Can a relationship survive something this fucked up?
 

I made a thread about this girl this summer and got some helpful feed back this is an update. Things did not go well for me. I'll summarize our rather long history with bullets so I dont bore you with long paragraphs.


- We met in 9th grade. We fell in love a few years later. It was a classic friendship to love change. We finished out senior year of highschool as an amazingly close relationship.
-We went to opposite regions of the country for freshman year
- She transferred to my school sophmore year, partly because of me
-Sophmore year we start to fall apart towards march. Too much routine, no passion.
-April she cheats on me with a kid she knows from home.
-She doesnt tell me about it
-June she cheats on me with the same kid again, then she calls for a "break" two days later so she can have room. I still dont know of the cheating
-June she takes advantage of the break to have sex with the cheater (guilt free?)
-July I make a thread of tfp and get some good advice. I did not know of the real problem then.
-September we get back together, and are good for a bit, but go back into our sophmore year rut pretty quickly. Again stress and the routine of school grinds us down.
-October, GF cheating time again (last time) same kid
-Novemeber, we break up before exams because I call her out on her increasing distance (she wanted to wait until the end of the semester to dump me). She has the gall to really emote when breaking up with me, and promise a reunion down the road.
-The week after the break up, we are hooking up (more so than when we dated) and enjoying each other as "singles". things are good.
-Two days ago, an anonymous "friend" IMs me online and tells me that my GF has cheated on me several times
-I get her to admit to some of it
-Today, I pertend I know more and the rest comes out

soooooooo....

Pretty clear cut right? I'm dated a dishonest slutty bitch who fucked me over? Too bad I still feel like comforting her when she goes to pieces over this. Too bad I still see myself with her in ten years. What my bullet points or any amount of writing can’t emphasize is that we are best friends. Even when our relationship sags, we are close as hell. Her (feeble) defense was that she couldnt break up with me because she knew life would be pretty damned bleak without me. She wanted her fun youthful college experience and to have me at the same time.

Keep in mind this girl is brilliant. I don't doubt in a few years shell be one of the country's leading scientists. How could she be so fucking childish/ retarded/ morally bankrupt? Her consolation prizes? she never had sex with him while we were dating. Oh, and she was never out of love, just felt trapped, and couldn’t bring her self to lose my comfort. And cant forget that she gave me almost 3 good years and only ½ of a cheating one. Also she wasnt attached to the kid she cheated with and rejected him recently, and plans on never seeing him again (my last request).

clearly we’re not talking at the moment. I was betrayed by the girl I loved, and lost my friend in the fall out. Problem is "I believe in a thing called love". It's my only non rational, non atheist belief. It’s the stupid notion that I found the perfect girl out of 3 billion. Well that feeling keeps me going. I can be furious with her, but in no way, have I kicked my belief. I am well aware I can move on to some extent with flings and crushes... But in my 20 year old brain, love is real.


Any advice?

ouch, ouch, ouch.

on behalf of the the national "i didn't deserve <i>that</i>" club, i welcome you as our newest inductee.

my only advice is to take your time. you deserve no less than time to process what happened, and make your choices based on that reflection. she doesn't have a right to pressure that, or try to guilt you in to premature resolution. she got herself into this mess, and her justifications are lame as hell. she cheated on you, no ifs ands or buts.

when i got cheated on, my reaction was to take her back. but i made myself wait, and in the meantime, she got impatient and left me.

and beleive me...that was all for the best with the benifit of hindsight.

You were having problems before the cheating.
Hard to say what caused what, but the above was the line immediately before you said she cheated on you the first time. I think there's more here than cheating. Cheating isn't the disease, its just a symptom. But its fatal. Unless there is some revelation between you two as to what lead to the cheating, I think its time to move on. It will hurt, but repeating this over and over will be worse.

Good luck.

I believe in a thing called love too, and if she loved you, she wouldn't cheat on you.

Find someone better and let some other sucker deal with the potential years of drama this girl will bring you.

Don't get burned by the 'first real love' syndrome, I had it, and luckly I escaped.

We've all fallen into the 'first love' syndrome.

It took me 3 years to get over mine. But I did it. You'll do it too, you just need to take her off the pedistil.

Men tend to do that with women when the woman isn't around. You will begin to remember all the good stuff (and good sex). However remind yourself what she put you through. Not once, not twice... but too damn many times. A person who loves you would never do that to you. If she has a problem, it's no longer yours. If she says she'll get back together with you in the future, dont forget you have a say in that (do you HONESTLY think she'd get back together with you after all you described?).

Exactly...

You can do a lot better than her - with someone who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated...

I'm starting to make a habit of agreeing with Ustwo, and that scares me ;)

But he's right on. This girl is too immature to be in a real relationship. She's trouble and you'll just mire yourself in deeper if you keep going back to her.

Moth.
Flame.

Bad mixture.

Maybe you should impose a "just friends" barrier until she get her priorities sorted out. There's no such thing as a consolation prize and your "1/2 a bad year" argument sounds like self-consolation - you need to set limits and rules, and make her understand that things like this have nasty consequences. You don't deserve to be treated like that.

As a former member of the world-wide "I didn't deserve that" club, I sympathise.

been in this one A confession much later after the event in my humble she was not honest and being in love is also about being totally honest with each other. Short term hurt often, but being the devils advocate may be when thing were too much routine you both should of talked.

Sorry do not wish to 'down you' cheating always hurts, I have taken back and had it thrown in my face.

"Its through time for pastures new" but LOVE is great but can be crazy

Holy ghosts of my distant youth....reiii,

On top of the previous posters, I'm going to add that a relationship can survive this, but it won't be the same relationship. As was pointed out above, cheating in relationship is symptomatic of some deeper problem, individually and in the way you relate to one another. If you get back together, as you have already noted, it's almost certain you'll be back in the same place rather shortly. I don't think it means you have to hate her, nor do I think it means that the part of you that feels close to her isn't valid...but it will never be the same. In short, going on what you've posted, it sounds like you may have been her best friend...she wasn't yours.

Having experienced something very similar myself, from a girl I loved and hoped to marry, my advice echoes that of the other posters:

-If she really loved you, she wouldn't have cheated on you multiple times and wouldn't have played you like she did. My GF came out to visit, planning on breaking up with me (after she cheated on me) but couldn't do it after she saw me again. Thanks.
- You can get over the love for her. It takes time, certainly. My ex-GF led me on multiple times and for over a year I hoped to get back with her -- I loved her and was so devoted. Finally, at one point, I set my foot down myself. It took me a long time to get back on my feet in the dating scene -- for a while my interest just wasn't piqued. In some sense I regret missing out on the opportunities therein because I was so wrapped up in her and the heartache and exhaustion from everything. However, I am now with a great girlfriend which is shapping up to be an even better and more fulfilling relationship.

Three + years with someone would presumably always bring you very close. With that in mind, just imagine finding someone who a) treats you better, b) who you can trust completely and c) is more mature in a relationship and then how close you would be given the same amount of time. That's what you should be looking for, and while I don't specifically know the exact situation betwee you and your (ex) GF, I think it's time to move on -- for your sake.

If you're looking for a direct answer, and my first thoughts: No. Your relationship cannot survive this. Break up with her and be done with it.

She's not perfect if she cheats on you. She's not perfect if she makes you feel like shit. She may be a good person, she may be brilliant and lovely and otherwise wonderful. You may be infatuated, hell, even love, but she is not perfect.

We can't tell you what to think or do. If you want to work very very hard on this, there's a chance it could be okay in the end. As long as the both of you establish that you need to build trust again, and that she can't pull any of this again, then maybe, over time, it could happen.

On the other hand, you could give it time and all that, and then things turn to shit and you're worse of than you are now.

*shrugs* Sorry if you were looking for comfort. I don't know what to tell you.

Yup. Affirmative. That's a roger.

We make up all sorts of idealized stuff about the first person we fall in love with. I know I did. On some level I still love her and always will, even though we haven't spoken in probably 15 or 16 years. But every time I think of her, I thank God or Whoever that we didn't end up together.

"The perfect girl out of 3 billion..." Geez, listen to you. How many of those 3 billion have you even met? C'mon. If this is perfection, you can just go jump off a bridge right now.

I'm not saying you can't stay close friends with her. But, if it were me, I'd be high-tailing it away from the drama.

World Population (roughly): 6.5 billion people

It's actually 6,446,131,400 according to Census..

Let's assume we dismiss every male and every female not between 15-64 years of age (that's disgusting on either end, man..)

That leaves you with 2,066,864,970 able-bodied females in your age range. That's 2 BILLION people. How many people have you met in your life? Probably less than 1000. Multiply that by 2 million times and you approach the number of possible females you could "love." Subtract one for your mother and one for your grandmother, and you're still comfortably in the 2 billion range. Even if you decided that 1/4 of them don't match your political and religious beliefs (atheists aren't exactly the biggest group) you've still got a sold 1.5 BILLION out there.

Why all the numbers? There isn't just one girl out there for you -- statistically, there are MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of other people out there with similar interests "who believe in love."

Trust me when I tell you that this one is NOT worth the trouble. If she treats you like this, think about how much better the other 1,550,148,728 girls could treat you.

dude...this is your problem. You need to come to terms with not having her in your life, cause she really doesn't sound like a good friend or lover. She really dicked you around but still expects you to love her.....and uses your love for her as an excuse!?!?! Come on man...get some backbone.

I've always thought that taking back a cheater just shows them there aren't serious concequences for their actions. I don't think that broken trust is something that can ever be repaired. Walk away.

I call this, the cumfy old couch dilemma.

You got an old beaten down couch. It's ugly, torn and stained but its YOUR spot and it's still comfortable. Now you could get a new couch but that would require getting rid of the one, killing lots of time shopping, speding lots of money and then you don't even know if the new one will be as comfortable. So you deside to stick it out with the old one a little longer.

Well sooner or later it falls apart. Two, five or ten years down the line you will have to do all those things anyways!

But with relationships it's worse. You are afraid to leave your comfort zone. To get back to dating, probably don't even know how to do it. Imagine you keep this thing together for five more years. You are 24-25. How hard do think it will be then hmm? What if you make it till 30? That's a disaster right there. It's personals and seedy bars for you man.

Oh you think you can make this work? She has no respect for you. If someone doesn't respect you it's over.

My good friend is a girl I love, we dated for a several years but it didn't work out. I still love her, I am still attracted to her, she is like a sister to me now. But I know it will never work. We are not compatible, we can't be a couple and we make much better friends. It took us many, many lessons to figure this out and it wasted allot of our time.

I have a friend who was in the exact same situation too. He went though the same crap accept for him it ended in complete heartbreak at the age of 22, I havent seen him in three years but last I heard he is still totally fucked up.

Please, take it from me, she WON'T change. There is nothing you can do to make her change. Move on. We'll be here to help you though that.

Ok, a little biased but still :thumbsup:

Cheers.

I thank you all for the outpouring of sympathy and advice. Last night when I weasled out of her the last of the dirty details, I told her I thought everything was going to be alright in time. I can't tell her off to her face, my instincts to make her feel better are pretty overwhelming. True to my socially stunted ways, I wrote her a note in a small lecture today, that basically told her to go fuck herself. Her struggling to keep composure, and making our lecturer double take was pretty satisfying to witness. The last time i saw her this miserable was when I left for college :/

some other fun details that make this whole thing all the more messy:

-our relationship started with us both cheating on our last ex's. those relationships were pretty non serious for both of us. To htis day, neither of us told our last ex's about the cheating.
- i made out with a girl senior year while trashed, I told her the next day. She forgave me. I never told her every little detail. I did tell her everything last night when she finally came out with her story. Mostly because I wanted her to juxtapose how my deepest darkest secret was from 2.5 years ago, and was NOTHING compared to hers. She had the gall to be really upset, "you kissed her bacck!?!?!?" uhhhh, you did everything but sex, a month ago while we were dating and didnt tell me.
- in april before the first cheating episode, she had some ground shaking family isssues (not my place to give details), she has been dealing with them throughout her entire infidelity.

thats all for now, I'll keep you posted on how I'm doing. I'm trying to keep active ,angry and focus my energy on finishing out my academic semester. In a week I'll be at home surrounded by my best friends, and wallowing in free time. Hopefully things will start to come together a bit there.

move onwards and upwards.

She is so far from perfection, I don't know where to start. She isn't sorry she cheated, she is sorry she got caught. Stop making excuses for her - she is no friend. Thank God this happened before a mortgage and 2.5 kids.

I feel for you. I would avoid contact with her for 2 months and get your head straight. In the mean time, some cute girl has been waiting for you to finally break up with that girlfriend of yours......

Thats cuz you gut is telling you it's the wrong thing to do.

Some one who disrespected you as she did doesn't deserve another moment of you time.

And if you wan't to be vengeful, being cool and brushing her off like a fluff from your shoulder has greater psychological impact then pejorative remarks.

Not that I condone or practice #2 :lol:

Does practice #2 work on former crushes too? :D


I'm sorry to hear about your girlfriend doing that. That's pretty f'ed up... hope it turns out well for you.

Wow.

You can't be honest and direct with her in person, so you stage a public humiliation and find it "satisfying." It would appear that you don't have the maturity to be in a relationship, either.

Honesty. Try it some time.

Cut your losses, my friend... dump the ho and be thankful that you found out she's the wrong person for you now instead of 10 years down the road after having been married for some time, having 3 kids and a 30-year mortgage on a house.

Start meeting other women, get other phone numbers, and erase that one woman from your life---she's not worth it. If you were to ever forgive her and take her back she'll cheat on you again.

her getting a bit choked up in class is a far cry from the public humiliation she subjected me to over the course of 8 months. I will consider your point about walking the high road however.

btw, from my prospective I'm being honest with her in both cases. When I tell her I lover her and think were gonna make it past this eventually, I believe it. When I tell her to fuck off because shes hurt me in an unforgivable fashion, I believe that too. She fractured me.

Speaking from experience, drop the bitch. And i don't mean bitch as in "female" (never that), but rather as in "BITCH." Cheaters suck...literally...everyone. The love of my life cheated on me (I didn't know at the time), and after we broke up (her best friend ended up spilling the beans to me), she cheated on a total of three different boyfriends with ME. No woman has a golden pussy, man. Go get yourself some lovin' from someone who will actually love you. Women like that should be reserved for booty calls and booty calls only.

Run for the hills & cut all ties with this girl. She doesn't deserve to have you as a boyfriend or a friend. If you're in college, open your eyes & see all the great things you could be pursuing instead of wasting your time with her.

Your story is almost 100% what happened to me during college, with a girl I planned to marry. We dated for over three years, and a friend filled me in on her wandering ways one weekend when we were home on break. That was 14 years ago. I still see her around town & the most she gets out of me is a nod if our eyes happen to cross. if you ever got back together, you wouldn't be able to live with yourself. You'd find yourself obsessing about her cheating, and every time she's late coming home or whatever, there will be one thing on your mind...who is she with?

Cut the losses & find something better...I sure did!

Its over just accept it. First of all when you started growing apart she should of said what she was feeling and broke it off before cheating on you. If she would of broke it off first and said she needed space or whatever then did it with the other guy it would of been diffrent but she couldnt do that and had to go behind your back with it. shes not worth your time no matter how smart she is. she dosnt respect you enough to not cheat on you and it got bad enough that someone felt bad for you and told you about it. its like its some sort of a joke behind your back. Forget about her find someone that can respect you enough not to cheat on you.

Yeah boss anything more then friends with this girl is a sure way to get kicked in the nuts again. I also agree with Pigglet that your relationship with her will NEVER be the same. You will always remember this and hold it against her. Sorry bro looks like it's game over time. On a good note there are plenty of opportunities out there to find the right girl. Good luck.

sounds similar to my ex (a MD with issues). You will never trust her again and this totally nixes any chances of a healthy relationship. Its not worth the angst.

Hmmm, I'm assuming that this pair is in college, so the maturity level may very well NOT be where one would hope. That is, I assume, part of the problem on the girlfriend's part.

However, attacking this guy because he decided, after taking humiliation after humilation from his girlfriend, to stage a little "payback", might be uncalled for. I mean, he himself pointed out that he is socially stunted, and that he has real issues with overcoming his need to protect her so he can share his feelings with her in a more adult fashion. It WAS, however, the wrong approach to take - defintely!

After getting that off my chest, I have to say that my recommendation would be to cut and run. At the very least, you could go back to your previous arrangement, where you saw eachother socially and hooked up when the opportunity arose. That would, for me, be too difficult to handle. I prefer cleaner breaks.

stay out of relationships. when it gets a little dry you can always use her like she did to you

I thought the situation sounded familiar, and then you mentioned that you'd made a thread on it, and I remembered that I chimed in on it... sometimes I hate being right... http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...5&postcount=41

Hey man, I believe in love as well. Very much so. But, no matter how much love you have, there are others out there that will evoke the same love from you, and you from them. I know you don't think so now, and don't want to admit it/think it, but there are other women with whom you can have a great, lasting reltionship.

Cheating is bad enough. Then confronted, she still didn't give it all up, you had to dig more. Completely unforgivable, in my book. Move on to someone who won't take you for granted like that, and keep you on the back burner so she can have her "fun youthful college experience" while having something to fall back on. Shitty man, i'm sorry, but there's nothing here to save.

...ow, that's harsh.

Lots of people pull things like this, regardless of maturity level. Love (and the loss thereof) is powerful, and can reduce people to their most basic selves when a problem arises. For many, it's the preservation of sanity through vindication. Call it immature if you want, but we're like any other animal... back us into a corner, or hurt us badly enough, and bad shit happens.

I agree. It's not an excuse for humans behaving badly, but I do think it *explains* a lot of why we're such assholes to each other in the wake of extremely painful situations. I've been known to do shitty things when I'm in a lot of pain over a relationship, though I don't condone this behavior and work hard to change those patterns.

It is interesting, though, to observe how fine the line is on TFP about being harsh or not...

Hey guys, I’ve been following this thread rabidly the past few weeks, but I thought I’d wait for a while before I posted an update, so Id actually have something to tell you. Right after my last post (where I informed you of my little revenge) I went into exams. Heres the catch with exams: I’m in two of this girl’s classes, and we know absolutely nobody else in either. Both are advanced bio classes and require some level of cooperation to understand the material. Our study sessions allowed some warmness to creep back into our exchanges, and we allowed that warmness to progress to all day post exam fuck fests. Yeah. Let me explain my reaction and I’ll try to use as little metaphysical- psycho babble bull shit as possible… but it may be hard.



-First, this girl is in love with me again. She loved me through out our relationship but I haven’t seen her actually head over heals since freshman year. I have felt pretty much the same the whole time, so It was amazingly empowering not to be the needy one anymore, to have some power, to see her as star struck as me.

-Second, it was great sex. This shouldn’t be a surprise, our entire relationship has changed, its like screwing a whole new person (yet not).

-Third, she managed to tell me what the hell was really going on in her family situation. It wasn’t just the normal run of the mill messed up family stuff she mentioned before. I wont go into details, but its bat-shit-crazy Jerry Springer stuff.

So I’m left in a complicated situation. I’m not naïve enough to think that her family trauma justifies her actions. But it does require me to re-think my reaction. She is an emotionally guarded person, she doesn’t like to talk to people about her problems, and this particular event was so extreme It would be embarrassing to tell someone anyway. I have no goddamn idea how I would have reacted to the same news; probably by seeking out mental health care. I can understand how she felt she needed me as a crutch, despite her growing want of a break. I was the closest thing she had to a family, and she wasn’t going to give me up even though she was feeling increasingly like she wanted to enjoy college life and see other people. I really believe this situation led her (at least partly) to cheat. Her actions were not motivated by personal malice or weakness of moral character.

That being said, I’m still fucking angry. I’m still distrustful, I still know that she could have acted differently, and that no matter what, this is still partly on her. I told her after those post exam days, that I need space, and that I still don’t plan on speaking with her for a while. That being said, I told her that I’m a human being, who cares for her, and will be there for her if she needs to talk about her family. The situation is still developing.

Probably the greatest gift of this past 2 weeks has been the slow realization that I have NO idea what is going to happen next. I can’t predict it, and I don’t have to. I’ve relaxed all expectations, and am willing to let tomorrow come as it will. I really cant wait to meet a cute girl in the next weeks of vacation, I feel weirdly ready.

Keep fucking. Once this new well of lust runs dry you'll realize that you are back in a hole. Then grapling hook your way out and run for the hills (aka other boobies).

I agree with Mantus. You're both getting laid, and neither of you is getting fucked up over it (seemingly) so keep doin what you're doin, long as it's makin you happy.

This has only been touched upon, so I'll bring it up myself--things sucked in your relationship BEFORE you found out she was cheating on you. You may have loved each other, but you were sick of each other and the sex was boring. It's this bad and you're in college--even if she had never cheated on you, can you imagine how miserable you'd be by 30?

I'm with Mantus. Keep having the relationship-free sex and stay angry at her. Then when you're stuck in the rut again, there's no relationship to keep you from just walking away.

No one should be in a "serious relationship" until they are at least 25. Fer christsakes, you are 20 and in college, you should be getting more ass then a toilet seat. DTB permantently (dump that bitch), live life on YOUR terms, and be happy with you! :thumbsup: