My girlfriend and I have been together for over 4 years. We are both fairly young, she is 23 I am 25. Anyway we have certainly had our share of problems. I am now a recovering alcoholic and drug addict as of 3 months this Friday. Now what set my recovery in motion was that my girlfriend had cheated on me. Once about a year and half ago. No sex that time and I do believe her. But she did not tell me about that until after she cheated on me a second time which I found out about 3 months ago this Friday. She had sex multiple times for about 6 weeks with this guy. I was devastated.

Now some background on her and I. Her brother molested her in her early teenage years. This has affected her and the way she treats people in many ways. For one she can be downright mean and nasty. She tends to give people she knows less well greater respect. She in a way emotionally abuses people who are closer to her. She also had a decent number of sexual partners before we met. She started having sex by the time she was 16. By the time I met her when she was 18 she had already had 7 or 8 partners. And throughout our relationship she has always enjoyed attention from the opposite sex, even in my presence at times.

I was an alcoholic as I said. Because of this alcohol often times came first in my mind. This of course led me to be dishonest with her. I also did not meet many emotional needs that she expressed to me. I was not a devil though. Not to make an excuse (I take responsibility for what I did) but I was the type of alcoholic that drank at night. I usually drank myself to bed. We did not live together so she did not often witness it. Now she saw me drink alone on many occasions I will admit. I’m just saying I was not the type of alcoholic that craved beer during the day or anything like that. Despite that I was and fully admit to being a full-blown alcoholic. My other problem is I am very bad at expressing my emotional needs and my feelings. I in fact almost never did.

Ok so that’s some bad stuff. There’s probably more too. But our relationship has been good at times. I love her more then anything I have ever loved before. We would not have stayed together so long if something were not there in my opinion. We both manage to be able to look past the bad things we can see in each other to see so many more great things. I love her love for people and animals. She is compassionate. She can be brutally honest which I love. And since she is not here to mention the things she loves about me I won’t toot my own horn.

Anyway back to when I woke up and smelled the coffee. She had cheated on me and I was devastated. But instead of doing what I had always thought I would do if someone ever cheated on me which was to run away to save my pride, I swallowed my pride and decided this love was worth fighting for. I recognized my problems and fought to overcome them. I still am as of right now. I also fought to regain her love. I tried to let her know that I was walking in my head in the clouds as an alcoholic, oblivious to all these problems. And as I said I fought hard to convince her that we were worth trying to save. She has since told me she wanted to break up with me numerous times before she cheated but could not manage to do it.

Anyway as time went and I was recognizing my problems she too began to realize she had problems. About 45 days after she had told me she cheated on me she had given up all contact with the man she cheated with. We were together and working on things.

I could sense something was still wrong though. But I gave that thought the benefit of doubt. We just kept on keeping on so to speak.

Well about 5 days ago things changed dramatically again. She informed me she still is not guilty and/or remorseful about cheating on me and hurting me like that. We proceeded to get in an argument. She mentions she felt she had needed some time to fix herself after she told me she cheated on me and felt that I had pressured her back into our relationship too quickly. So she said she needs a separation.

This has crushed me. I feel like I have been working very hard and she wants to separate. I’m afraid we will drift apart and not end up together. I’m upset cause I feel like she is giving up. I wonder why I can’t be a part of helping her get over her problems. I feel like she is telling me she needs time to work on herself but then when I end up talking to her I hear nothing of her working on herself. Instead it’s just her sending time with other friends. It’s hard not to interpret that as her saying she enjoys time with these other people more then with me. I don’t know, I’m just lost. I don’t want this. And I apparently have no say. I’ve asked her if we can try to work on this or that together and she just says no. I tell her how bad this hurts and she says too bad basically, I’m not budging. It’s her way or the highway.

Anyone have any advice?

Thoughts?

Any good links or books to deal with coping with separation rather then divorce


Oh yeah regarding the mixed signals. She tells me she wants to seperate. Says we should spend less time together. She needs to figure things out about herself on her own. needs time to figure things out before she can come back to us.

I tell her that sounds a lot like we are breaking up. She says no, we aren't. But then in almost every way she acts we are broken up. We hardly spend any time together, she is not addressing any emotional needs I bring up, in fact she says I know I am hurting you but just tells me she can't help it.

What am I supposed to do. Do I just ride things out for a couple of weeks to see if things change? Or to see if things are really as bad as I am expecting them to be? Perhaps I am over reacting?

<small>[ August 17, 2004, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: jamst149 ]</small>

Hi jamst149,

First off, congrats on pulling your life together and kicking the alcohol to the side. You need to know that you did that for yourself, and nobody else. Granted, she may have wanted you to do that, but you ultimately did it for yourself. It's like if someone needed to lose weight (as I did), I did it for myself, not because someone else wanted me to.

Having said that, if she cheated on you once, that's one thing. It is possible for a relationship to recover. But 2 times... you need to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you deserve that kind of relationship.

I would say that you need to seriously look at yourself, and determine what the perfect match for you is, and see if she fits into it.

In my post about my rel. , someone mentioned a book to me, that I think has several good points in it that you might want to read. It's called "Will our love last?". I would definitely pick it up and read it. It's about 220 pages, and is a very easy read. Trust me, I don't read books for the fun of it... this took me about 7 hours to get through. I don't read all that quickly, and I didn't read it straight... over 3 days...

To be blunt (if I wasn't before), it doesn't sound like she wants to be with you. She wanted to break up with you, but couldn't do it. And you pressured her into staying in the relationship... Look... I don't doubt that you don't feel you presured her, but she apparently does. It just doesn't sound like the type of relationship that I would want to be a part of. A relationship needs to be 2-sided... and it sounds like you're the only one who wants to be in it.

You right. Right now she does not want to be with me. Its just real hard to accept that. To accept that she is unwilling to try and work on it. That she is just giving up.

I have never felt pain like this before. It hurt pretty damn bad when I found out she had cheated on me. But that comes no where close to how this actually feels. And I know that I need to accept that this is how things are. That we are no longer committed to each other. Easier said then done though. She is not committed to me, but I am still committed to her. I just need to accept things for what they are.

Its just extremely hard to do. To lose a huge part of my life. To let go of that, cause I don't want to let go. And who knows maybe she will decide she has made a mistake. But maybe she won't. And for that matter who knows maybe I will come to the conclusion that it wasn't right or was not meant to be. But maybe I won't too.

I just feel like there are things we can do together to see if this will work or not. But she is not willing to try. In her mind this is the only way. I just have trouble with that. I feel like it lets so many variables into the picture that don't necessarily have to be let into the picture.

I just have to accept it and move on. Trouble is right now I seem to be doing anything i can to not accept it.

It's definitely hard...

In a similar situation, my last g/f basically said that she wants me to wait for her while she see's what it's like to date this other mofo..

I made up my mind... and said... pick.. either him or me... she couldn't decide... I did...

about a month or so later... we got back together...

That lasted about 8 months... I thought everything b/w us was good.... she went away with her mom to visit some family for about a month.. she came home... I quit my summer job to be with her, she dumps me from what I thought was out of nowhere, but she claimed that things were rough before she left.

It took me about 3 years to get over that... and stop referring to her as psycho. We chat occassionally online... but that's about it...

I was definitely better off out of that relationship...

Live and learn...

I've learned that there are better matches out there than what I had with her.