tryceratops Posted December 27, 2008 Posted December 27, 2008 I am a graduate student living and working overseas. I've been living in a foreign land for 2 years now and have spent at least 3 months a year for the past decade overseas. Our relationship began in the summer of 2006. We were working on the same project and had known each other for three years. She had gotten married to a good friend the previous summer, but I was always better friends with her than him. That summer she was having particular difficulty with her relationship due to the duration of fieldwork and the distance. It began with a bang. We were living in a very exotic location, a castle to be specific, and we enjoyed each other's company all over the grounds of the estate. We both took it as fantasy. The location, the secrecy, the cheating. When we got back to the States, we carried on in secret for about 6 mos. before she got a divorce. Even after that we kept it very quiet. The following summer we carried on with our relationship and fieldwork, but now I wasn't coming back to the States, I was staying behind. My graduate work at a prestigious institution was very rigourous and I suggested that we take a bit of a break. A chance to figure out if we could work out the LDR. I had some flings here and encouraged her to take advantage of her situation. She said that she couldn't and has never stated that she resented my flings. She came to see me the following spring and we had a wonderful time. After she returned to the States she told me she was disappointed because she expected a commitment after her trip. We saw each other again over the summer for fieldwork. It was as open as we had been to other people concerning our relationship. I returned home after fieldwork in mid-September. We reinitiated our relationsip as we always had, with lots of sex. A week after I had returned I developed some lesions that looked like herpes. I knew that I had been safe with my flings over a year before that and had not had sex with anyone else in the interveneing time. We both were tested. She had her results quickly indicating no infections. I only recently received my results with the same conclusions. She was very upset that I considered that I may have received an STI from her. A trust issue. I return overseas, and thought we should have some time to think about things. She has recently told me "commit now or forever hold your peace." I finish my PhD in the Spring, returning for a month and a half in April and May to complete my degree. I do not know where I am going to be after that but I will have my usual fieldwork. She has been incredibly supportive of me. My father was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer two years ago and I had to undergo an extremely detailed review of ALL of my academic work after an accusation of ethical and research misconduct. During this time she has been a rock of support. She recently finished a degree. Now she says that she is ready to move on without me. There are others lined up for her. I still deal with a lot of guilt after breaking up her marriage. I still wonder if I could trust her in a situation where we were married. I'm not sure that I want to give up yet and let her go. At the same time I feel that she has made her decision. I'm not necessarily looking for answers. I just want to write down a portion of this story and read it again in oder to better understand for myself whats going on.
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