A
male
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:Ok, I will try to keep this as short as possible, but I have so much to talk about I think it might be impossible. I am going to try to condense 5 years of problems on both of our sides and remain completely honest about my faults. I will not hold anything back in an attempt to look better.My ex-girlfriend and I met when she was 18 and I was 25. She has huge amounts of issues with panic attacks, she has problems with self worth, falls into bouts of depression, and experiences pain during sex with me. She tends to be a slob and no amount of begging seems to elicit any change in her behavior pattern. I financially supported her for 3 years during which she worked and quit 3 different jobs contributing little to nothing to me. She is flighty and tends to do the whole magic beans scenario, where she goes out for napkins and comes back with a banjo. Now, she is incredibly loving, the most supportive person I have ever met, sweet, and dedicated. She writes me little notes to send me to work, she is overweight but I find her extremely beautiful.For the first 3 years of our relationship, I was physically and emotionally abusive. I was experiencing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type situations where I felt totally out of control of my actions. I was able to slow these incidents down but not stop them entirely. Every time this ate away at me. I considered suicide many times, as I truly felt that I could not control my actions. Through that entire time she stood by me. Even though nearly all of my abuse was limited to slapping or pushing, I truly feel that there is no distinction between that or a full beating. This did not help to build her self esteem and I hated myself for it. 2 years ago, I broke down and dragged myself into a psychiatrists’ office after she finally called the cops on me. I was diagnosed with bi polar disorder type 1. I tend to experience heavy periods of depression mixed with short bursts of mania. It was the unpredictable and unstable bout of irrationality that was causing my outbursts. So anyway, they put me on a lithium and lamictal cocktail which after a few months severely gave me control of my mind for the first time in my life. As my brain chemistry adjusted to the medication my angry outbursts slowed and after 8 months of therapy and medication they stopped entirely. I still can't forgive myself for the abuse and it eats at me that she will go the rest of her life having experienced that, but the only thing I can do is apologize and work to control my mind and not let it control me. She always forgave me. Unfortunately, my constant concentration caused me to not pay attention to my emotional abuse, which continued for another 6 months until I got a handle on that as well. These things leave bad blood between us that even if she can forgive and forget, I can't. I will feel the guilt for the rest of my life.During this time her problems and my irrationality led us into a ugly cycle of me dumping her and her desperately begging me to come back. When I say desperately... the word desperate does not quite contain exactly how she was run around for hours, begging and pleading, seducing me and promising me things that would make any man want to marry her. The problem here is that first that cycle is incredibly unhealthy. Secondly, it constantly fed an ugly narcissism that was hiding deep in my psyche. I was feeding off the way she was demeaning herself to keep our relationship together. This ugly narcissism I did not acknowledge until recently, and to say that that self realization made me sick and disgusted with myself. There were rational reasons for us to break up. The main problem is that she was not mature. A lot of our relationship mimicked a parent/child situation. Unfortunately, my ego used this rationalization to feed itself and I was not strong enough to realize the problem existed. She would beg, I would take her back, the cycle continued.Now, do not get any of my negative things wrong. She has many wonderful qualities, and I love her more than any other human being on this earth. Here is where the situation goes from worse to bad. I finally managed to conquer my ego and she moved out back to her parents. We said we would attempt to continue the relationship but that she needed to mature some before we could work. I also told her that she would not mature very much living with her parents and she said that she was making plans to move even farther away to live on her own. Her parents live 40 minutes from me and in a 2 week period I only saw her once. I offered to meet her half way or go do things, but she kept saying she was busy. Then she started canceling plans and I started to feel basically abandoned. We spoke on the phone sparsely and only when I called her. Days would go by without a call. I asked her for an explanation and she would only say that she was busy. I finally got fed up and after another cancellation at the last minute I totally broke it off. I know I did this out of anger but I felt that I was being jerked around. She has a problem with lying about things. This issue has caused problems in the past when her parents dragged her to an abortion clinic after she got pregnant with our child. She swears up and down that she miscarried and I believe her to an extent, but I will always wonder. She lies to a lot of people about the weirdest of things. Some people think she lives in different places, others think she has animals she doesn't, and she has lied to me about a few things before. I used to be a damn good human lie detector, but my love for her is blunting my skill set during these occasions. Simply put, I was afraid, mad, and jealous that she might be cheating. Especially when she told me that she was speaking with one of her old professors who she used to use to make me jealous.Fast forward a few days. We were still talking, flip flopping on the phone, she was asking to work on the relationship, I was angry and acting like an idiot and on Sunday totally broke it off, including contact. Two days go by and I start to realize how much of an idiot I was, you know, one of those you don't realize what you have until you lose it type of things. I call her back up and apologize and this time beg her to patch things back up. She says she is willing to talk about it, but that over the past few days she has been having sex with her old professor in his car. She says 5 times. Before she left, I would be lucky if I got 5 times of sex in a few months. She told me that she had gotten over me and that it was not all that hard and that she was having fun with him. I have never felt that kind of emotional agony in my life. It quickly switched from terrible desperate pain to burning hot anger. You see, I could then slightly, but even later I can acknowledge that we were broken up and was no longer bound by our relationship to be faithful. I can even get over the fact that she slept with somebody else. What made me hurt and hate was the fact that 5+ years of shared life and love was not worth more than 24 hours of mourning. I didn’t control her, and she was within her right to sleep with somebody else. It ate at me that she could not even wait a week out of respect to what we shared. So after calling her a bunch of names I calmed down and we managed to agree to talk the next day and that she would break it off with the other guy. She said she would email him to break it off and later said that she had sent it. I go to my cell phone to log into my facebook to find that she was the last one to use my app so her facebook was still logged in and on her facebook page was a post talking about how much of a retard I am and how I am calling her threatening to commit suicide, that I was unstable and insane and she was not going to talk to me again. She made this post while we were reconciling. Above that post she was talking about her new boyfriend. So of course I get stupid and make another post calling her out on the lies and broadcasting to her friends and family that she had been sleeping with a guy in his car 24 hours after we broke up. She flipped out, which I deserved though while flipping out she did admit to the fact she never sent the email to break the relationship off. I should have logged her out of my phone, called her back and truly ended it there. What I did was petty and stupid. What I found out later is that I hit a manic episode after she told me she cheated that lasted 5 days. I ate one meal and got maybe 6 hours of sleep, ended up running out of adrenalin with a low blood sugar and passing out in public, ending up in an emergency room. I was medicated, I should have not had a manic episode but I guess my emotions were just way too heightened that my retarded brain chemistry took over. Anyway, she refused to talk to me for a few days. This was all before I passed out. I called her, she spoke to me briefly where I apologized and said goodbye. I then proceeded to end up in a hospital after which I got home and wrote up an email explaining everything, thanking her for her love and sacrifices. I mentioned that I was very slowly dating another woman, but that it just was not the same and asked to see our dog if she could find it in her heart.She called me back, crying, telling me that the man she was seeing eventually told her that she was fun but was not looking for a relationship. She feels used and is jealous that I am going to dinner with another woman and wants me to stop and fix our relationship. I was just happy to be on speaking terms with her again, but I refused to rush into anything. I told her that we have hurt each other so much that running back into each other’s arms, her moving back in, would be hasty and a bad decision. Ideally I really just want to ensure our friendship survives the ordeal, but my heart wants to mend things. My mind tells me that I'm an idiot and deserve to be screwed again if I go back into this relationship but if I won't listen to it at least go as slow as possible. Crawling speed even. I really can forgive her for everything, including having sex with another man, because technically we were broken up. The only thing I have trouble reconciling is that she didn’t wait even a week to have sex with somebody else. My therapist wants to strangle me for even considering entering this relationship again but my heart wants at least to salvage our friendship. As for the rest. I have no flipping idea. I am just tired of hurting. I think I really just needed to put this down where I could think things through in my mind, but any input would be appreciated. Thank you for reading this huge mess.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
female
reader, Viv Acious  +, writes (15 November 2010):
Hmmm....
I think I am with your counsellor on this one. And I am delighted you have a cousellor to work this through, I really am. Listen to him and work with him.
The best of luck to the both of you. Be well.x
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