Jefezen Posted August 25, 2014 Posted August 25, 2014 Before I get into the present situation, I think an overview of my past will be instructive. Until the last couple years, I was completely and utterly socially inept. I had absolutely no meaningful romantic, or even social, experience with women. I was a physically unattractive introvert with low self-esteem and nothing going for me. I would pay for the occasional prostitute and have a rare escapade with an assertive, desperate 45+ yearold woman. At 30, I made a concerted effort to build up my social life. I got my body into much better shape. I became more comfortable talking to women. I spent time with lots of girls platonically, just to get acclimated to being with people of the opposite sex. I also dated various girls, making all kinds of humiliating rookie mistakes that turned them off. Girls would even ask me out, but I would invariably become the nice boring guy who would get friend zoned or ignored after the initial burst of attraction. My lack of 'real life' sexual experience seemed to be holding me back. I lost girl after girl for these reasons, and I would obsess over them long after the fact in a very unhealthy manner, chasing them hard only after I had failed. Anger, bitterness, and resentment followed me everywhere. I would cyberstalk them and hang out in neighborhoods where I thought I might "accidentally" run into them. I would do this for months. Such habits were even worse back in my high school and college days when merely talking to a girl was an accomplishment. At 31, I finally started to get some 'real life' sexual experience. I performed horribly, as to be expected, completely embarrassing myself, but I suppose that's something we all go through at some point. A few weeks after the first failed experience, I dated a girl I didn't particularly care for over a period of three weeks. My kissing steadily improved under her tutelage, however she was dissatisfied with me overall due to my "lack of passion." I didn't know how to be a boyfriend. One night while hooking up, she said she just wasn't feeling it, and we ended things amicably. To this day, I still see her from time to time at social functions, and although she's moved on and is very happy with her current boyfriend, I'm completely fine with it. About a month after that brief relationship ended, I met a 36 (now 37) yearold divorcee online. Our first date went okay. She seemed more interested in me than I was in her. Though attractive, our age gap looked larger than the five years she had on me, and I was bothered by the fact that she had recently shipped her 11 yearold son off to live with her ex-husband halfway across the country, against the son's wishes. She admitted this was largely for selfish reasons, explaining that being a single mother is difficult, and that she wanted a chance to get her life back together, find a new man, and kickstart her career. Her ex-husband, who had physically abused her, re-married and was in a significantly better financial position. She said that by not having her son with her, she no longer had to deal with the ex as much, even though she doesn't feel she should have to pay child support. While I was fine with dating a woman with kids, I immediately questioned her maternal instinct. I want to start a family, I want kids, and it bothered me how cold and indifferent she seemed toward her son. Not having any other women interested in me at the time, I continued to go out with her. The age gap and situation with her son bothered me, but I was getting tons of sex and relationship experience for the first time in my life, and didn't want to lose all that just to end up at square one with nothing. She slept over at my place almost every weekend and we would go at it sometimes four times a day. Even just the makeout sessions were phenomenal. We could do that for hours at a time. I liked that she wasn't the type who sleeps around (only two guys before me, she claims, and I believe her), I liked her exotic background (Middle Eastern), and I liked how sweet and affectionate she could be with me. The physical companionship and cuddliness factors were off the charts. We'd always sit close to each other in an embrace, we'd walk around in public holding hands, we'd stop to kiss each other, etc. To others, we looked very much in love. But it was a rocky seven months. We would seldom go a week without some kind of blowout fight, mostly on her end. If I did not respond to a text right away (and this would be during work hours) she would say that she wasn't "feeling the connection" and that maybe we should break up. Yet it was perfectly fine if she ignored me for a few hours. When this would happen, she'd reactivate her online dating profile almost immediately and delete my number. I would try to calm her down over the phone, but she would insist that I drive to her place and talk it out in person. In person, she'd continue the tantrum and I'd have to ride the storm, take the blame for everything, absorb insults, apologize, reassure her, and maybe after a couple hours of that routine, get things back in the right track. She'd tell me how much she "loves" me, even admit to being a pain, and we'd get along for a few days until the next time. There were other issues too. I felt like I had to walk on eggshells whenever expressing myself because she would be hypersensitive about any opinions not in concert with her own. This was not only true for politics and religion, but for merely reporting something from the news, relaying a story a friend told me, or simpler things like art, music, clothing, decor and what or when to eat. She became very demanding over fairly trivial things. She wanted me to get a new eco-friendly refrigerator. She threatened to never come back to my place unless I bought her a special makeup counter. She said that I should stop asking about her son or trying to make plans for her or us to see him on our time off because it made her feel like a bad mother. She critiqued how I work, put down most of my friends behind their backs, said that I'm too close to my family, yet insisted that I introduce my parents to her (they live 3,000 miles away) to assess whether they'd be compatible as potential in-laws. I wasn't against introducing them, but she was pressuring me to either make them visit me (they haven't come in five years), or for me to take her to meet them but only for a couple days, and then spend the rest of the time driving her around the west coast alone without them. She said the one other man she had been with other than me and her ex-husband introduced her and her son to his parents, and then separately toured her around the southeast. She expected something similar. The biggest points of contention were about children and where to live. Whenever her son would complain about being far away, or when she commented that he seemed to be acting distant toward her, I would gently tell her that I would be perfectly fine if he were to eventually live with us instead. I also said that I wanted at least one child of my own and to live at my current address, which costs me nothing because it's my parents' old place. She said she could only live where I am if we got rid of everything from my parents' old room ("out of principle"), if they put the deed in my name, if I added a couple more bedrooms for added space, if I improved the landscaping, if I redid the second bathroom, if I promised that my parents would never stay for longer than a week, and if I let her re-decorate in a style of her choosing so that it would feel like home to her too and not a preexisting life that she's joining. Even with all those changes, she said she would prefer that I buy or at least rent us something else in the very expensive town where she currently lives (she rents a small affordable housing unit, falsely claiming that she has a dependent there with her). I explained how we would live a whole lot better overall if our housing costs were close to zero, and that there's no way we could afford something of comparable space and quality to where I live now in the location she desired. I expressed a willingness to explore other towns, but she said it had to be the one she lives in now because she's been there for eight years, she prefers urban living, she can walk to work (doesn't have a car), and she feels rooted in her community. I've been in my town for 29 years, and our towns are all of four miles apart from one another. I offered moving in with her and taking over the rent. She said that's not manly, adding that if money is the issue, either I should learn to make more fast (I already make more than double her salary), or find a small one bedroom that's at least in the location she likes. Suddenly the number of bedrooms and the overall quality of the place didn't seem to matter to her anymore as long as it was in the town she wants. When I pointed out that this would leave her son without a bedroom when he visits, and no room for future kids, she said her son barely comes and can sleep in the living room and that any future kids we have would not be in the immediate future, but maybe in a few years by adoption, in vitro with some other woman's egg, or possibly her if it works out that way. With all these obstacles, frequent tantrums, and her seeming unwillingness to compromise on much of anything, I became very anxious. Our principles and visions for the future were not as aligned as I would hope, but at 32 I wasn't getting any younger, and in fact, had been recently diagnosed with low testosterone (which could explain the lack of passion that other girls had complained of in the past). My body was starting to break down in other personal ways too. I wondered whether anyone else would take me. The expression "beggars can't be choosers" often came to mind. It wasn't that long ago that I couldn't get anything, and now at least I had the patina of a real relationship, with tons of companionship and good sex whenever I wanted it. But the thought of introducing her to my parents at some point terrified me. All the pressure to get another place terrified me. Our age gap in pictures made me uncomfortable enough to the point that not once did I ever post any pictures showing the two of us together on Facebook, whereas with every other girl I went out with I was always quick to show them off. She's not ugly, just older looking. She became my placeholder. I would check other online dating sites. Whenever I could get a night off from being with her, I would go out to social functions and try to meet other girls. I even went out on a few first dates, none of them amounting to anything. My admittedly unethical strategy was not necessarily to completely use my girlfriend, but to string her along indefinitely as a backup and settle for her only if I couldn't do better. I knew she wanted marriage because she said she doesn't date anyone for longer than a year without making a firm commitment. I kept going back and forth on whether to just settle with this one, or see if I could find a better match. A little over a month ago, when we last made contact, I told her I wanted to buy her a replacement umbrella for one that had been stolen from her. As we approached the store where we were going to get it, I told her to browse for a little while and that I'd be right back in a few minutes because I wanted to add some quarters to the parking meter. She immediately threw a hissy fit, calling me "cheap," saying that I was going to make her buy the umbrella for herself, and that even her ex-husband as horrible as he was to her, would never do something so debase. I told her that was not my intention, that I really was just going to add a few quarters and come right back, and that I thought she might want to spend time looking at other items anyway. I was angry that she would compare me to the man she had so often vilified and would even dare call me cheap given how much I had bought her (lots of lavish meals, a purse, expensive perfumes, outfits, shoes, trips, etc.) I had bought her son nice things too. So why would I skimp out on a $40 umbrella? She had another tantrum, said she wasn't sure where we're going, that we should both think about things. When I tried talking to her on the phone later, she said that such conversations should only be in person but that she was tired and that we could schedule a time in a few days or a week later. It was highly unusual for her to put something like this off. She said it was very selfish of me to try and talk to her on the phone when I know she wants to wait until we see each other in person. She said I should consider myself lucky that she was even giving me an opportunity to defend myself. "Defend myself?" I asked incredulously. "I don't have anything to say. I thought you wanted the opportunity to explain your position to me." She raised her voice in anger, "Oh really? You have nothing to defend? You are so infuriating." I asked her if this really just came down to her desire for me to buy her a place in the town she lives. "You are outrageous! I have been thinking a lot about things lately. That's it! We're breaking up!" She hung up the phone on me and sent an e-mail about an hour later requesting that I send her any and all pictures on my phone of her and her son, delete them from my phone, and then delete the e-mail. I ignored that request. We have had zero contact since, and that happened exactly a month ago yesterday. The first couple weeks without her I felt great. There was a sense of relief in not having to deal with her usual nonsense. I went out with my friends every night, I had a grand old time, I went back to my old routine no longer having to abide by all her annoying little rules (such as her strange obsession with laundering couch pillows every week). I didn't miss her at all. But then the third week was difficult, and this last week even tougher. I've gone out on a few dates, the new girls have seemed interested in me, yet for some reason I'm still hung up on the one I was with for seven months. I'm comparing everyone to her. I'm also suddenly cyberstalking her, checking when she's logged into the dating site (she's using pictures that I took of her now on her profile page). For the last few days, I've had this tremendous urge to reach out to her. None of my friends liked her. My parents don't like what they heard about her. But I'm suddenly feeling more of a pull now, and a depression, in weeks three and four of no contact than I did in the first two. I miss the routine. I miss the affection. I miss the sex and how easy it was for me to get whenever I wanted it. I miss the exotic looks. I miss the intellect. I definitely don't miss the personality, the drama, and her bizarre perspectives on family. She doesn't really have any friends or family, sticking mainly to herself, which seems like another red flag. I don't know what to do now. I'm afraid that if I wait too long, she'll move on to someone else and I might be stuck with no one at all. I think I'd rather have someone than no one, and the jealousy in me abhors the thought of her with another man after everything we shared intimately. But I also know that if I try to get her back, it would just be more of the same with the anxiety, the stress, the arguments over the living situation, the discomfort I have being photographed with her, the worries about having kids with an older woman who doesn't seem to be much of a mother, the whining and lack of appreciation, etc. I took days off from work just to be with her for her doctor's appointments, or to babysit her son, and yet she'd still have the gall to call me selfish. I'm angry at her, yet I miss her, or at least parts of the routine with her. I'm lonely and the new girls rather than fulfilling the void are only reminding me more of it.
ThorntonMelon Posted August 25, 2014 Posted August 25, 2014 She sounds like a nightmare. You solely miss the attachment, which is an issue for you going back years. When you find the next "Miss Right" - you'll attach there. So just ride the wave until she comes along. But under no circumstances go back to this one.
Author Jefezen Posted August 25, 2014 Author Posted August 25, 2014 I think that you are right and that I mainly miss the attachment, rather than the individual because even while I was with her, I felt anxious and stressed out. I would look forward to time alone and I recognized that I could not meet all her demands, nor did I want to meet them. I felt like I always had to be the one making sacrifices. That's why I didn't fight to maintain the relationship when we had our last fight. I easily could have just called her the next morning and arranged to meet her at her place. She would have whined and yelled for a couple hours, I'd apologize for whatever she thought I did, we'd have sex, and then we'd superficially get along until the next battle. But this time I said to myself, "To heck with it, I don't want to deal with this anymore." So I just let it go, and she has too evidently. I guess she's the one who technically broke up with me, but this happened so many times, maybe I'm the one who broke up with her because I didn't make my usual in-person attempt to fix it. Either way, we've both stayed silent now, whereas in the past, she'd usually send me a flurry of e-mails if I went quiet for more than a day. But instead of it getting easier with time to get over her, it's getting harder for me. The first two weeks away provided a much needed respite. I was happy and relieved. I didn't have to kowtow to everything she wanted, and still not be appreciated for it. Then I started to feel the longing in the third week, and now after the fourth week apart it's at the point where I have to exert a lot of self-discipline to not reach out to her. This is in spite of actually having gone out with two different girls within the last week, making out with one of them, and being contacted almost incessantly by the other. I don't view either of them as an upgrade, which makes me wonder if maybe I miss my ex for legitimate reasons beyond my need for affection and attachment. It wasn't all bad. Between fights, we'd get along, and she does have an old school sensibility about relationships and sexual matters that appeals to me (i.e. not a superficial wild party girl who sleeps around). That's harder to find these days than it may seem. We also had strong sexual chemistry. I don't know for sure that I could get her back if I wanted, but I think it's more likely than not that I could; the questions then become (1) should I bother, (2) if I bother when and how do I do it, and (3) would I be happier with her in a relationship that's sure to be toxic but will at least give me the attachment I enjoyed, or waiting for someone else to come along (which might never happen?) I just don't know because usually the women who want me aren't women I want, and vice versa, and if I wait too long with my ex, she'll almost certainly move on from me. She said she went two years actively looking for someone through online dating between her last relationship and finding me, however for a large part of that time her son was still living with her, which limited her options.
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