Long distance relationship, broke up, back together again - but some early new issues

[dunstable]

I was in a happy relationship for 7 years though we lived in separate houses each with our respective children, when I would have preferred that we lived together. This was in England. Then I had the opportunity to move to the USA. I moved to the USA and went to great efforts to build a home and a life for us there but could not persuade her (with her daughter, my children then being grown up) to join me. After a further 5 years, the strain of only seeing each other for a few weeks a year finally broke up our relationship. We then tried to build lives with new people. I had several brief relationships before marrying someone else. But I could not find happiness at any stage. I thought about my ex every single day. Whenever, I was with another woman, I wished I was with my ex. Whenever I went out each morning, I looked at the weather and asked myself whether my ex would like the weather that day. If I was at the theater with another woman, I found myself wondering if my ex would like the play (or ballet, or opera, or concert). After a short time of marriage my new wife petitioned for divorce – one of her complaints was that I still had feelings for my ex and in fact she was quite right about that. After we had broken up, my ex (my old girlfriend that is, not my new wife) had only one new relationship and then not until after I had married that other person. And it was a lightweight relationship – she never took him home to meet her daughter, they dated fro 10 weeks, and they only had sex when they spent a couple of weekends together – one weekend in a hotel and another at his house. Then, in the middle of one night, she called me as the only person she could turn to in order to talk about something that was troubling her. I thought it was significant she didn’t call her friends, her family, or her new man. During that conversation, she admitted that when she was going to meet her new man for one of their romantic weekends, her daughter had mentioned I had just phoned, and that message from her daughter about my phone call had got her thinking how she wished she had been traveling to meet me instead. To cut a long story short, we decided during that phone call to try again with our relationship. We have now met on a couple of occasions for a few days each time – please remember we live on different continents. The make-up sex was just exquisite. For the first time in years, I felt sex was natural, wholesome, pure… But we have been having a few issues.

Recent issues

Issue 1. She took me to meet her new work colleagues and she asked me to not say anything that would embarrass her. I said of course I would not do that and asked what they knew of our history. She said they knew nothing except that I was her partner. A few days after that we went for a dinner party with her colleagues. She suddenly announces to her colleagues, over the dinner table, that I left her and married someone else. She tells them the exact date of the wedding (three times over). She mentions I’m still married to that other person. I’m totally shocked that she is blurting all this out. Her colleagues look embarrassed and change the subject. Then she tells her boss about her visits to the USA and what an awful place it is – I feel she is indirectly criticizing me since I’ve been trying for years to carve out a new life for us there. In the car on the way home, I tell her I was disappointed by her negative views of the USA and also that she revealed intimate information about us to her colleagues. She gets really angry and accuses me of trying to censor her on the first matter. On the second matter, she tells me she had already told her female coworkers our story – though this contradicts what she had told me a few days earlier when I thought she had said they knew nothing. She tries to reconcile the anomaly by saying that when she said they knew nothing she meant her manager not her female colleagues. After hours of argument she finally says sorry for revealing shared information without my consent but she is adamant that it is OK for her to slag off America and that it is my problem if I find that depressing and that my even mentioning it is tantamount to trying to censor her.

Issue 2. The next issue that arises between us comes out of an intimate moment. We are answering each other’s questions about sex with other people (maybe not a wise thing to do). She tells me she did not give her new man oral sex because it felt too intimate. This makes me feel rather special that she does something for me that she didn’t do for him. Then, a few days later, in a similar exchange, she starts telling me some story in which she says he gave her oral sex and “vice versa”. I said, what do you mean “vice versa”? – you told me you did not give him oral sex because it was too intimate? She replied that when she had said that she didn’t do it, she was referring to their first act of sex but that she gave him oral on the second act. I felt a bit disappointed to think that I was not so special after all. (I also recalled that we had been together months at the start of our relationship before she gave me oral sex and that I hadn’t been offered it but had to ask for it.) I wouldn’t have minded her giving him oral sex – I would have assumed she would have done - it was the fact she said she didn’t and then that she said that she did that disturbed me.

So that’s two separate occasions when she appears to have been caught in a lie but she says I just misunderstood her. When she said her employer knew nothing of our history, she says she meant her boss not her colleagues. When she said she never gave her new man oral sex, she said she meant on their first act not subsequent occasions. I don’t know whether she just phrased her sentences very badly so that I accidentally got the wrong impression on those two occasions or whether she tried to mislead me and then got caught out.

Issue 3. I traveled to England to spend Christmas with her (and with her daughter and my children). She has made me check into a hotel for 12/24 to 12/27 because she says she and her daughter need to spend some quality time together on their own. Her daughter does have some serious emotional problems at the moment so I do partially understand why I am wanted to be out of the way.

Individually, the above three issues don’t seem very serious but taken together I have found them thoroughly depressing. If I try to talk to her about my feelings, she just says if I don’t like the way she is, I should go back to the USA and find someone else to marry (preferably someone very submissive who will accept my controlling behavior, she says).

Should I be worried or should I just let these things go? I'm not about to leave her again because I know that I cannot be happy without her.

[Storyrider]

On the surface it doesn't so much sound like you're being controlling as that you're using every situation as a test to see whether you should move forward with her.

 

Regarding the dinner with coworkers, you're going to have times when one person says things the other doesn't like. That is a given in any long term relationship. Women often feel an irrational urge to discuss thing that are bothering them just for the sake of venting (at least I do). It is sort of like a reality check. I don't think it was wise for her to do it the way she did, but I understand what would motivate it.

 

As for the sex with other people thing, you're both feeling jealous about that. I think you need to just give each other a free pass when it comes to what happened while you were broken up. Either don't talk about it, or agree to judge nothing. I can understand why she would lie or bend the truth if she was worried about your reaction.

 

Some of her behavior indicates she is guarding her boundaries very closely and worried that she will lose ground if she softens. She wants to start out on the right footing by staying firm on the things that are important to her. Perhaps she feels you were too pushy the first time around, and this is her way of preventing herself from being too passive the second time. It might seem to you as if it is overkill.

 

The slagging off America is a cultural thing I've heard many times from Brits and Europeans in general. If she were ever to live in the US, she would hopefully come to accept some of the differences, use humor to help her deal with them and try to appreciate the US for what it is, rather than for what it is not.

[dunstable]

Thanks, Storyrider, for your very perceptive comments.

 

I think I am indeed testing her love for me (I hadn't thought of that till you suggested the possibility). I'm not in any doubt about my feelings for her - she is the love of my life (sorry for cliche) - but I left her initially because I felt she did not love me and now we are back together I am a little wary as to whether she is back for the same reasons as I am or whether maybe she is back because I am a good provider, emotionally supportive etc.

 

We had a text message exchange just after we agreed to reunite. She had said on the telephone that her new lover ("G") was a compromise. Our text conversation then went as follows:

Me: U said one cant expect to fall madly in love at our age and must make compromises when selecting a partner. Its clear G is a compromise not an ideal. Am I also a compromise?

She: I didn’t say that I very much want 2 b madly in love.

Me: Then u r no longer in love with me?

She: I have told v I stil love u the questinm is do we make each other hapy I really hope so.

Me: U love me but r not in love w me. Makes me v sad. I am as ever still in love w u.

 

The above made me think that whereas I found myself still deeply in love with her, that she was being more analytical and saying that our getting back was based not on being already in love but on a hope of making each other happy in the future.

 

Storyrider, I think you're right in suggesting I let go of the dinner incident and the possible evasions/bending of the truth over what happened sexually with others. We may have just had a miscommunication on the sexual matters but even if she was trying to minimize what happened this is understandable and I think I can let it go without much difficulty.

You are right about her defending her boundaries, that she felt she was too passive first time around, and that she is determined not to be the same again. I felt she was actually the more controlling person in the relationship, but again I think I can let this go and not make an issue of it.

I love your remark that the US should be appreciated for what it is rather than deprecated for what it isn't! How on earth did you come to that incredibly wise observation? I think I will remember that one for ever! Maybe you will tell me it's obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me till you said it.

Edited December 25, 2007 by dunstable