the ongoing saga of salmagundi :(

[salmagundi]

hi everybody

 

Its been a long time since I've posted or even last visit the shack. I wonder if anyone is still here that followed my shady story from last winter. If you're curious just search my old threads under 'salmagundi'

 

Heres the resumé: Guy (32) meets seeming woman of his dreams. Girl falls in love with guy and vice versa. (oh yeah, girl dumps former boyfriend to be with guy, but not at my instigation, claims former boyfriend was abusive).

 

First six months are bliss, guy cannot believe he has landed someone so beautiful, so charming, so intense, so intelligent. Guy has it bad, but not to worry, girl seems to have it bad too.

 

There are warning signs though. I month into relationship guy leaves Quebec (where we live) to go treeplanting in BC. Seems like a good idea to let dust settle from her last relationship before we get to serious. Girl emails daily, twice daily even though guy lives in bush camp and gets into town to check email only once a week. Once girl panics because guy misses day off, cant check email and is (seriously) presumed dead. Girl therefore seems a bit obsessive. Girl comes out to visit guy in BC. Meets friends, family etc. Everything is great but guy doesnt want to rush into sex right away, wants to go slow. Girl wants nothing to do with going slow, pressures guy. Guy caves but secretly knows that the only reason to rush the sex is if sex is the only reason.

 

She leaves unhappy. Says my friends are cold to her (uhh, they dont speak french and she barely speaks english). Says she doesnt know about us anymore. A week later emails me that she loves me and wants to make it work and cant wait til I get home, apologizes for being a bitch etc. Ok great, i say

 

Four more months of relative bliss, great sex, plans, intimacy etc. Then, a shift in her. She cricizes me more and more for stupid things, starts being increasingly moody. Admits one day that she has "allowed herself to be seduced by someone else" (?) Dumps me.

 

This is long, sorry. Basically, She sees other guy but keeps me dancing on the end of her string, I dont have the balls at this point to stop it. If she finds out I'm gravitating towards another woman she either chases them off or sleeps with me, whatever it takes to keep me single.

 

BUT THEN, finally after a few months of this we fall into a FWB relationship that leads soon after to her confessing that she has been really messed up but that she has never felt about any guy in her life the way she feels about me and she wants to try again.

 

Its love. Its wonderful, for maybe...6 months. She wants me to move in with her. She loves me, I am exactly the guy she needs. All of my qualities complement hers. She wants kids, she wants to make plans.

 

AND THEN, repeat above. In july she decides that moving in together would be rushing things. And then I stop being perfect. The petty criticism starts up again. Things like, she doesnt like that I eat at work, I dont bring my own lunch (I work in a veggie healthfood café, fer crissakes,), I'm too easygoing (which she said she loved about me a few months before, that i was tolerant and patient, which I am). My thinking is too abstract. (?!) She doesnt like my shoes (seriously). Etc, Etc...

 

Finally in the middle of making out at her place she tells me that she wants to break up. Its a repeat of the first time we broke up. Its my fault. We have no connection. We have no 'complicité' (emotional intimacy). I'm too distant, too remote. The way she presents it, she has no choice but break up with me because I'm too flawed. (I never said I was perfect...but WTF?) Then she wants me to stay the night anyway and cries when I say no...we're broken up now, I gotta go, seeya!)

 

NC for one week then I ask if we maybe should exchange our stuff (something she refused to do the first breakup). I go over to her place, we have sex, exchange some of her stuff but she asks if we have to exchange all of it "that would be too violent" (?) she says. But she insists we are done.

 

She sees me at a weekly film night at the university with another girl that I've shared a mutually ambiguous attraction with, leaves the movie halfway through, calls me later crying accusing me of moving on in the space of a week.

 

The next monday shes at the film again, at the end of which she comes up to me and the other girl (who she knows as well) and is all friendly. She leaves with us and asks in front of her if I want to walk with her to talk. The girl I'm with backs off and is like "yeah, you guys go ahead...etc etc." WTF I think but anyway, I walk with my ex towards her place and she tells me she misses me, she thinks about me all the time, that she's all alone and that shes ****ed her whole life up. And then, while walking next to me starts staring at me with this crazy smile and these burning f&ck me eyes until my biology caves and I start frenching her. This goes on for awhile then she disengages, says she has to go and not to come over because she has to be up early and needs her sleep...

 

I dont see her for a week until one days she comes over to the café, to visit me I think but she only says hi to me. She's really there to talk to a guy I work with. I week later I find out there going out....At this point it hasnt even been a month since the breakup...

 

SO now I'm all ****ed up wondering who the hell my ex is, what her problem is, why I invested all this time (almost two years) in her, what the hell she has been doing since we met, if any of this has ever been real and what the hell my problem is that I've taken so much **** from a woman that I loved completely, and, I sometimes think, never really loved me at all.

 

I dont know what I'm looking for here. Just your comments and anything you can tell me to help me understand all this. Its been a wild ride and now I just want to get better but I...just don't understand...

 

thanks everyone

 

salmagundi

[princessa]

She looks unstable. Sometimes women have insecurities, fears, questions about the relationship, which trigger break ups and make ups. Maybe she does love you, but in the end her way of dealing with whatever her problem might be seems really immature. Especially if she's screwing around with other guys.

 

Is this her first relationship???

[salmagundi]

Her first relationship! LOL!

 

No, she's 29 and has never NOT been in a relationship. Ever. Her best friend since childhood told me she has never seen her single for more than a few weeks. Another red flag maybe.

 

As to her being unstable...well...yeah I guess you could say that. I remember this same friend of hers, who is also my friend wished me well when we first started going out but warned me about her "côté obscure" (her "dark side") Huh? I still dont know what she meant by that, I wish I'd paid more attention.

 

salmagundi

[princessa]

Hahaha.. Well then maybe it's her "cote obscur" that pushes her to playing you like that. If she had been jumping from one relationship to the other, it could be that she can't deal with the fact that she's so attached to ONE guy now, and tries to make up excuses to leave.. I'm starting to speculate now.. In reality there could be TONS of reasons why she's acting like that. But it's unacceptable for anybody to put up with it (a moins d'etre masochiste). Have you ever been able to sit down and have a mature talk with her about what's really bothering her? And what is it that do you want in the end? How can you put up with the disrespect of her being with another dude in front of your face?

[princessa]

And I mean at 29 if you're not done playing games like that and if you haven't grown tired of playing with your "dark side", if you're not looking for something stable and real, if you don't care enough to take care of it.. I don't know how much potential there is in there....

[salmagundi]

Thanks for your replies princessa

 

In any case, we're done. the end of my post is about 5 weeks ago, I havent seen her since and certainly havent tried to contact her. So I'm not really concerned about our "potential" there is none.

 

We have talked over the course of our relationship about what bothers her. The last time was actually the last serious talk we had, just before she hooked up with my coworker. I visited her place briefly to drop off a couple of books she claimed she needed for school and we got into a talk about how, basically, her life sucks, she feels empty inside, she doenst know who she is, she feels she has wasted her the last seven years of her life in school and then she just melted down completely and cried and cried.

 

I'm not trying to fix things between us. THere is no us. I'm just trying to fix myself right now. I'm just trying to understand her and how I got so totally hung up on her in spite of everything.

 

p.s. parles-tu français?

 

salmagundi

[princessa]

The reason you're so hung up on her is probabaly because you both understood eachother at a deeper level, and had a connection and you were attached to her emotionally. It's normal to always try to fix a relationship once you feel that the other peron's feelings are "real", and that you see some potential in the relationship. So you keep trying and trying, and forgiving.. but if the other person keep f*cking up then I guess you reach a point where you just can't see it working anymore. It's all a matter of how much effort you're both willing to put into the thing to discuss it, how much of a priority it is for both of you. She's obviously not doing her part, since she's probably busy trying to figure out who she is in the first place. Of course if you're confused about WHO you are, how do you expect to be able to deal with who you are with respect to a relationship, and what you want out of that relationship. If she doens't know who she is then she doesn't know what she wants. Hence the random running off to other guys. And if you really cared for her you can't blame yourself for trying to make it work, even if it took 2 years or more.. Sometimes it takes time to realize that some people have problems that only they can fix, no matter how much you try to help them. ... et oui je parle francais aussi

[salamgundi]

so, like I said I haven't seen or heard from my ex in about 4-5 weeks and have certainly not contacted her. But this morning she showed up at work wanting to see me. She says she misses me and wants to get together to talk next week. I didn't know how to respond so I was just like "well, alright, you've got my phone number." But I don't know what she wants and whether i should talk to her again. But I have to admit a part of me very much does. But I dont know if I trust that part of me...

 

what do you think?

[Kamille]

ah le Québec me manque...

 

Salmagundi - don't you dream of a fresh new uncomplicated romance? One that just makes you giddy?

 

one that frees you...

[D-Lish]

Sal...

 

Why put yourself through it yet again?

You'd be nuts to let her coax you back into her complicated life.

 

Everyone does the push-pull thing in a relationship- but someone that does it to the extent that she does is throwing out such obvious red flags...

 

She sounds seriously unstable.

Run for the hills...

 

D

[riobikini]

Sal (Smile) I remember you well.

 

Same bottom-line advice now as then -except it's much louder now: get on with your life!

 

-Rio

[salmagundi]

Hey Rio, its great to see you're still here. It feels like so long ago when I first started posting here. All I remember now is how messed up I was.

 

Yeah, I should run for the hills i know. I know that her visiting me and putting out to me that she wants to hang out as...well...has got me thinking about her again. As if I ever really stopped, that is....

 

Its clear to everyone who isnt me, everone looking from the outside why I should just not see her and keep on keeping on. And its clear to me, to be honest. ANd yet, I do want to see her. Because I do really care about her.

 

I've come to think that secretly I just want to get tangled up in tumultuous relationships with drama queens. I'm being serious actually. Can I actually be happy with a normal stable woman? God, I hope so.

 

But I dunno

 

merci anyway

 

salmagundi

[princessa]

You gotta keep in mind the difference between a relationship where both people care for eachother, and a relationship that is compatible with your life's goals and has long-term potential. It's normal that you care a lot about this girl, and she probably cares for you too, otherwise you wouldn't be drawn to eachother after all this time.

 

But look at the relationship from the perspective of where it fits in your life and your priorities, maybe that will make you realize that moving on is really the best option for you. Ask yourself how would the relationship make your life better if you were to go back with her. Would it help you to fulfill your life's dreams or hold you back from them? Would it make you more productive as a person or would it disrupt your other life's priorities? We all come across people who we end up caring about deeply, but if they end up bringing nothing but heartache and problems to our lives (doesn't have to be volunarliy!!), then we owe it to ourselves to cut them off and focus on what's good for us.

[MagnoliaJane]

Salmagundi,

 

I believe when we get stuck in a relationship it's because: a) there is a secret pleasure; b) there's some sort of a projection or a mirroring of our own feelings of insecurity/instability/desire to be saved????

 

Perhaps your fixation with her can be redirected a bit by focusing more on yourself instead of on her? For instance, why are you stepping into her scenario every time? How do you feel about yourself and your life in general (without her)?

 

Magnolia

[riobikini]

re:

 

Sal: " Hey Rio, its great to see you're still here. It feels like so long ago when I first started posting here. All I remember now is how messed up I was."

 

And then some (Smile).

 

Sal, I rembember trying to convey to you once, months ago, in so many words, that Virginnie was kind of like this wafting bit of translucent air....one that enticed you and enveloped you.

 

It appears that she still has that same intoxicating seductive power over you, as always.

 

(Smile)

 

And here's all that rephrased:

 

The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you really want to live the rest of your life drunkenly pursuing a puff of air.

 

('nother Smile)

 

Take care.

 

-Rio

[salmagundi]

Thanks everybody

 

Rio, yeah I know what you're saying. And I have no problem moving on and not seeing her when I dont see her. Its paradoxical. If I dont see her I have no desire to see her. In fact I'm just too pissed off and tired of it all. But when I see her I cant help myself...I melt. All my resolve disappears along with all my anger and suddenly I do want to talk to her etc. Its stupid, I know.

 

MagnoliaJane - hmm, thats a tough question. I'm gonna think on that and post later...

 

salmagundi