Never had a serious relationship before, not sure how to handle this.

[Weeble]

I'm just going to apologize in advance, this is a pretty long post.

 

 

I never really dated much, honestly I never really cared to. At times I felt like I wanted a relationship but then also loved my life of solitude. That changed last year when I met a girl and we immediately hit it off. It was wonderful. We were eight months in and she suggested we move in together, she wanted to move to be closer to her work, and I work from home so I can be anywhere. I said sure and we went for it and found a lovely apartment together.

 

Now before I get into that, I need to talk about her past relationships. She's had very bad experiences in that department. She would hook up with guys in hopes that it would make them fall for her, but they'd pretty much just use her for sex then toss her aside, or they'd lead her on knowing they didn't care for a relationship but still wanted sex from her, and she let that continue hoping they'd change their mind and want to be with her. When she first told me about all her hook ups, she originally said she just did it for the fun of it and that it had no meaning, but later on she admitted these were guys she had feelings for and felt that sex would get them to fall for her. She said it was a part of her party phase in college when she was trying on different identities to see who she was. I am six years older than her, my party days are gone, so I asked her if she was done with the partying and hooking up, because I didn't want to date someone who was still into that. I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, I asked her just because I was out of that phase in life and wanted someone who was on the same page as me. She said she was done with that and that she could never go back to being that person again.

 

So anyway, she did find a guy during that phase, but he ended up being extremely abusive. He would tell her to kill herself, he would absolutely flip out if he knew she was out in a group and other guys were there, he made her take pictures of what she was wearing out that day and if he felt it was too revealing, he'd have her change, he would slut-shame her by saying things like he didn't want her to hang out with any male friends because she would only end up having sex with them. She would always run back to him though because he'd put the blame on her, saying things like "well I'm only this angry because you made me that way so it's your fault" and other disgusting crap that unfortunately, she went with, she'd apologize for her behavior even though it wasn't wrong. She just wanted to keep him there and happy. She would tell him she will not stand for such behavior, but in the end would always run back to him. After awhile, she had enough, she broke it off, and shortly after that happened, we met.

 

As we got to know each other more, she would tell me she was truly afraid of him because he has said some pretty horrendous things to her. I suggested she go to the authorities or a domestic abuse shelter to seek guidance and see what steps we should take. She agreed, and for awhile, things were great. She was in therapy, she was given advice as to how to go about getting a restraining order, all of that. She really wanted him out of her life completely, and she was doing this on her own, all I did was suggest it, but she went full on with it. I was so proud of her for realizing that she is worth it and there is no reason she needs to put up with that type of crap in a relationship.

 

That all happened before we moved in together. When we did, things just went bad. She was so needy and insecure. She didn't like that I had female friends or coworkers that I would joke around and talk to. One of my closest friends I have known for over a decade is a female, she's like a little sister to me, she is married to a great guy and there is no reason we would ever pursue anything romantic, but my girlfriend at the time wasn't comfortable with that relationship. I would explain our relationship to her but I don't think it ever really sat well with her. As time we one, we just kept fighting and fighting and fighting about every little thing. One fight in particular was how she wanted us to always go to bed at the same time together and I told her that I didn't want to do that because generally, I don't need much sleep. If I get five or six hours, I'm solid. She needs her whole eight, and I shouldn't have to adjust my bedtime just around her schedule. That's one fight that eventually got an "eff you" from her towards me. Another fight was because an old friend I haven't spoken to in years ran into me when I was walking the dog one day, we had a friendly chat, she told me about her new baby, how both she and her husband got new jobs, and that they're doing great. She suggested we grab lunch one day and I told her that would be great. When I told my girlfriend, she flipped out and said "that is not okay, I don't know this girl" and would only be okay with us hanging out if she met her first. That got me pretty upset because I have never given her any reason to think I would lie, and I felt insulted. She kept saying "I trust you, just not her" but I think that is a BS cop out. If that girl tried ANYTHING with me, I would simply walk away, end of story. My girlfriend still wasn't comfortable with it. So anyway, those fights kept happening, and I started to fall out of love with her.

 

I attempted to break up with her and she begged that I stick around, talking about all the fun activities we had mentioned wanting to do before but haven't gotten around to, things like that. I realized that I really do want those things. I was just straight up with her, and I let her know I needed more space, she was smothering me and I was just going crazy (I didn't use those exact words). I told her what I needed in order to be comfortable and not feel like I'm constantly walking on eggshells around her, and I made sure to ask her if it was fair in her eyes, she agreed it was, and so we continued.

Several weeks go by and I'm trying so hard to get back the feelings I once had for her, but they just weren't coming back. All the fighting and such just trampled any feelings I had left. I knew things needed to end.

 

I decided on a Sunday that I would let her know on Tuesday that I am leaving, I want the absolute best for her, but that it isn't me. That Sunday night, she was in bed, I was in the living room playing my Xbox. I got stuck on a certain part of the game, and her laptop was nearby so I opened it up to look for a video that would help me with my game, I had requested before if I could use her laptop and she eventually just told me "you don't have to ask me to use it, it's fine, just go for it." As I open it up, iMessage is the one window that is open and since she has an iPhone, the texts she sends on her phone also appear on her computer since she can iMessage from there too. All these flirty texts start popping up from some guy she is talking to in real time. I stop for a second and try to justify in my head "hey maybe this is a close friend" or something. But I couldn't help myself, I scrolled up and could not believe how often they had been texting. It had been going on every day for the last four weeks. I also noticed that the most recent person she was texting before this guy was her extremely abusive ex I spoke about before. She was sending both of them pictures of her cleavage, talking about how she would be "getting off" to them when she took a shower, explicit texts saying what they would do to each other, and just generally being extremely inappropriate. I left the apartment and took a drive to clear my head.

 

I was numb for a couple of days, then that Tuesday I ended things like I had originally planned. I also confronted her about the messages I saw, she said she felt ashamed and that it wasn't who she was, but that I wasn't giving her as much attention as she desired. We hadn't had sex in a couple weeks and she felt like she wasn't wanted by me, so she resorted to this guy she barely knew (not her ex) to talk about how hot she is and how he wants them to do this and do that and blah blah. I was planning to break up with her even before all this, and I felt absolutely terrible about it. She was so in love with our apartment and the thought of our future together. After I saw all those messages, I didn't feel so bad at first. The break up happened, it was awful. Fast forward to a couple weeks later, I'm trying to get used to living alone again, I'm battling feelings of both being extremely angry with her but also feeling sympathy for her because until she finds somewhere else to live, she is in our old apartment. It's empty because most of the furniture belonged to me so she was left with just a bed and her desk. I would just imagine her having to live there alone, OUR apartment that we wanted to share and it broke my heart.

 

While this internal struggle is going on, I still made sure to get out and hang with my friends, I had been neglecting them for the sake of my relationship, it was wrong to shove them in a corner like that, but, regrettably, I did it. My friends and I were having dinner one evening and one of them who didn't know my girlfriend and I split asked how we were doing. I let them know we broke up, and that's when someone else at the table (an acquaintance really, I don't know him that well) said "oh yeah I figured you guys broke up" I asked him why he figured that, I barely knew the guy so I thought it was weird that he knew we were over. He takes out his phone and shows me that he saw her on Tinder a month ago. My heart absolutely sank. I asked him why he didn't let me know and he said "I dunno, just figured it wasn't my place to tell on her."

 

Now I can't help but question so many things about our relationship. I know it doesn't do any good to dwell on the past, but I asked her straight up if she was done with the hook up life because I was looking for a real relationship and didn't want anything to get in the way of that. I am so extremely infuriated with her for doing this, I felt completely betrayed, I was mad that she would have the nerve to get angry with me when I wanted to have lunch with a female friend, or if I had to go meet a female coworker for something work related. I was mad at her for not being able to trust me even though I never did a damn thing that would make her think I was unfaithful in any way possible. But, I am also filled with sympathy for her because I know how much our break up hurt her. Even when we were saying goodbye as she left to stay with a friend for the weekend while I moved out, she was tearing up, holding my face and kissing me and looking me in the eyes, like she wanted to make sure she remembers what I look like or something. I was crying too, it was just awful, she asked me "are you really sure?" it hurt to say but I told her yes. I feel so bad for causing her pain, knowing she is by herself now and that she had so much she wanted for our future, and I completely just tore it away from her.

 

I've been rambling on for awhile now. I just wanted to get this off my chest. A part of me feels like I never even knew who she really was, those text messages I saw were surreal to me. If I didn't know the names of who sent them, I would have never thought it was my girlfriend saying those things. I feel like she was lying from the start and that she never left that phase of constantly needing guys to consider her attractive and wanted in a sexual way.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Weeble

[PRW]

What ages are we dealing with?

[ExpatInItaly]

Very typical cheater behaviour from her, unfortunately.

 

The ones who most frequently toss around baseless accusations and make ridiculous demands are often the ones behaving badly themselves. It's projection. They know what they are doing when your head is turned, so they subconsciously assume that you are doing the same thing.

 

It sounds like you didn't know the "real" her, no. Not completely anyway. It's so much better you found out now what this girl's true colours are.

[Weeble]

What ages are we dealing with?

 

I'm 30, she's 23.

[Weeble]

Very typical cheater behaviour from her, unfortunately.

 

The ones who most frequently toss around baseless accusations and make ridiculous demands are often the ones behaving badly themselves. It's projection. They know what they are doing when your head is turned, so they subconsciously assume that you are doing the same thing.

 

It sounds like you didn't know the "real" her, no. Not completely anyway. It's so much better you found out now what this girl's true colours are.

 

That makes sense, I didn't think about it that way. She was doing all this stuff behind my back and knew it was wrong, so she was all worried I would do the same. It's just a bizarre feeling to think that someone I thought I knew I actually didn't really know.