Thanks for the heads up Mirabelle. I have thought about it and I sense that this is a turning point. She has finally agreed to see a therapist no matter what happens to us. She was doing just fine in 2006-2009 when she worked part-time. She started to paint and was a lot more in balance. Then things got worse when she decided to aim higher in her career. Abandoning her in a moment like this feels cruel, but I'm prepared to do it if she lacks in determination and spirit and refuses to do some dramatic changes in her life.

SirLong, I think maritalbliss is exactly right.

There are really two cultures about marriage that have grown up in the West, living side by side. It's the same in America as it is in Europe. People who live according to the values of one culture have happy marriages. This happens for about 20% of marriages. The values of the other culture result in permanent separation, divorce, unhappy marriages where people just "tough it out" because they have to, and unfaithfulness.

People from one culture frequently don't understand people of the other culture. For example, many people simply do not believe that a happy marriage for life is possible. It is foreign to their experience, because they and practically everyone they know have had marriages that became unhappy after a time. What they don't know is that with a different set of behaviors, a different set of cultural values that they could adopt (people can and do freely move between these cultures by changing their behaviors), they could have had a happy marriage!

What blew my mind was to discover that most of the people from my church, who I thought were pro-marriage, and seemed to think the church had a monopoly on what it takes to have a happy marriage -- actually belonged to the culture that produces bad marriages. Go figure.

SirLong, here's a radio clip from Dr. Harley that you might find informative:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=379

Dr. Harley talks about the 20% that have happy marriages, and what they do different, and how it sustains love for a lifetime.

I have another clip with similar information, talking about the differences between the two cultures, somewhere in my notes, but at the moment I can't seem to find it. Still looking for it for you...

What is confusing most people here is that you and your wife are not "separated" -> your girlfriend has simply left you for another man and she's playing you both back and forth. You can try and assign a variety of psychological textbook terms or blame it on everything or everyone else except what it is. She is not wayward wife, she is a girl who is either broken up or 'on a break' from her boyfriend and therefore can do whatever she wants.

Nobody is saying that you shouldn't feel hurt by this. Of course it hurts. But you are trying to make your girlfriend, who has left to date another man, fit into the Harley's model of a "wayward wife". It's not the same thing.

SirLong, here is a thread for you about the concepts of Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders. If you want to enter a permanent Buyer relationship (with this woman, or with someone else some day), I suggest you read this and also get the book:

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2332882

First of all, can we address your deception? Not cool. You referred to your GF as "WW" in the first few posts and should have told people you weren't married up front. Even if you feel you and your GF are in an arrangement that is similar to marriage, you HAD to have known that others would not feel the same way.


I see what you are trying to do here, but your argument doesn't make sense. If you are living as a married couple and getting married is nothing more than a party and it is very easy to get married and divorced, then it makes even less to me that you wouldn't have just done it. Not the other way around.

PS
It's no accident that you two never married AND she doesn't act like a "committed" person would act, SL, having cheated more than once now. She is not marriage material. I would move on.

Ah! I found the other radio show clip I was looking for for you:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=851

Dr. Harley explains how there are basically two marriage cultures. One of them, you look at the married people, and they don't seem like they are in love with each other. If you're not in a culture of happily married people, you look at a happily married couple, and you think they are strange!

It's not a U.S./Europe thing. Most marriages over here are not happy, either, and living together instead of marriage, for all the same reasons you named, is epidemic here as it is there. The rates may be slightly different, but the cultural issues cut across continents.

Prisca and Markos offer great advice, SirLong. Especially this (from the link Markos sent):

According to Harley

most happily married couples have worked their way up from Freeloaders to Renters and finally to Buyers.

He says the problem arises when partners do not eventually become Buyers.


I think that over the 11 years you have been together, you became a buyer and your girlfriend did not. You want her to be a buyer. You are putting in, and seem still prepared to put in, a LOT of work into making her a buyer. But you know, don't you, that you can't MAKE people be anything?

To be honest, it doesn't look good. Even if I'd never heard the term narcissistic personality disorder, I would have felt the same about your story. Knowing that the dark shadow of NPD is lurking makes me feel even more concerned.

You are 28. You are living on hope. Please set boundaries that protect you. Be absolutely prepared to enforce those boundaries, with all their grim consequences. Do so BEFORE more of your life is wasted on someone who may not actually CARE about you the way you should be cared for. Yes, she will claim she does care, she will cry, she will weep piteously, make you feel guilty, make you feel you should be the saviour, she will promise, sob, moan, and be convulsed with self-loathing, but her long-term ACTIONS count, NOT what she says.

(Mirabelle, this is a threadjack, but Dr. Harley says all waywards exhibit Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It's one of the things that goes along with being a Freeloader. Change that to Buyer status, and you no longer have the disorder. But get a married person's emotional needs consistently met by somebody they are not married to, and they will soon be so addicted they will be a narcissistic Freeloader.)

Its important to understand that people who live together are NOT buyers by definition. Living together is a RENTERS tactic. The fact that they have not committed precludes them from being classified as buyers. When you are not married, you have not bought the house, and therefore, are not a buyer. You have to buy the house...to be a buyer.

You have to commit to the relationship by getting married. When you buy a home, you sign papers and actually pay for it. When you get married, you go through an official ceremony, file marriage licenses, become legally married, etc.

I would suggest caution in diagnosing personality disorders. Most people in these situations DO mimic personality disorders. And even those that actually DO have a disorder do just fine regardless.

Sorry for the threadjack, Sirlong, but thank you for your point, Markos. It's a point well taken. I can see how that dynamic you described could evolve. But I am worried about NPD because SirLong mentioned his girlfriend's mother had it, and I know from first hand what suffering it can bring to be in a relationship with NPD. Threadjack over.

SirLong, I don't want to convince you that your girlfriend has NPD. It could well be that she is actually accessible and can change, she just needs to have her eyes opened. The wise people of this forum can help you to find your way, and I will try myself to help if I can.

Another threadjack. I agree with this too and don't want to diagnose personality disorders willy-nilly. I am not a psychiatrist, I am just a fellow wanderer who is trying to make sense of things. Which is why MB is great, because it removes the need for this kind of analysis.

I do think though that when it comes to NPD (don't know about other personality disorders), it's the people around the NPDers who suffer, while the NPDers seem actually bizarrely unperturbed. Threadjack over.

The problem with assigning the emotional description of "NPD" to a wayward is that it's an armchair diagnosis that is assigned after the fact to explain the wayward's actions. SirLong, my question to you is whether or not your girlfriend was in therapy and dealing with NPD prior to her dates with this other guy. I'll bet you tell us 'no'. I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard that a wayward surely must be afflicted with NPD - or, equally bad - MLC (gotta love those 3-initial diagnoses )

The main danger in assigning a fancy bit of psychological terminology to a wayward's actions is that it legitimizes their actions. ie: "She can't help it if she's banging every guy in town - she's got NPD." Nothing could be further from the truth. What you are seeing is a woman who is behaving contrary to how she may have behaved in the past. That does not mean she is emotionally dysfunctional.

If you were married, I would tell you that she is not respecting boundaries and is being unfaithful to you. As people who are living together, I will tell you that she's decided to do a little single-person networking.

SL,

If you're not married, then consider this a blessing. You now know what she's really like.

But acting like you're married and actually going in front of your family and God to swear that you will love this woman until the day you die and love her as Christ loved his church and that she would do likewise, then you're not married.

She's cheating on you, and it hurts, but it isn't adultery and she's not a WW. She has a right to be with other men until she swears she won't be. So this is a sign that this isn't someone you're ready to spend the rest of your life with and vice versa.

I will tell you that I am not religious but marriage is a sacred (meaning not to be broken) vow and being officially married, making that commitment IS different than living together.
Even if you live in a culture surrounded by people living together in non married committed relationships for decades (which is common in my area of the world also).

Whether you choose to try to fight for your mate/girlfriend and 'win' her back to you or not.......is your choice but you are under no obligation to do so or to do so for long or to do so with any illusion that she is the only woman for you.

You are in a situation where you could date other people with clear conscious and that is a powerful freedom of the spirit on your side.

The problem with a private arrangement to commit for life between two people, as opposed to a marriage, is that it is a bit like a gentlemen's handshake as opposed to a written contract.

I dont know how suppportive people have been in your exposure, but how could they possibly know how serious your private arrangement was? Most people will assume, given her actions that it was a day-to-day arrangement.

And you yourself cannot assume that it was not a day-to-day arrangement for her. She has never married you. She may have said she would, but words are pretty weak when they are spoken in such a hypothetical way. Even people who set a date do not always get married.

I know you specifically asked us to focus on the similarities but not being married presents you with a few hurdles you would do well to know about before they hit you.

1) People may not hold her accountable for 'doing wrong' and will instead ask her what makes her happy
2) She may never have been commmitted to you and getting her to be committed from this low point may prove impossible.

If you can overcome these hurdles with supportive friends and a complete 180 degree change in her attitude to commitment, then great. If you work the MB plans however, that would mean getting married as Dr H specifically states that just living together breeds independent traits and is destructive to the relationship.

The basic issue with his not being married is that his relationship with her is on equal footing with the relationship with the new boyfriend. So there is nothing to expose, other than that she has a new boyfriend.

A committment is backed up by actions, not just empty words. I can tell the home builder that I am "committed" to a certain house, but unless I actually buy the house, my "committment" is just empty talk.

People who live together often demand that others treat their relationship the SAME as marriage, but the truth is that THEY THEMSELVES don't treat it the same by virtue of their actions. [or lack thereof] Others are not inclined to take it more seriously than they do.

I have refrained from joining this discussion because it seemed that the salient points were being addressed, but one detail has avoided abject exposure.

Much back-and-forth has occurred about whether SL is, or considers himself as a "buyer" and whether his cohabitation arrangement does/should have the respect accorded a marital union.

Interesting discourse, colleagues, but in the matter at hand, irrelevant.

What we, or SL believes is of no import.....because SL's WGF has no such illusions about her (absent?) commitment to their relationship. Here's a nutshell of the classic discussion that (effectively, if not actually) has transpired between them:

SL: I thought we had an agreement to remain true to each other, holding only each other in our hearts, giving only to each other the comforts, emotional and physical, that are within our powers to give!

SLWGF: You were wrong. I'll be back later. Don't wait up.

Exactamundo!

The only one who seems to have a hard time understanding there is no committment here is SL.