need advice from a female point of view - "taking a break"

hello all, i've been lurking in these forums for a few days and thought it was a great place to talk openly about relationship problems and get good advice. I've learned alot just by reading through some of the posts and you guys are a really great community!!

My situation is, 4 days ago, my girlfriend of 9 months and i got into an argument which escalated into her basically going down her list of complaints about me. In the end I think the biggest complaint on her part is that I make her feel like I am smothering her. She feels that she doesn't have enough time to herself and with her friends and family. I am out of the country and I've been texting her and emailing her and she says that she doesn't even have time to miss me. At the end of the conversation she says that she wants a break. So I say ok. She said she needs time to herself without feeling suffocated.

After our conversation I thought about my actions throughout our relationship and saw that I had turned into one of those clingy/needy/jealous types who wants to be with her 24/7 and wants to know where/what shes doing all the time. I know that women are so not attracted to these types of men. I promised my self in the past that I would never be one of these men, but alas I see that I have become a clingy, jealous, baby. I'm so dissapointed in myself and I have definately made it a point to not be this way in the future by making my life a priority and concentrate on myself for a while.

But now my delima is, i keep asking myself, have I gone too long being this way and have totally detracted my girlfriend permanently? I have maintained NC for 4 days but when I get back into the country shes the one picking me up at the airport because she has my keys.

I guess my main question is, does this spell doom for our relationship, or is it more of a wake up call for me to stop being such a needy man? Also in these types of situations, how long of a "break" do women want?

I really love this woman so much and would like so much to make the right moves in getting her back. Any good advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

The answer to the main question is, of course, that this is a lesson learned. This is a wake up call. Be glad you recieved yours and acknowledged it so soon after the break/break up. Now you have a chance to change and improve. Maybe, just maybe, she`ll see that in you. But IMHO you need a fair bit more time apart for her to believe you have changed, and for you to truly accept this new-found knowledge about your behaviour and look for the reasons (believe me, there ARE reasons you were acting that way, and often they are so deeply ingrained in your psyche, you need an epiphany to see them). Then, work on those issues/reasons you have, be it jealosy, codependence issues, low self-esteem, putting her on a pedestal or whatever... Just do some soul-searching and read alot of the threads here on LS and maybe you`ll find out something unexpected about yourself...

Again, be glad you realised what you were doing wrong so soon. But this is just the first step... And it`s gonna be a long road to get to the core issues.

Good luck and commit.

Hey..thanks Omega. Thats good advice. I know my issues stem from lack of trust. I don't know why its this way with her because shes never done anything for me to distrust her, and I've never had any trust issues with past girls. I know this is something that I need to work on. I guess I didn't grasp the importance of dealing with the trust issue and that it could start affecting our relationship this way.

Yep. Those pesky "little" issues creep up on us when they shouldn`t, don`t they? You never think you`ll be one of those guys untill a girl comes along and rocks your world like never before Do you think you deserve her? Do you think she`s out of your league, so to speak? Jealosy and trust issues often stem from low self-esteem, and sometimes we put our SO on a pedestal, thus always fearing we will lose them to someone "better" than we are.

Does anyone have any insight on what she might be thinking?

I do have questions about your post, but the following is based only on the info you give and my own experiences.

First, you are right, -most women are turned off by clingy men.

Why?

Because, although they (clingy males) believe they are 'covering all the bases' in the relationship by tending to every one of her 'needs', they come off as way too emotionally centered for our socially generated ideal of how the male leader in our present human society is supposed to behave.

Yes, he's supposed to be attentive, -but not in an obsessed way.

Yes, he is supposed to communicate verbally about feelings, -but not better than his female partner.

Somehow, all that emotionally centered behavior just doesn't fit the ideal of the strong, testosterone-driven, sometimes distant, protector stereotype women are so used to with men; you know, the sports addict/computer junkie who normally has no trouble telling sports stats or building a computer from scratch but fumbles for words to describe feelings and has this awkward inability for doing sweet and considerate things.

So, is it that women WANT someone totally inconsiderate, -or even abusive?

Absolutely not!

We just want a happy medium, -no extremes.

We want to know that your male traits and characteristics are not encroaching on our own sacred female stereotypical ground and taking over.

But we DO want men to be open to 'those' talks and participate in them when we feel the relationship and/or it's problems or goals need to be discussed.

Yes, we enjoy gifts.

But we don't want to feel as if our partner is attempting to purchase our feelings or as if our partner thinks he has to 'be really, really good' in order to be loved in return.

Yes, we want lovely surprises.

But we want them to be special when we receive them...it's like, if you had Death By Chocolate EVERYDAY, it would soon become sickening and you'd never want to see it again.

But there's also another aspect of clingy behavior that is more disturbing to women and increases the risk of her being the one to break it off in a relationship with a desperately clingy partner.

Women have this 'radar' that suddenly alerts them when something isn't quite 'right' or is potentially dangerous about their partner's behavior.

This radar is a powerful internal system backed up by experience, female intuition, and wisdom taught by other women and has the ability to often acurately detect underlying problems masked by current behavior in her partner, which may emerge in the future.

For a woman, it may detect a threat not only to their general day-to-day happiness and wellbeing, -but a threat to their independence, their status, and perhaps, their safety, as well.

One of those threats with overly attentive, clingy males is that, if they are dumped for any reason, all their history of 'being good' to their partner is normally recounted in full....or should I say, in SPADES, right back into the face of the dumper.

He will be alble to tell you how much (in full, down to the penny) each of those week-end vacations cost him

He will immediately be able to tell you the cost of each of the shopping trips he took you on (he insisted, you resisted, but you gave in).

He will list every 'nice' thing he ever did for you.

He may even demand that you hand back the goods or the money.

Clingy boyfriends tend to build up very deep and harsh resentments when they are dumped and make every conversation to everyone all about how 'good' they were to their partner.

They make it an enormous issue and seek sympathy from everyone.

And of course, everyone agrees with him.

Some women, upon hearing how 'good' he was to his partner, will eagerly ask for his phone number, thinking he sounded like a dream-come-true, and comment that his partner "must have been crazy for letting him go"!

That's because they didn't live through the suffocating clingyness themselves, -often those who hear the story only hear of how good he was to his partner...-not how desperately clingy he was.

Getting dumped can lead to bitterness and anger in the 'nth' degree for the 'clinger' who suddenly feels it was HE who was being 'used' in the relationship.

They seem to harbor the resentment and, if the pattern is not broken, they tend to recreate this same pattern in the very next realtionship.

'Clingers' rarely give themselves adequate time to heal after breaking up, they usually go straight into another 'love' relationship.

Over time, the 'clinging' boyfriend will have built up a series of hurts that seem to never heal and just gets bigger, -and with every relationship, he may become more fearful, desperate, and resentful.

In his tortured mind, he's looking for the ideal woman who can appreciate all of what he views as 'normal' offerings of kindness, consideration, and love.

But the 'ideal woman', for him, will likely never appear, until he deals with all the past issues of why he feels the need to cling.

If the 'clinger' cannot see his problem and restore his mental and emotional health and equilibrium himself, then those issues are best handled by a professional therapist.

Hope this helps you some.

Take care.

-Rio

i can totally relate with being the overly jealus, protective wanna know were she is at and what she is doing thing. I also told myself i would never do taht but seams like u cant help it. Well coming from experience shoud could honestly need time to think about the relationship. I did this to my ex of 6 years and took her 3 months to figure things out. She came back thinkingI changed and i did but i slipped into that jeolus over protective mood again and lost her again. If she does decide she wants to come back and work on things this iwll be your opportunity. Dont screw it up man if u truly love this girl cause u can easly fall back into the same way u were before. good luck

Hi riobikini,

Thanks for that great post of yours...it does make things clearer !!! I recognize myself in some of the things you wrote (I am the clingy man!!!). I realise that it was probably it was my first serious relationship and wanted to make it work. I put my life on the side to live my relationship life 100% and slowly screw everything up.

It's been 1 1/2 months she broke with me. I still love her and has self re-assess myself to become someone more balanced in expressing my emotions, etc...etc... I have a question to ask.

Is there any way of getting a second chance ? If so, what should I do ? I have managed to cut contact with her for almost 10 days now. During that time, she called me about 6 or 7 times but I never answered.

David

It does sound as if you've been too clingy, but clearly that's something you're willing to address. Clinginess in a relationship is sometimes a reflection on both parties - and on the relationship as a whole. eg someone who isn't normally clingy could become so in a troubled relationship.

I wonder if she discussed her concerns with you before, or if they all came out in a flood during this argument? If the latter is the case, then I have to say that I think she also bears some responsibility in this for not communicating her feelings earlier on. Not suggesting that she should be beaten and put into a cupboard under the stairs for not communicating properly, but at the same time it would be unfair for her to lump all the blame for her feelings onto you if part of the reason those feelings reached the stage they did was because she failed to speak up earlier.

Some people value themselves for being independent free spirits to the extent that they will project any inner insecurities they have onto others. The more they define others as being possessive and clingy, the more they convince themselves that they are not so. I've noticed this sometimes seems to happen in the case of people who have themselves been accused of clinginess in a previous relationship and are perhaps keen to distance themselves from that description.

That's just an observation, not an attempt to speculate on your relationship or your girlfriend. All I'd say is keep a clear head about this, consider her complaints about you as calmly and objectively as you can...but don't necessarily accept them as gospel. It's too easy, sometimes, to automatically assume that a partner who feels like criticising us is correct on every count.

well thanks guys for all the grear replies so far. It's good to hear some analysis of the situation and gives me some insight on things.

I am supposed to see her in a few days because like I mentioned before she has the keys to my place. by the time we see each other and if we have not talked by then, it will have been 10 days of no contact. I guess I'm wondering, will she miss me by the time I get back? Or do you think 10 days is too short to actually start missing someone thats been suffocating for the past few months? I'm sure she'll want some sort of evidence that I won't be that way in the future to even consider being back with me. I really don't know how to act when I get back and see her. Any thoughts?

My guess is, she'll miss you...at least miss the constant behavior.

When you arrive back home, 'forget' to do a few small things you have done in the past like: 'forget' to open the door, 'forget' to rush into her arms and crush her with a long kiss (a small one will do, -a 'peck'), 'forget' to gush all the info about your trip or ask her all the details of her time alone.

That should be good for starters.

Don't play it too cold.

Just show her you've been thinking and have come to a decision to respect her need for untethered space.

Stick with it...don't fall back into the clingy, desperate behavior.

Pay more attention to yourself and the day-to-day routine of your life than you do to her.

Make only very infrequent phone calls and texts...(by the way, texts are sometimes perceived as 'desperate' attempts to seek contact anyway, -so lay off).

Let her wonder for a few weeks...this will give you time to begin your own changes (which you needed to make, in the first place).

Give her time to come to YOU.

If she doesn't negin to do an 'about-face' in a few weeks, then she's happy without you (at least for the time being...this could change....she could show traits of becoming the 'clinger' if she leaves you and later finds out that the grass wasn't greener, after all).

Sounds like a stupid game, but it's just human normal human behavior.

Keep us posted.

-Rio

My guess is, she'll miss you...at least miss the constant behavior.

When you arrive back home, 'forget' to do a few small things you have done in the past like: 'forget' to open the door, 'forget' to rush into her arms and crush her with a long kiss (a small one will do, -a 'peck'), 'forget' to gush all the info about your trip or ask her all the details of her time alone.

That should be good for starters.

Don't play it too cold.

Just show her you've been thinking and have come to a decision to respect her need for untethered space.

Stick with it...don't fall back into the clingy, desperate behavior.

Pay more attention to yourself and the day-to-day routine of your life than you do to her.

Make only very infrequent phone calls and texts...(by the way, texts are sometimes perceived as 'desperate' attempts to seek contact anyway, -so lay off).

Let her wonder for a few weeks...this will give you time to begin your own changes (which you needed to make, in the first place).

Give her time to come to YOU.

If she doesn't begin to do an 'about-face' in a few weeks, then she's happy without you (at least for the time being...this could change....she could show traits of becoming the 'clinger' if she leaves you and later finds out that the grass wasn't greener, after all).

Sounds like a stupid game, but it's just normal human behavior.

Keep us posted.

-Rio

Sorry for the repetitive posts...can't figure out how to delete when overposting.

Thanks Rio. From all my other research and reading, your advice seems very sound. The sad thing is that it does seem like playing a "game". Maybe all human interaction is a game anyways. By acting and reacting certain ways, you try to change people's actions toward you.

I'm thinking long and hard about what I really want out of this relationship. Now that shes given me a "break", its given me a chance to see the relationship from a different perpective and I think its really been a blessing in disguise. I guess now the main question is with this new information will I do something about it. I mean I know I will do something about it, but I hope that I don't become complacent later and start reverting to my old ways which then at that point I can only blame myself.

What do you guys think about any tactics to build trust in the relationship. When my girlfriend goes out with her girlfriends, I always have a nagging thought that shes going to be flirting with other guys and it then makes me start thinking unecessary thoughts. She swears that she will never cheat on me, but any cheater will say that too. Shes never given me any sign that I should doubt her at all up to this point in our relationship. Also, on the weekends when she wants to hang out with her friends rather then me, I feel jealousy in that as well. Thus making me that jealous clingy type. What action can I take to prevent myself from being this way?

Well, for one thing, if it brings you any comfort, there`s nothing you can do to prevent her from cheating. If she wants to, she will cheat on you. So just surrender and acknowledge there`s not a single thing you can do to stop her. You cannot control it, and just try not to think about it. Thinking and worrying whether she`ll cheat on you makes as much sense as trying to control the weather. So really, the only way is to "give up", so to speak.

As for the weekends, well, do what she does. At first, you may be doing it out of spite (yes yes, we`ve all done it), but make some arrangements with your friends. With time, hopefully you`ll get to look forward to spending some "me time". Me and my best bud made sunday afternoon our "time off", we`ll get together, go to a nice restaurant/pub, have a couple of beers or cognacs and a salad, and just chill... Make some chit chat and really relax and not think about our everyday lives. That helps. So, find some activities, hobbies to occupy your time. You really need to develop your personal life, something that makes you happy (not connected to her in any way), so that you have some "time off". That way, you can both relax, devote some time to yourselves and reduce the strain on the relationship.

ANSWER: Build self-confidence.

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: *It really depends on YOU, my friend...meaning it depends on where you are at, already, in HAVING self-confidence.

#1) If you already have MANY issues that remain unresolved, (and most of them center around your OWN behavior and thinking patterns), you are probably going to have a longer, more winding road to walk to get to a decent level of confidence in yourself.

#2) If you have resolved SOME of the issues and already knocked a FEW of the mountains down to size where you can make better decisions and get along better in your own life and deal more realistically with yourself and your relationships, you may experience SOME difficulty dealing with issues of jealousy, but you probably won't have as difficult a time feeling more secure than those who haven't done ANY work on themselves.

#3) If you have dealt with MOST of the issues and feel pretty confident in yourself and your decisions on MOST days and in dealing with MOST things that come your way, then having a new problem present itself (like an unexpected feeling of jealousy) will only be a temporary problem until you can shake free of your momentary lapse in control of your life and put it back into the proper perspective that routinely grounds you in your life.

I'd say the majority of us fit into one of these categories.

The trust that you are seeking from relationships with others only comes after face-to-face empowering (and often humbling) realizations about yourself:

#1) Who you really are.

#2) The concept that you are a valuable and lovable human being despite anyone else's opinion, (i.e. self recognition and respect).

#3) Finally grasping the perspective that you do not 'complete' anyone else and they do not 'complete' you because you are complete in yourself (as some have chosen to be, i.e. celibate), and that, in a reciprocal loving relationship, you COMPLIMENT each other NOT COMPLETE each other.

#4) That you are 'in charge' of your own life and therefore responsible for your life's direction.

#5) That you're the only one who can truly fix your own personal problems and no one else is to blame.

UT-Longhorn, even after having said all this, I still have to say that even the most confident people are going to feel unconfident, sometimes, in love and life and just take a crazy hike with jealousy.

They usually have built up an arsenal of successful coping skills, tho, and can normally pull their head out of their ass, admit to their mistake, and get on with their life.

But for those who haven't worked through the issues in their lives, it's just damn hard to do.

Hope this helps.

Take care.

-Rio

All I have to say is, good thing to figure this out now...

I'm 25, and have gone through a very simiar situation to UT_longhorn.

It's funny though, when I was 17-18 and fell in love with this college girl, and we're very close, but out of the blue long before my jealousy had hit full blown, she cheated on me (read blindsided)...

This set the stage for various failures, the next girl I dated for over a year and we went to college/military together. She was awesome, but I kept breaking up with her and cheated on her (perhaps getting even in some sick way with my first love -- though she never found out).

Fast forward through being out of college, drug use, and a quickie marriage divorce... I realized I needed to be 100% me, worked my way back into college and right before I went back I met this wonderful wonderful girl. I even hesitated because I knew I didnt want a girlfriend.

She walked into my life and was the best love of my life ever to this point. I told her about my past, that I made some mistakes and got off track but worked hard bought my own car, returned to Penn State Univ., and she went off to a college about an hour or so away.

I did things right, love, but not overly clingly for about a year. We had plans of going to grad school together and getting married and all that.

Then over the summer, something pretty terrible happened that triggered alot of old fears and now I'm in the same boat as UT_longhorn, trying to mend things.

-----------

A brief timeline:

June, 2004 Started seeing each other. Almost daily since we met

Sept, 2004 started being official, by my request (I wanted to be right in the head so I could graduate returning to college)

*** Although silly jealousies would come up, it wasn't bad.

August 2005, she informs me her first boyfriend, right before me, had raped her virginity from her.

September 2005, find disturbing journal entry.

*** downhill from there.

-----------

To be honest, I suffocated the hell out of her from September onward... I felt betrayed for the following reasons:

1.) During Nov. 2004, she went to visit her X, when he came home from Iraq. I didnt know at the time he did what he did to her. She swears to hell and back she never cheated...

2.) Since she said they had sex probably about a dozen or so more times til they broke up (about 5 months before we met), I was disturbed by this. (Since they we're dating for a long time, it was probably slightly forced, but clearly she didnt mind...) who continues to have sex with a rapist?

3.) Since she became very catholic, right before these problems occurred this past summer/fall, she forced me into giving up sex for god/future marriage.

4.) I found a "journal" entry in one her story books (shes a fiction writer). Saying how she was in love with the both of us, but was going to choose me. , written toward the beginning of our relationship. She said it was a "writing exercise," to put herself in a situation.

5.) I've never done this, but I couldn't take it anymore and found a bunch of old emails she kept. Although they we're broken up, and she probably forgot she even had these emails, in some old account, it illustrates to me that she based our relationship on a lie. The emails basically are love letters conversations to her X, since I didnt give her a commitment until october, so the day after we first sleep together (June 28th), she sends him an email a day later suggesting that they live together when he comes home.

***Ok granted, she stopped contacting him for good when we became official, but I told her my past, I told her I'd been hurt and I gave love a chance and did it right for over a year, yet somehow I'm crawling back to her on my belly because I was overly jealous and lost trust for her because of what I found, and her battle cry is "I never cheated."

***I also asked specifically if she was single, and a mutual friend warned me of her Army guy. Granted she technically told the truth, but I laid down the rules and even admitted I had been jealous in the past, which is why I was playing hard to get and trying to keep my heart to keep my cool... That made her fall only faster. When she left for college I told her I wouldn't even date her if she decided to date more than one person to leave me out of it. Yet amongst that group of emails I found another journal entry about the two of us "running a race" that neither of us would ever knew we ran. I won the race, but I've all but lost her now, because I became jealous over this.

*** I told her (when we first started dating) I was returning to college and didnt want a relationship, so I could travel, and focus so I could be a successful engineer/scientist and well rounded person. But you can't choose when you fall in love.

So, don't I have a right to be ****in hurt, I was ****in lied to, by a woman "who promised to change my opinion of women" and IN EVERY WAY SHE LOVED ME BETTER AND DID JUST THAT. I only find out now it was based on a lie...

This is so confusing, my only alternative, is to believe she never cheated, pretend like those letters meant nothing, and she was only keeping him around until I made it official. Still, for her being a good girl in every other respect, she completely undermined my heart.

I was never a jealous person until I'd been burned and blindsided.

sincerely, John

I'll be totally honest with you LoveShack folks. You guys are great and I truly belive that you have very good advice. You listen and care for the LS community. BUT after coming to the forum and reading all the stories of mistrust, cheating, lying, heartbreaking, hurt, it really makes me question my relationship even more!!!! There are so many stories here that go along the lines of ... "I trusted my S/O completely, then I come to find out they were cheating" or "I gave myself completely to someone and after 5 years they totally ripped my heart out".

It's very disheartening to hear these stories and it really starts making me look at relationships in a negative light. I had an issue of trusting my g/f and after reading all these posts, I don't know if it made me trust my g/f more or less??!!

Just an observation.

I had an issue of trusting my g/f and after reading all these posts, I don't know if it made me trust my g/f more or less??!!

longhorn, trust is ultimately about you, not her. Riobikini had some good points about self-confidence, and I would relate some of them here if I had the attention span to read through her long posts.

Many relationship problems are a symptom of one person's underconfidence. Clinginess is something you need to deal with regardless of what happens here, it's your issue, not hers.

Agree with travellingman completely. You have to realize though, there are things in life you have no control over. It`s hard, but whether your SO cheats on you or doesn`t, is one of those things. For you to try and fight it, trying to exercize some sort of control over it, is fighting a losing battle. The moment you accept that as a given fact, a thing you cannot influence or change, is the moment you can be at peace, whatever happens. Just like the weather. You can be pissed that it`s raining when you want a sunny day, but in the end, it doesn`t bother you that much, and you can truly enjoy each day as it is, sunny, raining, snowing, hot, cold. You go with the flow. It may be a bit simplistic view of things, but it works.