posted
yesterday, my girlfriend of 3 years (who i had thought i would be spending the rest of my life with) told me that there was someone that she had had feelings for for a long time. my girlfriend told me that while she loved me with her whole heart, that she needed to see if this other person was in fact the one for her. i guess that 3 years of comitment and love isn't enough to convince her that i am the "one" for her, despite the fact that she has told me an innumberable amount of times that she wanted to be with me for the rest of her life. she also said that we were so young to be pairing off for life (i'm 21 and she is 20), but that she was also terrified of losing me in her life. this statement came as quite a shock to me since she had been saying for years that she didn't think that age matters and that people can find the "one" early in their life.
what upsets me the most, is the fact that she has sort of been lying to me. the guy that she wants to "test out" is someone who she knew from high school. she talks to him for hours on AIM, and i have asked her several times point blank whether she had any feelings for him. she always assured me that she didn't, but the whole thing always seemed suspicious to me. obviously, finding out that this person might be the one who steals away the woman i love is quite distressing to me.
erin (that's my girlfriend), says that she still loves me as much as ever, but that she needs to reacess her relationships. apparently, if she finds this person to be unsatisfactory she will return to me. i have no idea in hell how long it is going to take her to determine this, and i don't know if i would even want her back if she did want to return. to me, being told that basically the love she had and still has for me might be inferior to someone else, even if it is not, totally breaks the comitment that we have had. i have a hard time understanding all of this since i have been totally devoted to her. i don't even dream of have fantasies about other women (not even idealized female forms in sexual fantazies), which i have learned is rather uncommon in monogamous relationships. i love erin far more than i could ever put into words, but i don't know if i could be with someone who questions the very basic building blocks of our relationship. i also don't understant why someone would risk losing a sure, deep love for something that might not even be real. to me, it's like trading in a ferarri F-50 for a car sized box that might have a yugo, but might also have a mclaren f1. maybe the mclaren is a better car in some ways, but even if you trade for it you still lose everything that you enjoyed about the ferrari. obviously if you get the yugo you are screwed. i just don't know what to do. all my plans for the next several years (i was going to start doing research about what graduate school programs have both good music school, she is a clarinet performance major, and good history departments) are shot, and i am at a total loss as to what to do. i know that i don't understand women, but i thought i understood erin.
thank you for reading, i really needed to get this off my chest, and all of my close friends are out of town on a school trip.
posted
My advice is that you break up with Erin. It may be painful, but if she lies in your face you really need to get out of that relationship. A similar thing happened to one of my friends. She would lie in his face, and tell him lies to get him in trouble, and other stuff so much until he contemplated commiting sucide. He didn't tell me until he was about to. I conviced him not to. He broke up with her and is happier than I have ever seen him. We've been best friends since preschool.
The Defiant
EDIT: That wasn't the best way to put it, but you get the point.
[ May 28, 2002, 11:50: Message edited by: The Defiant ]
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
well, it's not really that she is lying to me (that's why i put "sort of been lying"). she says that she didn't realize until this weekend that she had actual feelings for him, but obvisouly the feelings were latent and she had to have had some kind of idea. she has never lied to me about anything in 3 years, so i tend to believe her when she says that she didn't know until this weekend. that doesn't make it any easier, however.
That really sucks! 3 years and she's not sure and has decided for a change!?! Okaaaay.
I don't really know what to say to make you feel better as I can imagine that you are feeling pretty low right now . . .
(Goes away to think for a while)
-------------------- If you cant convince them, confuse them.
Registered: Apr 2001
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The Defiant
Ex-Member
posted
Oh. Well, you might want to ask her if she had feelings for anybodyb else, or something like that.
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
i did ask her if she had feelings for this guy (since she was constantly talking to him online), and she told me no. you would think that 3 years would have cemented us (we were SOOOOOO close, or at least i thought we were).
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
This is why monogamy is, to me at least, a poor idea. The idea of "singular pair bonding" creates a whole possessive ideal that becomes akin to property. It's partly biological, yes...but mostly societal. Call it a 30/70 split.
My girlfriend & I adore each other incredibly. I can think of no one more suited to me than her, & she will always be first & foremost in my heart. But she is not the only one. There are perhaps 10 other women who I love just as much, who I feel just as strongly for. Lindsey knows this, accepts this, & participates in it becasue she knows & loves some of them as well. By law, she will be my wife...but by heart, she will be the first of the nest.
The concept of "fidelity" is not as black & white as society would have us believe. Is wishing for a blowjob from the hot piece of ass in Marketing the same as actually getting it? Is flirting with that cute guy with the tight ass at the latte bar a sign of trouble ahead? No, it doesn't have to be.
Ed, your morals & ethics & takes on these issues are your way alone..& you need to reconcile them with hers. It IS possible to be in love with more than one person, I can say that from experience. The hard part is finding another person who is willing to accept that part of you...& this may be what you need to do.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
First of all I'll state that I don't understand women very well. That said, don't blame me if what I now say doesn't make sense.
OK . . . so she's going to go with another guy. So she's technically dumping you for him - right? If not, what the hell is she doing - expecting you to be the when she's had enough fun foolin' around with other guys?
Since she's leaving, that leaves you the option to go and have some fun and be with some other girl(s). Two can play this game I say, and I think that if she's going off with another guy, you should go with another girl. Nothing serious (unless you want it to be), just let Erin see you with another girl in order for her to get the message that she's not the only one who has feelings for others. Of course she might get the wrong idea and think that you've completely moved on from "her and you", so . . . yeah, be careful.
The main thing is not to let her actions get you down, step outside with a smile, have a laugh and enjoy yourself.
That help/make any sense at all? Hope so.
-------------------- If you cant convince them, confuse them.
Registered: Apr 2001
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The Defiant
Ex-Member
posted
^^ Agreed
You need to make sure the other girl knows it's an act. Don't want to have her trying to kill you because you was trying to get back Erin. That is all.
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
quote:Ed, your morals & ethics & takes on these issues are your way alone..& you need to reconcile them with hers. It IS possible to be in love with more than one person, I can say that from experience. The hard part is finding another person who is willing to accept that part of you...& this may be what you need to do.
i understand all of that, but understanding does not take away the pain. i have been in positions (before i found erin) where i had feelings for several different women at once, so i know what it is like to love more than one person. however, i find that i can't devote a satisfactory amount of myself to anyone when i am thinking about more than one person. when i met erin, however, i found everything that i needed with her. she told me that she had found everything she needed in me. i believed her when she said that she would never leave me or even think of leaving me. i thought that when she admonished me for even glancing at another woman (normally this was an accidental thing, but i am as human as anyone else, and it is hard to not look) that this meant that she would follow her own advice. obviously she has not been internally consistant, since she says she is very attracted physically to this person.
i don't try to posess her like an object (though sometimes i wish i could), and i have already told her that if she wants to go with someone else that she is free to do so and that i won't interfere. however, i think i need to tell her that if she does that she can't just assume that she can just come right back to me like nothing happened. i might have found everything that i needed in her before this happened, but i probably won't in the future. i think of myself as a pretty cosmopolitan person, but i think that a lot of naivete that i didn't recongnize in myself before has been revealed.
quote:The main thing is not to let her actions get you down, step outside with a smile, have a laugh and enjoy yourself.
i wish i could do that, but it hurts way too much. with friends of mine, there have been situations where one the people has found someone else, been infatuated with this new person, and they have been with this new person for a little while. after a while they go back to the original partner because they realize that is where they belong. i guess that is what is happening now. i don't know if i would want to be back with erin, however, if this is what happens. 3 years of total comitment is a hard thing to break, and when it breaks i don't think it can be repaired completely (with my friends, the relationship that was broken then fixed had never been more than a year old). i guess i just need to wait and see. i think it would be hard to be in anything but a casual relationship for a while, if erin does leave me. i just can't see myself with anyone long term, at least not in the near future.
posted
I don't think it's uncommon for people to start to question their long-term relationships, nor does questioning them mean they're going to abandon them.
I would, of course, caution you against taking any advice recieved from here too seriously. Not to play into stereotypes or anything, but I suspect our average dating success rate is...unenviable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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EdipisReks
Ex-Member
posted
quote:I would, of course, caution you against taking any advice recieved from here too seriously. Not to play into stereotypes or anything, but I suspect our average dating success rate is...unenviable.
i definitely hear you. right now, what i mostly need is an outlet. like i said, all of my close friends are out of town right now.
posted
Well, let me say that I understand there are no black and white answers here. Obviously any relationship that has lasted 3 years is going to be more complex than just saying "You should do this," or "You should do that".
I think you have to be realistic, though. She seems to essentially be saying, "I'm going to leave what we've had for three years and go see about this thing over here. Now...if it doesn't turn out to be better than what I have now, I may come back and settle for this. So wait here for me...I may be back in a little while."
Like I said, it's not black and white and you're the only one who knows what she really means by what she's saying. But the idea that she expects you to wait for her to see if she's going to dump you permanently (which could take lord knows how long) is both cruel and moronic. She doesn't get to have it both ways, man. It would seem that waiting around to see what she's going to decide will only prolong the pain you're feeling right now.
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