mm, I hate to nitpick, but in the interest of presenting her character fairly since she’s not here to do so, that’s not really what she said. her position, to the best of my knowledge, was that she wouldn’t share you with that particular woman because that woman wanted you as her one-and-only, and would eventually want you to choose, and would be working toward the goal of taking you away from Carolyn entirely. I don’t see how she could have said she could never share you, as she was already doing so with me at the time she requested that you leave your other lover. she simply wouldn’t share you with someone who had the same designs on you that she had; namely, to be your girlfriend and future wife.
Thank you for trying to give both sides.
I remember a long and drawn out story in which Caro walked me through, asking how I’d feel if “[she] was with one of her male friends, legs spread, moaning,” etc… Her essential point at the time was not that Christa would want me all to herself, as far as I remember (and I may be incorrect) that evolved later.
Her point was only that she didn’t want to think of me being alone with another woman.
And I will note, she also had a bit of trouble at first getting used to the idea of me living in your apartment, or me making love to you instead of just fucking.
I will also note that at that time I was busy trying to convince them both to be with me and each other, and Caro’s objection wasn’t that Christa would want me alone, but that she didn’t want to share me in-that-way.
Because, if you remember, it was ‘just sex’ when the three of us started out.
If was sex + emotion + the possibility of christa and I being together that threw her.
Perhaps I oversimplified… but isn’t that essentially what I said?
She didn’t want to share my affections, at least not to that degree.
She wanted me to be her boyfriend, to plan on having a future with her. I don’t mean to present her as some ogre-bitch, and I hope I haven’t. I think she’s one of the most wonderful women, most wonderful people, I’ve ever known.
But the majority of the people in this thread have pointed out that to a certain degree being poly means that you have to let your partner explore their love … Carolyn didn’t do that.
She was just as ‘possesive’ as I was.
No fault, no blame, but this certainly wasn’t all my doing.
She was the one who asked me to be monoogamous with her, not the other way around.
Lilairen and Basandre: Thank you very much for giving your perspectives, I am sorry I did not respond sooner.
Oh and KellyM it’s not that I’m not appreciative of your response, it’s just that I think you’re by far the exception and not the rule. I wish I could be as, well… as seemingly blase as you are.
But it has and most likely will always require work for me to deal with my demons.
I’m glad that you’re so strong in all of this, but I really do require advice geared more towards mere mortals like I.
final word (I think)
Carolyn has decided to be monogamous with nevermore, she is no longer confused, and is going to ask nevermore to be alone with her.
I guess there is nothing I can do.
I really feel like dying.
You know what really gets me?
Three weeks ago I broke up with Caro, told her that I didn’t think I could make her happy, that we were incompatible…
And I was okay with being apart from her, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to make her happy.
And the very next day we talked, and she said I could, and that we were compatible, and that she wanted to get back together.
And like an idiot I took her back.
And now that I’m not okay with leaving her, she says she wants to be monogamous with my best friend.
I guess there’s nothing to do with someone who falls out of love with you, but I feel… gods, I feel like dying…
Maybe I should go see a therapist.
Out of curiosity, Snakespirit, what makes either of these women so deserving of love? I don’t see either of them making any sacrifices to give him anything he needs to be happy, so by your standards they don’t deserve his love. Where’s your condemnation for this chick who’s insisting that everything be entirely on her own terms? You know, the one who wanted him to stay in a situation that would make him die by inches so she could have things exactly how she wanted them. Why isn’t she too selfish to know what love really means? In other words, WTF?
I’m not saying the OP’s a perfect mate; he seems to have more issues than the New York Times, and a fair number of them seem to be things I don’t think I could deal with. He’s not the self-absorbed shitstain you’re making him out to be, though. He’s just a guy with some security issues who’s hurting because he’s been rejected.
Honey, there is always something you can do. There’s nothing you can do to get back into a romantic relationship with Caro, no. (Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would want her, based on the stuff in this thread; she sounds like a manipulative beeyotch in the first degree. I say thank whatever higher powers you acknowlege for your freedom and run like the wind.) There’s always something you can do, though. You can work on you, on finding ways to be a complete and fulfilled person in and of yourself. You can look for ways to make yourself happy, instead of looking for someone to make you happy. It’s something everyone ought to do anyway, IMO.
To be fair… I don’t think she wants that anymore.
Now at least she says she’s not in love with me, doesn’t want to work on anything… although she’s very hurtful about it…
Gods… I wish I could hate her, and I still may end up doing just that… would certainly be a lot easier.
I just dont’ understand… three weeks ago she was asking me to stay and telling me that we were compatible and could work everything out… when I was emotionally able to leave her she asked me to stay, and then tore my heart out as soon as things were difficult…
I don’t understand why all these months I was good enough to be with alone, why she was willing to leave nevermore a dozen times, but now she’s not willing to even try to work on things with me…
I just… I feel like absolute shit for hurting her, for making her life difficult… I wish I could change things… I am… I was devoted, loving, caring, I did my best for her all the time…
~sighs~
Thanks, I think.
yeah… I definitely have security issues… and I guess she just doesn’t want to deal with me, or them, anymore…
But I’m definitely not self-absorbed… I built my life around making her happy, I moved to Austin so that I could go to school within driving distance of her… gods… I feel like such a fool.
I guess I just have to accept that…
still makes me feel like shriveling up and dying.
~sighs~
I think she may very well be…
when faced with me leaving her, she got me to stay, only to break up with me a couple of weeks later.
Things don’t change that fast… and instead of letting me be okay with it, her ego demanded that she break up with me…
I just…
She says she’s “fickle”, that she’s not in love with me anymore, that when she thinks of nevermore her heart ‘sings’ but when she thinks of me she just has an empty ‘sinking feeling.’
I mean… I’m too confused right now to sort things out…
I don’t understand why she wanted me to be monogamous with her in the first place…
I don’t understand any of this, but perhaps you’re right…
I mean… she is gorgeous, one of the most attractive women I’ve ever known, but that isn’t anything all that special… there are many gorgeous women in the world, and maybe one will treat me right.
But… please… I still love her, I’m still in love with her, even though she probably doesn’t deserve it.
Please do not speak ill of her. Please.
See… I guess you’re right… I can be okay on my own… but I’m happiest with a partner. Maybe that’s the problem…
I still feel horrible, I don’t want to wake up tomorrow, I don’t want to go to my classes, do my work… I just… every moment that we were happy fills my head and I miss her so fucking much.
~sighs~
nothing to do but move on.
Everyone deserves love, CCL, you, me. Finn, Caro, nevermore, our cats, even dirty street slime deserve love. It’s what saves us.
Even **Czarcasm ** deserves love, believe it or not.
Love is the tool that can fix all our ills. Love is the solution that solves all problems. Love can save Finn, if he;'d embrace it.
Dude, have you read my last few posts?
Caro wants to be monogamous with nevermore and is going to demand that nevermore leave me all alone.
there is nothing I can ever do to be in her heart ever again
And it wasn’t about her being poly, ever. It wasn’t about me limiting her choices, ever. She just wants someone else, and not me.
And I still have no idea what the heck you’re talking about… How on earth would giving up everything that makes me feel good, everything I need to be happy, solve anything?
Just to drive the point home SnakeSpirit:
She won’t even sacrifice enough to let nevermore stay with me.
She is going to take her away, even though nevermore is poly and would like to stay with me. If Caro asks it, she’ll do it, not that I blame her… but let’s be frank here. Nobody will sacrifice what they want, or what makes them happy. And I don’t even know if they should.
I’m sorry to ask for help again, but…
I’ve never been good at ending relationships, especially if I’m still in love…
and of course Caro can’t predict the future, and won’t tell me that I’ll simply never ever have a chance…
She keeps saying that ‘for right now’ we can’t be together, but that she also doesn’t think that we could for the future… should I just take that as a “No, never, no.”?
so it’s hard to let go, and I know that I’d come running back to her if she ever wanted me again.
What I really need to ask you folks is…
how can you best get over someone who meant the world to you?
It just drives me insane… and I need to vent a bit or I’m going to go bonkers right now…
I have faith in nothing, I’m a scientific skeptic in most things.
And Caro demanded that I have faith in her, demanded that I have faith that I was the single best person for her on the planet, that she’d never leave me, never want anybody more than me. She did this even though I told her I loved her but I didn’t have faith… she demanded that I be sure.
And then she broke my heart.
Is it just because she’s young? (we started dating eight months ago when she was 19 and I was 23)
Is there anything I can do to make the good memories go away? To stop thinking about how wonderful the good times were?
And I still think there were more good times than bad, that we argued a lot over hte threesome, but I loved her with all my heart, and I’d have done anything for her, and thus our relationship was strong… but she doesn’t think so, doesn’t even like me anymore…
Can anybody, please, suggest some coping strategies?
Yep.
Yep.
I had a bit difficulties reading this thread because it was not obvious to me that both nevermore and Caro are women.
At first I gained the impression that nevermore was your male partner, who then also began a relation with Caro.
I can be wrong (have no experience wiht relationships as you described) but after reading all of this I have the impression that you are in love with a woman who recently discovered she may be purely lesbian instead of bisexual as she probably thought she was.
There is nothing you can do to change that. Even if that is not the reason why she now wants to end her relationship with you, there is also nothing you can do to change that.
What I asked myself is what your feelings for nevermore are, in comparison with what you feel for Caro.
Maybe it is then good for you to ask nevermore what her feelings are for you in comparison with what she feels for Caro.
This is maybe going to sound harsh and cruel (not intended to be but you are an emotional train-wreck right now and everything is able to hurt you immensely), but if you follow your own reasoning here, then ask yourself why nevermore would leave you for Caro, if she would see that as sacrificing what makes her happy.
Besides that, you are completely wrong in your assertion that “nobody will sacrifice what they want or what makes them happy”.
If you need to, you need to. There is no escape of the fact that you can’t control falling in love, but that you can control how you deal with it when you happen to fall in love with the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong moment.
I could tell you all about it and that is why I came into this thread in the first place. Not because I am married twice, because my situation can not in the least be compared with the ones you came to describe.
Maybe I misread it, but you come across as thinking that you need to love this woman to be happy and that you need to make her happy because otherwise you can’t find happyness yourself.
In my view that is a wrong way to look at any form of love-relationship. You don’t need anyone to “make you happy”. On the contrary: you need to be able to make yourself happy before you can add to the hapiness of someone else by the mere fact alone that you love that person.
At this instance it is obvious that there really is no other choice for you then letting her go, let her make her choices, let her live her life, let her try to find happiness all by herself. You can not make her happy how much you ever want it, how sincere you are in your love, how deep that love for her is. You can’t do anything to make her love you.
It is not her fault and it is not yours or the fault of anyone else, but you should do yourself the favour to look in the mirror and say to yourself that you are worth so much more then asking/waiting/hoping/dreaming for the love of a woman who said she does not love you anymore.
It’s going to be one rotten time for you, but it is also an occasion to calm down emotionally by trying to figure out what you really want for yourself. Not for someone else, like wanting “to make her happy”, but for yourself.
Other people made the suggestion that probably you are not ready for this type of emotionally complex relationships.
I couldn’t agree more.
Salaam. A
FinnAgain, I’m sorry you’re going through this break-up. You’re obviously suffering, and I know how much that sucks.
If I may offer some advice: stop picking at scabs. Right now you’re analyzing things that were said while you were in the relationship and getting angry at contradictions with what actually happened, you’re trying to guess at motivations and find reasons for how things ended up how they did, and you’re obsessing over what you did wrong and how you could have done things differently. All this has the effect of keeping the wounds fresh and raw when you need to be starting the healing process. Cry, mourn, be sad, be angry, etc. but stop trying to reconcile the past with the present.
Accept that the relationship is over, and thus who said what doesn’t matter. I think what you’re doing is making the breakup harder without any gain.
No. You don’t need to. What you need is to become able to accept them as good memories.
- Do not contact here anymore. Ever. Do not answer her calls.
- Avoid places where you can meet her.
- Avoid places/situations that recall shared memories.
- Try to focus on something that is for you
a) something completely new
b) asks very much of your time and attention
c) has in no way any relation with her and the past relation(s). - Do not lock yourself up. Call your friends and tell them you need them (eventually tell them to bring their own weight of your favourite brand of whatever alcohol, if you think that would help… Confort yourself with the thought that I did not even have that option at all).
- Think about it that you do not like me at all and that I managed to survive a situation of being completely desperately hopeless in love with the wrong woman, at the wrong time, at the wrong place. (Long story, bad beginning, bad middle peace and bad ending, but for the rest all was/is OK with me.)
Salaam. A
So how do your reconcile everyone deserving love with telling Finn he doesn’t deserve for Caro and nevermore to love him unless he gives up everything for their happiness? (That might not have been what you meant, but that’s how I interpreted, “you will get what you deserve, which is nothing.”)
Finn, it doesn’t matter why she chose to treat you this way. It might be because she’s young and doesn’t know who she is or what she wants yet. It might be because she’s a psycho-cow on a power trip. It might be because the planets were aligned just perfectly for this to happen. We’ll never know. You’ll never know. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. The why of it all is unimportant–the meat of the matter is that she treated you badly and now you feel like shit. Knowing why she treated badly isn’t going to make you feel less like shit, and it might make you feel worse, so let it go. Easier said than done, I know. The best thing I’ve found is what Aldebaran suggested: finding something to do that requires a lot of mental energy, preferably something that involves other people so you have more incentive to stay on task.
No, there’s no way to get rid of good memories, and I agree that you don’t want to get rid of them anyway. I recently ended an 18-year friendship, and yes, the good memories still hurt a bit. They’re probably going to hurt for a while. The fact that it all ended the way it did will probably always sting a little. Still, much as it can hurt to remember how much fun we used to have together, I wouldn’t give up those memories for anything. The good times and the bad times and the in-between times, they’re all a part of what made who I am now, and overall I’m pretty happy with who I am.
Thank ye, all ye wise Dopers.
I am doing better.
Not much.
But baby steps.
Yeah…
hard to accept, hurts like nothing I’ve ever known. Sucks.
I love nevermore I want to be wit her too, but she and I both know that the love we share is nothing compared to what we both feel for carolyn. She just happens to get the girl in this little drama.
A slight mis-read.
I don’t need her to be happy.
But yes, she did make me very very happy.
And yes, it does make me very very happy to make people I love happy.
Good point, thank you.
Good advice and quite possibly correct.
Thank you.
Means a lot to me.
good point.
I’d still like to know why.
But I guess I never will.
And it does piss me off, I never pretended to be anybody but who I was, and she chose me, and played games with my heart, and left me…
But I guess, in the end, the relationship was unhealthy and it’s for the best that I’m not with her.
All very good advice.
Thank you very much for taking the time.
Shalom ;j
You’re right. It doesn’t matter why.
This was a tremendously unhealthy relationship for me and it’s a very good thing that we’re not together. Gods forbid that I’d have had children with her.
It still hurts, it still sucks, I still love her, I still want her.
But those aren’t healthy emotions.
I should be glad that she cut me loose before hurting me even worse.
It’s not quite that easy, and I’m still jealous as fuck of nevermore but I no longer know why, and I need to get over this shit.
I lost a woman who never treated me right, ah well.