jackofmany Posted December 22, 2017 Posted December 22, 2017 Okay. I'm back, and I need to vent in a few odd directions. Trackback for the full story if you feel like it. Thankfully, and with your help, that didn't happen. Bear with me if you have read those, because some of these details are repetitive, but I am trying to hone in deeper on what is troubling me, and there are some questions I need to examine more closely. In that post, I mentioned that despite the urge to contact her, I felt like I was getting better. That was not apparently the best thing to say out loud, because I seem to have snapped back considerably. I am not seeking to have my anger validated, and in fact I am encouraging points of view that take me out of the narrative I've been selling myself, because I do believe there are two sides to any story, and without actually talking to her I am mostly guessing at hers. So first, let me explain what set me off today. It was ridiculously simple. There were a couple of different holiday parties I was invited to last night, both of which had a high probability that she would go with her new boyfriend (the guy she dumped me for). I had friends at both parties and I texted them before going. In both cases, I learned they were there ahead of me, leaving one party to go to the other. As much as I felt like a chicken for doing it, I elected to go to neither. I just didn't want to see them together. So far I haven't had to. On the other hand, they have now been together for longer than the entire duration of hers and my relationship; they have a history that pre-dates my involvement with her, and they are unlikely to split up any time soon, if at all. I am going to have to live with this. I can't avoid them forever. That's one of the things that's bothering me. The fact that this is affecting me at all is bothering me. The fact that she is in love while I am miserable is bothering me. All of that. But I'm going to try to dig a little deeper here. First, the response has come up several times when I told this story that she cheated on me and "once a cheater, always a cheater," etc. As tempting as it is to want to use that as a blunt hammer to get me over her. I have to be honest. Consider this situation and let me know if you really think "cheating" is the right word: When we were dating and she was living across the country, we were lying in bed one morning trying to figure out what to do now that we lived so far away from one another. She said to me, "I don't feel like it's fair of me, since I'm the one that moved, to expect you to just wait for me. I mean, if you meet someone else." I wasn't expecting that. More or less, what I said in response was, "I understand, and I know you moved out here to get away from (place we met). You have to feel free here too, to make whatever choices you need to. I want you to come back. But I want you to feel like you can explore everything." Something like that. There was no conversation about being exclusive. If anything, it was the opposite. Now, this is where it gets cloudy. While we had that conversation, we also starting liberally saying "I love you" and the like. There was so much passion it seemed silly to think of being with someone else, at least to me. When I left her at the airport, we seemed to be about as in love as you can be. It hurt to leave and I immediately started to think about how to see her again. I decided I would offer to fly her back. She had a friend visiting for the next two weeks, and we were not as in touch as we had been. She seemed a little more distracted when we did talk. I got sick and maybe paid a little less attention to her than I could have for like a week and a half. She was upfront about feeling like we were not connecting. "I don't know how I am going to feel next time I see you," she said. This took me by surprise too. We reconnected, but there seemed to be noise in the channel now. As I mentioned in the other threads, it was about three weeks after when her birthday rolled around. I couldn't get in touch with her on the phone, but I texted her. She said she was having a great birthday. When I talked to her on the phone the next day, she said, "There is no getting around this. X is here (x being her now current, then who knows, boyfriend)." She claimed to be upset about this. I asked her if there were something deeper going on. She said no, and then proceeded to tell me how she had spent the night bowling with this guy and her brother and then something about them coming back to the place she shared with her sister really late and her making food for her brother and this guy and her sister getting upset about it, etc . . . I listened. I wasn't crazy about the fact that someone she had history with, someone who had flown across the country to make a declaration of love, was hanging out with her on her birthday, but I decided to trust her. Remember we had no actual exclusivity agreement, but we were saying were were in love. I figured if she has something to say, she'll say it. Either the next day or the one following, as I am sitting at work, I get a text from her that just says, "S*** has hit the fan here." It doesn't sound good, so I call her. She is really, really down. Apparently, her sister kicked her out of the house they were living in as a result of the late night kitchen session. It was loud and drunken and I guess she did not clean up entirely. But the thing is this, she just told me this story. All of the details are the same. She was out late for her birthday, got a little tipsy and came back and made food for her brother, etc. But there is a detail missing. This time when she tells the story she does not mention the other guy. She tells me she is in a hotel in Berkeley and feeling down. I do everything I can to cheer her up, reassure her that I love her and that we will see each other soon (I bought her a ticket to fly back to visit like two days before her birthday, as a present). Time goes on. I see strange indicators. She changes her profile picture twice. Once to a picture of her ex, and then once to a picture of her wearing his coat and with a rose in her backpack. Another photo of them randomly in her newsfeed. But she says nothing to me and I decide she would if she had to. Her tone with me changes a bit, but she is still sending photos of herself with messages like "Hey. I love you. Just a reminder." But the tone is still different. She is a very beautiful, very sexual, woman, and the innuendo has gone fairly cold. About three weeks go by like this until it is time for her to come back for the visit. The day before I get a text saying, "Hey. I gotta chat with u." Never a good message, and to be honest, I felt like I knew what it was going to be about as soon as she said it. So it turns out she didn't spend all her time at that hotel in Berkeley alone. She is confused, etc. She lets me know they slept together and that "I don't want to feel bad if I want to see (x) while I'm there." I don't process this at all, but instead going into immediate denial and shock. How things played out from there is worth looking at, if you want the full context, because the week she spent back in town was weird to say the least, but I won't go into it here. What I want to know is, seriously, is that cheating? I'm not sure it is. Everyone keeps saying she lied to me and cheated on me, but did she? I am not cool with the fact that it took her three weeks to admit something had happened, nor with the fact that she had plenty of occasion to do so. I am not cool with it, because I think she knew it would hurt me and it might spell the end of us, but that she was not yet certain of her perspective. She did say she was confused now. I couldn't have cancelled her tickets. I chose not to, and things played out how they did. And now here I am not even able to stand hearing that the two of them were together at a party. They live together and are a couple for real, in a way that she and I never quite got to. I don't know their entire backstory. In fact I know none of it really, except that there is some. But it must be something, as she moved back to move in with him and they are out and about as a couple all the time now. That doesn't just happen over the course of three weeks. There had to be something there I was up against but was unaware of. That said, I think when she was with me, before she moved, she really was happy. I don't think she expected to get back together with the guy. She said in one text to me, "I was so confident in my love for you that I thought I could bury my past. I was wrong and I'm sorry." I think she meant that. I think she meant everything she said. She was confused by competing feelings of love, but the pull was stronger in his direction. Okay. So I lost that battle and that stinks. But did she cheat on me? I don't know. There is something about how this has wounded my pride that is making it harder to get over than should be normal. We've been apart longer than we were together at this point, and I barely have any interaction with her. And I still can't get her out of my head. Just yesterday, I was thinking I should talk to her. The harsh reminder of her current relationship kicked that thought out of my head. But it comes back. I don't listen to it, but it's there. Sometimes I miss her terribly. She had a very big personality and is shockingly, shockingly, gorgeous. I don't blame the other guy. She also sometimes didn't seem exactly right in the head, slightly manic, and sometimes she struck me as possibly selfish. I don't know what would have come of that, but I know I would have put up with a lot (and as you can see I did) because she was so incredibly beautiful. I should also say she is a LOT younger than me. Before you judge that, let me just say I did not pursue this woman. She came at me, strong. She more or less admitted she gave me no chance. She decided she wanted me and she is not shy. Nonetheless, the age difference always concerned me. I didn't think the relationship could last for that reason alone. She is a smart person. I can't imagine the same thought didn't occur to her, even if we never discussed it. But what I am saying is I didn't think I would be surprised if we reached the conclusion that she needed to live her life as a young person and make choices as a young person. This is why I didn't put too much pressure on her. I felt like she had to make the choices to come to me. If I pursued her too hard, or tried to talk her into coming back to live with me, I worried she might resent me for not letting her come to her own conclusions. I made it clear what I wanted, but I also made it clear I would accept her choices. A last note on that point: During our break up week, in one of the conversations we had, she said that the fact that I was always saying there was no pressure could make me seem indifferent. The other guy, flying across the country with his rose and his big play, was anything but. I think she liked that. Well, clearly she liked that. Clearly she liked a lot of things. But did she cheat? Everyone I know gets mad at her and says she was s***ty to me. But they are my friends and they are going to do that. I know I have to keep doing what I am doing. Stay away, etc. But this is gnawing at me. If she didn't cheat, did she do me wrong, and if so, where would you rate it on a scale of 1 - 10? And, you know, if she didn't. Well, I should probably contemplate that point of view too. Whatever went down, I don't think she particularly enjoyed hurting me. But she did. I have got to let it go. Thinking this through will hopefully help. Thanks for listening and for your patience. I write a lot in here, I know. Aside from the cheating question, I also want to reiterate this: It drives me crazy that she is happy while I am suffering. It just makes me nuts.
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