Live(s/d) with me here

Does she have employment in the town where you live?

No. She's been a stay at home mum since the birth of our daughter.

You really are up against it - you're not married and that DOES make a huge difference. As Mel says it's a renters relationship.

I suggest:
1. Read the Infidelity FAQ's on this site
2. See your Doctor to get a script for some anti-depressants
3. You should expose this to anyone who may have an influence over your girlfriend - parents, friends etc - it's not quite so much fun having an affair when everyone knows about it.
4. Get hold of "Buyers Renters and Freeloaders" (also comes as a book called "the One") written by Dr Harley - it is available in Australia through Koorong (www.koorong.com.au) It explains the different types of romantic relationships and will help yu to avoid making this mistake again in the future.

Really this is an incredibly difficult situation from which to recover. You do have a child together so you will always be tied to this woman. Most of the strategies here on MB are effective for people that are actually married so unfortunately you will only see limited success most probably.

One other thing - individual counselling is invariably a waste of money....

I think he should fight till his last breath to raise this daughter. Sounds like he is much better for her.

If the daughter's mother wants to be a part of that, too, that would be great.

He needs to take care of his daughter, bringing the full force of the legal system to bear, if necessary.

Does he not have any paternal rights in Australia? Can he demand to have his daughter at least 50% of the time?

She sounds flighty enough that if he plays his cards right, she might not want to take responsibility for raising her daughter, and might be happy to have him doing the dirty work.

I hope he's the kind of man who changes dirty diapers!

I don't know that asking questions is really the path to helping anything.

Your goal needs to be for you two to fall in love with each other again. The best thing in the world for your daughter is for her parents to be madly in love with each other, for life.

Marriage Builders offers a plan to do just that.

But the biggest obstacle right now keeping that plan from being effective is her involvement with other people. She is giving those other people the opportunity to influence her to fall in love with them.

You have to walk the tightrope of influencing her to fall in love with you AND shut the door on the other people. For a marriage, that's usually the one place where Marriage Builders recommends making any sort of demand of your spouse: demanding that they say goodbye to the other lovers, for life.

Your daughter's mother is right about one thing: you do need to romance her, and win her back. But she's terribly, terribly wrong to expect this to work well while she's permitting herself to be involved with multiple other lovers.

BUT, there are people her who have used the Marriage Builders program to accomplish that.

For now, you need to do some reading, so get cracking. Read ALL of this that you can get into your head:

Marriage Builders basic concepts

Marriage Builders articles

Marriage Builders Q&A columns

Plus all the books above that you can get your hands on.

If you can afford to spend some time on the telephone with Dr. Steve Harley, or if your mother can afford to help provide it as a gift, I think you will find his coaching more effective than any "counseling" you can find. You can read more about Marriage Builders telephone coaching here.

Read, read, read! If you want your daughter to have two parents who live together and make each other fall more madly in love with each other every day, get to reading!

Also, I think you are very definitely going to have to read about Plan A and Plan B, but I would ask for tons of advice here (and from Dr. Steve Harley if possible) on how to apply them to your situation, if at all.

I would read these after the basic concepts and articles above:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8113_ab.html
http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1518204#Post1518204

Two words...

RUN... FAST.

This is NOT a good start to any permanent relationship. You'll be basically doing the equivalent of trying to build a house on sand. And no-one's going to give you back those years spent pursuing a relationship that's basically doomed to failure. Years that you could have spent with someone else.

I suggest walking away, and filing for custody. WGF needs a serious wake-up call.

As far as I know in principle, yes, 50/50. As for how often that actually goes down, I don't know. DS is more than capable of looking after DGD, and does indeed change nappies . However, I can't see P relinquishing custody. I suspect she would not even go down the 50/50 path without a fight, and DS says she has already stated she won't let DGD stay overnight in case he decides to take her interstate (ie. where I am). Sigh...:( . Times like this I hate living on opposite sides of the country.

DS has lots of questions about Plan A and B etc. I've answered as best I can (it's much easier to armchair coach when it's not close to home!), but recommended him to post questions here, as I've not utilised them. (Besides, other people's wisdom often has more credence than parents, lol.)

The baby is worth fighting for!

It's ridiculous that any woman would oppose letting the father of her children have them half of the time, assuming he's not abusive. It's even more ridiculous that the legal system would see this as reasonable and support such women. But I know it happens.

Fathers are parents just as much as mothers are parents.

I can't see what's wrong with your son bringing his daughter to see her grandmother, either.