I'm very happy for you, opt. A little envious, too.

Glad things are still going so well with NG, Opt.

A couple of things, sounds like you're still in the infatuation stage, which is most excellent. You said there wasn't a single conflict, and that is nothing but great.

However, no matter how perfectly things are going at this time, there WILL be conflicts. It's how the two of you deal with them as they come up that will make you guys or break you. But, I don't need to tell you that.

Triggers is an interesting discussion. I haven't been triggered by my ex-wife much since the divorce. There are times when she is unreasonable or condescending, and it makes me glad to be free of her, but nothing that brings back the horrible feelings of betrayal. In fact, she let it out that she is seeing someone regularly now and I actually felt a little glad for her.

I hope this never happens to you, but watch out for triggers with your new love interest. They can be really tough to deal with. I have inadvertently triggered PG a couple of times now, and I can see the hurt and love bank withdrawals. She even recognizes it as a trigger and not totally logical, but that doesn't erase what she is feeling at the time.

I just came back from a four-day weekend away with PG. Unfortunately, she gave me a major trigger on the third night, I won't go into details on this forum. Overall we had a great time, but it was still in the background on the final day that could have been better. Still trying to sort it all out, how much was me overreacting and how much was a legitimate gripe. Will maybe get into more later and resurrect my thread, but just want to give you a heads up on what's to come.

Schtoop- please continue to post or resurrect your thread. I think your experience would be helpful to all of us. Very glad to hear you and Opt doing so well. Plus it is always better to learn from someone else's mistakes and missteps. The future still looks very bright!

I think Opt and NG have dealt with a little bit of conflict, but that may be the wrong word here. I'm talking about Opt's recent admission about his past. Wouldn't call it a conflict, but certainly a moment of uncomfortableness for them both. I think he handled it superbly and showed her just how important honesty is to him moving forward.

Keep blazin' the trail guys!

Limb, thanks for your thoughts. I forgot to mention we saw Stone Sour. They were very good live and I recommend you look for them in your area. The tour never made it near you and it's almost over. Also Halestorm played and they are worth seeing as well.

Schtoop, why does it not surprise me that you and PG had a weekend together around the same time as me and NG. It's uncanny, lol.

Thanks AGG and CP. Time will tell. NG disclosed some news yesterday that I'm having difficulty with. I will elaborate later when I have time. I may be heading for disillusion stage, but I still feel very drawn to this woman.

Fred and KayC, thanks.

Sid!!!! Nice to see you. Hope all's well.

bbl

opt

You and NG have gone through some "emergency" triage relationship stuff Opt, it was a good sign of being able to depend on each other in a crisis. That is allways attractive to either sex.

Dis-illusionment well, you strike me as the type who doesn't want to live in illusion anyways, so the more you know who she is, warts and all, the stronger love can grow.

I am a believer, and a Christian, and if I only expected God to love me when I could fool him into being perfect, well I would be dancing around all the time with that fig leaf on.

That 1 or 2 faults I have,(JK), all the faults I have, and still I am around and valuable and he protects me. Well the same goes with relationships and we all have our blunders and blind spots.

As you know its how we deal with them that spells success.

You sound like your doin good Opt. Hoping for trust, communication,intimacy and everything to go in a good direction for both of you. Better than you even dreamed.

I liked Mark, too.


I've gone so far as to be in touch with Mark on the phone.

Any clarification or correction would be appreciated.

Thanks CP for the encouragement. You are absolutely right, and I also went into the R with eyes wide open; what she shared with me I suspected anyway. Again, I'll elaborate when I can.

opt

He is an incredible guy and very smart and has also helped me tremendously.

I do talk to him from time to time still. I miss him posting here too.

Hey Opt.,

If you're going where I think you're going with this, we truly do live in a parallel universe. I can only share my experience if it might help.

Our weekend getaway was to New Orleans and Jazzfest. What a blast! The only problem was there was just too much to see and do.

Mumford and Sons were definitely the highlight of the weekend.

Opt, I don't know where you are going with this, so I will wait. But I do want to say that you too recently shared some news from your past with her, so perhaps she feels safe enough to share something with you. It's all part of the discovery process, unless of course it's a deal breaker...Hopefully not of course.

I'll stay tuned.

AGG

Both had very insightful posts. Hope both are doing well.
Opt

I just saw Mark post on a thread elsewhere so he's still around.

That's good. Mark is excellent.

opt

IMO the man is a valuable asset not only to the forum, but to us people as well.

My feeling was that we are all here trying to learn how to apply the MB principles to our own lives, and help others do so when we can.

opt

okay, here goes.

it turns out that Nature Girl is flat broke and deep in debt. She filed for Bankruptcy last week. Based on my observations, I suspected she was already in bankruptcy. It�s not hard to figure someone doesn�t have a lot of disposable income.

Red Flag? Deal Breaker?

Here�s how I feel.
One thing I�ve found very refreshing about NG is her appreciation for the simple things. She has never asked for a thing. She�s never suggested an activity or to go out to anywhere specific. She would just as soon stay in and make dinner as go to a restaurant. We have fun together no matter what we do, so going out isn�t an issue; and it�s nothing that I find that enticing. I don�t have much money, and the Divorce made that even more true - so being frivolous is not my idea of a good time. Also FS is in the bottom half of my EN�s. In fact I like spending a little money on NG because she appreciates it so much when I do. Fortunately, I have had a lot of very elaborate vacations in my life (cruises and time in warm places); I�ve been there and done that, i can live without it...especially seeing how much fun I had with NG in cold climate Maine for the weekend.

Two things give me pause. One is that if I�m going to spend the rest of my life with this person, at which point does her lack of financial security, at this point (she�s 45), affect me personally? Ever? When we retire? When we want to take a vacation? When we get married and move in together...

The other is that personally I feel that it takes a certain something to get to the point of financial destitution. In NG�s case, evidently it was an extreme lack of boundaries, and a perceived need to be super-parent while her kids were teenagers (her divorce happened when the kids were about 10). NG�s ex became a falling down drunk dead-beat dad and never provided one cent for CS, according to her. I have no idea how he has stayed out of jail, but apparently he almost killed himself with the drinking more than once. She lost her house, everything, in the years after the D. Meanwhile she worked feverishly 60+ hours a week to make sure the kids had whatever they would have had with 2 working parents. I don�t have any reason to believe she was irresponsible per se. She has admitted she made many mistakes including not simply spending time in Alanon and having the kids do so. She is extremely embarrassed and regretful and literally did everything imaginable to stay out of this situation. She has been working with a lawyer/financial planner since before I met her to deal with it - her daughter�s wrecking the car last weekend was the last straw.

NG has an excellent work ethic. I work in the same company. I see how she is. She is healthy and smart and able to recover financially eventually.

As I said, I have thought something like this was going on since the second or third date when she didn�t offer to pay for anything. I kept going out with her because it didn�t bother me. Now that I know it for sure, it still doesn�t bother me that she has no $. However, there is clearly a history of poor boundaries (with the kids, with the ex). Do I go with my faith in humanity and believe that people can learn/change/grow? I got burned by that one once before. But NG definitely seems different. She�s so much more responsible and proactive than ExWW. And honest. She admits her mistakes. She tries to improve herself (again I see that in her approach to her profession). She�s reading FilSil, we talk about the concepts. She has Cloud and Townsend - wants to read that next. We�ve talked a lot about our want to grow and learn from our mistakes. Her $LB continues to be very high and I am very much in love with her. (She also thinks the world of me. )

Where am I going wrong? I'm truly interested in all views on this.

opt

My advice is simply to get a financial plan together, dicsipline yourselfs to it, and see how it goes. There is no hurry right? You both are adults and obviously she won't have to work those hours or wants to either now.

Its just Money, but it has to be managed, thats all.

Hey opt, I actually came across something like this in my dating experiences . I found that the key question in these situations is whether the financial problems were due to the person's inherent habits ( ) or due to extenuating circumstances beyond their control. I met one of each; one I ended up dumping like a hot potato, the other one I married . So it all depends on the big picture.

The first one did not tell me anything about her financial woes at the beginning. I "assumed" that because she worked at the same company as me, in the same profession, with similar experience (and thus had a good income) that she would be financially sound. But as we went out a few times, I started seeing some weird signs. I always paid for our dates, but on one date, after I paid for our dinner, she offered to buy us coffee at Starbucks. I thought that was sweet, until I ordered a mocha and she pulled out a few single dollar bills from her pocket and said something about "I guess I'll just skip lunch tomorrow"... Can we say "Lovebuster"? Then we had the issue of her telling me to not call her at home, and of course I started wondering if she was living with someone. Turned out that she never answered her phone because she had collections calling her all the time. She finally admitted that she declared bankruptcy recently, although she never explained to me how she ended up being bankrupt. And given that she had only visitation of her young kids ( ), that made it that much more difficult for me to understand what she did to end up in that situation. The problem for me was not that she had no money, the problem was the shroud of secrecy that I felt always surrounded her. I get it that no one wants to advertise having financial issues, but I found the secrecy to be way worse than the actual issue. So I dumped her, and found out that a couple of years later she ended up going on disability (although everyone knew she was not disabled), which just cemented my conclusion that she was bad news.

In contrast, I met another lady who by our second date wanted to tell me about a skeleton in her closet, in case it would be a dealbreaker for me. Turned out that she made a poor investment a few years earlier, and had to take on some serious losses in the process of unloading it. It really was no big deal for me, especially because I could see that she was upfront about things, and that her finanical balance sheet was presently in great shape, better than mine actually. So I married her .

So my point with these examples is that you have to understand the reason and background for the financial mess of your partner. If it is part of their character, I'd be very careful, because once you are married, finances get very hard to keep separate, and their poor choices/habits affect you (just ask holdingontoit on EN board). If, OTOH, the financial issues are due to circumstances that you can understand and appreciate, and their present financial habits appear to be in line with yours, then maybe you can get past it. But again, if you see present day habits that give you pause, do not overlook that, no matter how in love you might be. Financial mismanagement can be a fatal lovebuster. Remember the big three lovebusters in marriage (per AGG): money, sex, religion/politics.

AGG

I agree...

All in one years time my dh was divorced by his WW, had an accident that involved 8 surgeries on his knee and then lost his job. Bankruptcy followed within a year.

I listened closely to him about money and observed his actions.

I decided to marry him....

I had a dream not long ago that my near perfect credit score of 790 was brought down to 240 by him....lol...probably not far from the truth.

It is just money. And there are no guarantees about that kind of stuff. It can be here today and gone tomorrow through no one's 'fault'.

I want strong worth ethic, willingness to live within ones means and the trust that we will be fed and clothed.

As my good friend said to me, (the night I met dh as a matter of fact) 'you've been happy with nothing and happy with a lot and unhappy with a lot.'