[bstill]

Hi all,

I'm unsure if this is the correct forum for my post, but hopefully it doesn't make much difference.

I've been seing a girl since january,and I am now in love with her, and she with me. We have been long distance from the onset (about 1000 miles), but somehow, by sure luck and chance, our lives coincided enough to allow for monthly visits last several days at a time. She is wonderful.

My concern has to do with her past, specifically her only serious relationship, which ended about 2 years ago. They lived together for a year, were together for about two, until he started goinga little off. The last time they saw each other, in fall of 2004 (i think), he beat her, then dragged her out of his apartment. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a few months later and placed in an institution.

She was very stupid about how she handled it, afterward, and the advice she received has been shocking to hear. I am the only person that suggested not contacting him anymore. When she told her ex's best friend about what happened, he said "Yeah. He can get into a funk sometimes." She continued speaking to his parents long after it was necessary; she told them what happened as part of the process of instituionalizing him. In may, his father called her and asked her to describe the way he had beat her, to see how violent it was. This was already after it was irrelevant, there was no medical care-related need to know this. I thought it was bizaare and cruel.

Two things: She never told her own parents about this. I can understand that she was very shamed and embarassed about it all, and she didn't wish for her parents to know how she had been injured. But, her mother recently gave the kid's parents money as part of a charity related to mental illness, with a message sending good will and allthat. I doubt seriously if she would have done that if she knew the whole story, and wonder why my gf allowed this if what she wanted was to sever ties.

Also, she had the insitution's number on her cell phone, and didn't delete it until last week. She also had the phone number of the guy she was talking to when she met me, and only then deleted it. She hadn't spoken to him since january. She told me about deleting the numbers herself, and I didn't think that she would have had them on her phone after all this time. It seemed really odd.

I've spoken with her about her ex, much more than i should need to. She claims quite passionately to be well and done with her ex, but thenall these things that appear contrary to this keep popping up. From her insistence on being nice to him after he hit her, to making herself available to his parents, and subsequently to him, to not telling her own parents the full truth, and now they make friendly gestures. I just want, as she claims to agree, that past to be over. She claims to want it to be over, too, that she is tired of having it affect her life, and that she made so many mistakes that just made it harder.

On another note, his mother sent my gf a letter in june, updating her on her ex's condition (for some reason), and included two free passes to a local museum. She wants to take me there, using those passes. She doesn't know that I know where she got the passes--the letter was left lying around my gf's place last time I visited, and I read it. I never mentioned it to her. The free tickets shouldn't bother me, but they do. I haven't brought it up.

There is more to the story, obviously, but I don't want tomake the initial post longer than it needs to be. I guess I just need a few opinions on all this.