation.

I am still seeing my counselor.

[Gemini54]

Try: http://shrink4men.wordpress.com/

Might ring some bells.