How do you know when it's over?

I never said I was smart when it comes to social interactions. I like lab bacteria. Bacteria can't sass back. Or cause confusing feelings. They might just become flesh-eating every once in awhile, but I think they're just misunderstood.

 

There times when I would take the bacteria..less painful.

 

Wait, you were cheating on your SO? And by what stretch of logic is that ever a good thing?

Or maybe I misunderstood something.

 

It was a very gray area and time period that I'm not proud of. We were "together" on paper only. He knew I wasn't feeling the relationship anymore, because we had talked about it on several occasions, and was trying as much as he could to keep me. Very shortly after, we were broken up but still talking, then officially broke up.

As I said, it is something that I am not proud of in the least bit, but it happened, and I am being open in the fact that I fucked up, and am not going to ever fuck up like that again.

 

You are a good human being, GeneticShift. A bit traitorous of you to prefer flesh eating bacteria but a good one non the less.

 

Thank you, Xerxes! Even invisible internet love means a lot. I felt awful about it for a very long time (still do, even). I try my hardest to be a good person, but sometimes I slip, and this was kind of a fall down the mountain for me. Haha.

And I prefer bacteria because when they decide to be flesh eating dicks, it's not illegal to kill them all in one moment of anger.

 

Don't feel bad Gen, we all screw up. all part of being human. we are far from perfect. But that's what keep life from being boring.

 

Well, I can honestly say I've never been called boring, so at least I have that going for me!

 

which is a endearing trait.

 

I realize I can't continue with the relationship when the other party refuses to listen to me

 

Last year was a slow crumbling of an almost fifteen year relationship, cataloged painstakingly—and painfully—in blog entries right here on the ol' TFP. A few moments still stand out in my mind:

• When I first accused her, half-jokingly in front of another couple in an attempt to mask my true fears, of having feelings for the woman that would eventually take my place.
• When I realized just how much I despised this song, which, in my mind, had become theirs, once my suspicions that she and my replacement were an actual thing had not gone away despite her insistence to the contrary.
• When she told me all the work she was doing to help me get my shit together was done, out of love, to prepare—or rather, to improve—me for my next relationship.
• When she told me, repeatedly, that she'd always known I would never be the one to leave, as though her ability—and willingness—to be the one who could was some kind of trump card over me.
• And, finally, when she returned from a conference after we'd been living separately for some time and told me she'd realized, while she was gone, that my absence didn't mean anything to her and that she could never love me again as a partner.

Perhaps against my better judgment I fought, even till the bitter end, to hang on, not so much to her—or the person she had become—but to what the relationship had been (for me) and what I thought it could be for us in my trajectory of personal improvement. Realizing and accepting its end, as difficult as it was, was a critical turning point on the way to a much better life. Good goddamned riddance, I say.

The main reason I'm even bothering to respond to this thread is because that fucking song, which I still despise, popped up during a commercial for August: Osage County and now it's stuck in my goddamned head.

GET IT OUT.

 

Reading this whole thread, I come to realize how sedate my life has been, compared to what y'all have been through.

In my life, I've been involved, serially, with more than a dozen different women.

I've never had an SO with a drinking or gambling or drug problem of any kind.

I've never had an SO who was verbally or physically abusive in any way.

I've never had an SO who was dishonest with me about anything important.

I've never had an on-again-off-again style relationship.

All of my relationships with SO's have been monogamous, and as far as I know, there was never any cheating on either side.

The worst things I have done in relationships have involved my neglect of the other person.

How do I know when it's over? In almost every case, the relationship was over when the woman announced it. If it were up to me, we would have stayed together.

(I think I have initiated a break-up only twice in my entire life, and both of those were fairly brief involvements.)

I always took it for granted that I was very lucky to be with a woman who would put up with me, let alone be willing to get into bed with me.

I have been married a total of once; never divorced.

My wife and I have been together for almost 28 years.

Our relationship is not everything that I could want, but it's good enough.

We both work. We have, by any objective standard, plenty of money. We live in a small, modest house on a busy street, though we could easily afford a more expensive one. Our credit rating is excellent.

Splitting up would be a can of worms. She and I and our daughter would all be worse off if that happened.

 

I can't tell you how sad I was reading this @DamnitAll. She treated you terribly. If you care enough about someone to have a relationship with them, it's inconceivable to me that you'd treat them they way she treated you. But, the rules go out the window when the other partner is clearly a total asshole.

Look at it this way (adapting an old joke by Winston Churchill). All this time later, you have a strong relationship with a wonderful person who clearly cares deeply about you. And, all this time later....she's still an asshole.

Much love and hugs to you

 

Damn right.

 

My first serious "making out" girlfriend (we were 16) and I drifted for a few weeks, she missed a rendezvous, I figured it was over, and just got on with life. A week later her best friend sought me out at school and said "T wants to break up with you". I told her I thought we already had!

My first "all the way" girlfriend (we were 17) cheated on me, with my best friend, 3 years into our relationship, and 1 year into our engagement. I found out when we were all hanging out and I went to the kitchen and came back to find they were in a 69. She had always refused to give or receive oral.

We broke up.

Later we got back together, after I'd had a couple of fun flings and her relationship with him imploded - turned out he enjoyed the chase more than the maintenance. Both of them appologised, both said it was flirting that had got out of hand.

In the next 5 years, he slept his way through the girlfriends of all of his best friends, including one how was letting him live rent free in central London, and had given him a job!

After our reconciliation, J and I eventually married. One weekend 16 years later she suddenly got a promotion that involved several day trips to London for training, and then had a weekend away with the girls. This after 16 years of never wanting to be away from the house overnight.

Started to diet, and password protected her phone (not that I ever looked or cared, but just the fact of adding a lock was noticed).

The monday after the weekend away, I called her in my lunchbreak, she answered brightly with the wrong pet name, and tried to bluster, so I just asked "are you having an affair?".

Pro tip, for those planning to cheat... if you are asked "are you having an affair?", it is not working to your advantage to wait a loooong time, then say "who told you?".

I went home, told her I was only going to ask once, said "me or him, chose and live with the consequences, but if it's me we see a counsellor and admit what happened" and she picked him.

I kept the house, the daughter, and lost my mind for a time.

Within 4 years, she'd had three boyfriends, each acquired by cheating on the last, until the final one who offered marriage, she accepted, only to find he was also screwing his secretary.

Schadenfreude much?

 

What, and they all just magically agreed to sleep with him, one after another?

I guess I have led a very sheltered life. I just don't get how this happens with people in committed relationships.

 

The girlfriends involved didn't individually know that they weren't the first. For example when he slept with the girlfriend of M, my girlfriend didn't know. Then he slept with my girlfriend. A year or two later R had a girlfriend, and he seduced her. Another year later he lived with N and his recent girlfriend, and ended up with her.

Each time it happened, he burned one or more bridges, until finally nobody really trusted him at all, unsurprisingly.

This was twenty years ago.

 

I suppose it helped that each of these women was unaware of the others.

But all of them yielded to this guy, spoiling their relationships, just like that.

That's orders of magnitude greater than the success rate most guys have with single women.

To single him out as the untrustworthy one implies a very low view of women.

On the other hand, a situation like this might impart such a view to the boyfriends involved.