I have to highlight this last paragraph because it seems spot-on. Seeing both Finn and nevermore talk about Carolyn like she’s some kind of drug they have to have just stunned me, but you’re right, she does seem like a very controlling personality. Also, the “I have a much better connection with her than you” is a very spiteful breakup weapon to use, intended to hurt, but also highlights the very “honeymoon period” nature of this. Yes, those two had been together before, but this is her “new” fling nonetheless.
I wish nevermore all the best - because if she’s going to be with Carolyn, she’ll need it. Finn, I hope your heart heals soon, and I hope you see that you do deserve to be loved well and kindly, not jerked around and made to walk on eggshells at a whim. A love that is healthy does not involve such things.
Honestly, speaking as an Egyptian recon (but not a priest, thank the gods), I am not at all impressed with this person’s behaviour. It is, at a bare minimum, not in even remotest accord with my understanding of the principles that the netjeru are bound to embody and protect. (Especially given that Bast is a protector of home and family.)
Awwww shucks. Thank you for responding. I’ve been going through a lot of pain and confusion, and Dopers have really helped.
It’s odd that you should say that, she told me from the very beginning that she needs to be in control all the time. Good observation.
And yeah, evidently it was somewht like her saying that she couldn’t “handle” having nevermore be with me too… (and that after months of her swearing up and down that she was poly)
She’s great with people, she can be very very cute, and she’s got the kind of body that the renaisance painters tried so hard to capture.
I wonder if she ever knew she was doing it.
I still respect her and admire her as a person and I’d like to think that she was just really confused (as was I) and not playing games with my life and emotions.
Hope I’m not ignoring data.
~sighs~
I felt horrible, I wanted so bad not to get upset at things, to just let everything be cool… but my intuition is generally pretty damn sharp, and I ignored what I knew to be true, probably because I didn’t want it to be, I wanted to believe her, wanted to believe I had a future with her.
Well… there were a bunch of times that she’d spend most of the day snuggling with nevermore and if I didn’t ask to have attention she’d almost never think to give it to me, or to ask me to snuggle with her… I don’t know. It’s hard for me to keep facts straight and clear in the sunlight, still really confused and probably not remembering correctly… after all, remembering is most often re-membering.
Possibly… I don’t know about their relationship, and I really have tried to not know anything.
Yeah, I feel good about that. I should have trusted myself. Not sure what it would have accomplished though. I desperately wanted to believe that Caro loved me like she said, that we’d be together, that we had a future. It was easier to think I was being insecure than that I was being led on and lied to.
I definitely got sucked in hard and fast. (oh baby!)
But it is hard not to take responsibility, or think that I had it.
Hard not to think “but if I’d just…” “but if I hadn’t…”
But I guess I did my best, and she never was okay with being alone with me, as I pointed out in nevermore’s thread. (And as they denied and made me feel like shit for thinking)
Just like they denied and made me feel like shit for thinking that they had something special that I wasn’t a part of, that their love was somehow more… ~gestures~ something or another,
And yeah, I felt insecure and thought that she wouldn’t be with me all the time, that she wouldn’t always have my back… and in the end, she didn’t.
I’m just not sure if it’s a cart-horse sort of thing…
Like I quoted before from the Oracle:
“What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”
Yep… The pop song that is ‘her’ song talks about a girl being “perfect in a fucked up way.”
Then again, I’m a Thelemite, so I do believe in following your will… I just think you’re a shitty person if you use and/or abuse the people who love you.
Not to say I think she’s a bad person… I really can’t bring myself to believe that.
And I don’t know why… nevermore says she’s an alien and a witch. Maybe she’s right.
But yeah… Caro’s admitted that she’s totally selfish, although it seems to me that she tried a great many times to make me happy with the threesome… I dont’ know, confused… she once wanted to end it saying that I couldn’t handle it, and I thought I could…
She’s really not a bad person, we just all fucked up in this eight month dance.
Nope, no check or balance.
It actually broke my heart to hear her talking like that, I so wanted her to take credit for her own insights, her own inspiration…
Yeah… she definitely seems to either change her mind very quick or simply say whatever sounds good. Then again she’s said she never analyzes her desires, so maybe she doesn’t even know what she wants…
Then again, playing that fast and loose when other peoples’ hearts are involved…
But yeah, from the beginning I knew she had control issues… but I always did my best to compliment her, support her, try to tell her I’d always be there for her to help her… I guess I thought that if I just loved her enough I could make everything okay for her.
Yeah, I’m getting that now… for a few days she was swearing that nothing had changed that she just liked nevermore more than she thought.
Then she swore that she just wanted to get deeper into her relationship with nevermore, and of course, made me feel like shit for pointing out that the language she was using implied that she’d be monogamous with nevermore and leave me for her.
Told me to just “believe” her, to not ask questions, to just “trust” her. To stop annoying her and asking stupid questions.
And then, of course, she wanted to be monogamous with nevermore and left me. ~laughter~
It’s interesting to see the same old cycle work in only a few days.
Just drives me nuts now that I look back at it… So many times she’d say things, and I’d point out their implications, and her contradictions, and she’d demand that I believe her story, no matter how full of holes… told me I was being horrible and insecure if I didn’t… and I felt like shit for so long because I didn’t ‘trust’ her like she deserved.
Looks like she didn’t deserve trust.
But yeah… better to be out of it than jerked around and led on, even by accident.
Better for my health and my sanity. This wasn’t good for me.
I’m not sure… part of me wishes them both happiness and luck.
Part of me is very bitter and reserves I- told-you-so rights.
But nevermore is a great friend of mine, and my shoulder will be there for her to cry on if she needs it.
Caro has said that she gets bored with relationships, that being in a commited relationship is very hard for her after a while…
Maybe she just needs the taste of newness.
To be honest… although part of me likes the idea, I doubt she ever would. She’s now convinced that we were never, and could never be compatible. That sort of an attitude pretty much precludes the possibility of her ever caring for me again… but who knows…
I just hope that if it ever happens I have the strength to say no.
~sighs~
I’d like to be with her, but I no longer know why.
I’d like to make things work with her, but I know she’d never work with me again.
I still want her, but I’m trying to deal with that.
Yeah, she is a total control freak.
And I don’t think that nevermore or I could ever put it into words as to why we both felt, well… to an extent both still feel that she’s so fucking awesome.
I really have no idea.
Maybe she drips liquid LSD from her pores or something.
Well to be fair, I was talking to her (which I’ve now stopped) and trying to figure out what the fuck happened, why she wouldn’t work with me, why she didn’t like me… and it all essentially comes down to the fact that she’s nuts over nevermore. Then again, she really has no tact when it comes to that… seems to have to tell me everything in the most brutal terms possible.
I don’t think she’s really all that bad… just all of us were confused and did the best we could, to varying degrees of effectiveness.
But yeah… it might just be flash-and-sizzle with the two of them. I have no idea.
You know… almost every single person who knows the three of us has said the same thing. That she’ll end up doing nevermore like she did me. Hell, even nevermore is a lil’ bit nervous about that, but not wanting to think about it.
I honestly don’t want her to get hurt.
A very good point.
I’ve been shown a lot about myself that I didn’t know, and I’ve got a lot of growing and thinking to do.
Finn, I’ve been following this thread with the horrified fascination of someone watching a car wreck. I’m sorry you’re going through all this. Thoughts off the top of my head:
You seem to be moving towards acknowledging Caro’s faults to us, which is a good sign. Keep doing it. She may be awesome and gorgeous, but that’s not enough when she is clearly manipulative and controlling as well. Being manipulative and controlling are not unusual qualities, but most people manage, with maturity, to keep them in check. Unfortunately you and nevermore are allowing her to do this to you. You both need to reclaim your own lives. This doesn’t mean that the relationship between her and nevermore can’t work out, but a relationship where one person is recognised to have all the power and the other doesn’t is unhealthy to say the least.
You have said you have issues with security, and you need to be loved. You are clearly someone who is prepared to work at a relationship. Don’t let your insecurities get in the way of the fact that you deserve to be loved for who and what you are. Don’t subjugate your will to that of another person. (This is all advice for future relationships: you are at the point now that you need to learn from what went wrong, and to use that to build on).
Falling in love is a great leap from infatuation, because to fall in love we must entrust our happiness to another person’s whim and will. By falling in love, we trust that they will treat us with the same care that we will treat them. Your trust has been betrayed, but don’t let that affect your willingness to do it in the future. Just recognise that in this case, you trusted too blindly.
Caro may well be fascinating and charismatic, but she strikes me above all as being very immature. And power and immaturity are not good bedfellows.
Could that be part of why she’s so attractive to you? It’s kind of a stereotype that danger is an aphrodesiac (sp?), but it’s human nature that when somebody says up front, “I’m nothing but trouble” it makes them seem that much more attractive. Especially if they’re physically attractive to begin with.
Even if she was confused many of the things you say she did show a terrible lack of respect for you. Confused or not, it was very unkind of her to stay with you when she couldn’t show you basic respect on a day-to-day basis. At the very least she should have allowed you the freedom of finding someone who could. It’s not nice at all to make you dance while she’s making up her mind.
Why is that?
I don’t think it’s a cart-horse thing. One thing instincts will tell you is where loyalties lie. Even if you’re not entirely conscious of it as a thing in the relationship, it’s always there. (I think we’re hardwired for it.) It sounds like neither of them had very much loyalty to you. With Caro’s controlling behavior, it’s not surprising that she would make sure the third person in your relationship is loyal to her first. It’s just a shame that, IMO, that means you shouldn’t trust nevermore very much at this point.
It’s not that I think she would deliberately hurt you. But she’s already admitted that Caro has got her firmly by the ovaries. Probably many of the ways that she approaches the situation with you are strongly influenced by what Caro thinks should happen. And considering her agreement with Caro about your “insecurity” I wouldn’t be surprised if Caro’s lack of respect for you has rubbed off on her.
But please don’t think I’m attacking her. I know she’s young, and caught up in it all, and I know you want to be a good friend to her.
That was very loving and supportive of you but, I’m sorry to say, the completely wrong approach to take with someone with control issues. As I said before, if you lack experience in dealing with a controlling person, it’s incredibly hard not to get sucked in and lost in it, so I hope you don’t blame yourself. (Or keep torturing yourself with what-ifs.) Your attitude and behavior was a good thing, and in a relationship with a stable person it would have been fabulous. You’d have bonded like crazy glue.
A controlling person, however, takes it if they need it at the moment, returns it if it’s convienent or they get something out it, and forgets about it the moment a stronger desire comes along. It really is like water, the way emotions and attitudes and perceptions run together and carry them along.
It’s great to hear you say that. (Okay, to read you writing that.) I agree with you.
The kindest and the cruelest thing you could do to Caro right now is just not care. I know that isn’t likely to happen, but it’s true.
Best of luck to you in your continuing struggle. It really sucks but I hope you know we’re all rooting for you to get through this. Take care.
I’m not understanding this assertion at all…
what could I have done to show loyalty in this situation? what did I do to show disloyalty?
(I am not angry; just genuinely confused.)
I apologize in advance if this comes off as overly defensive, but I believe you are postulating on an extreme lack of data. I’ve lived with him for the last 5 months… I can tell you with the full force of my being that what she thinks of him has very little to do with my own opinions of him. My agreement on his insecurity issues… well, for my part, I honestly thought that what she was saying was true. I honestly and truly thought that he would always (or at least as long as any of us were involved in anything romantic) be the most important person to her, that she’d never allow her feelings for me to get in the way of her spending her life with him, that she meant every word she said to him. I didn’t see any reason for her to lie to him… I think if it had been the other way around and Finn had been telling her he’d always put her first, he’d never allow his feelings for me to come between us, he’d always be willing to put me aside for her, and she’d been the one doubting it, I would have defended him as well. Perhaps that is simply who I am… I am very trusting when it comes to love, and I believe people when they tell me how they feel… I find it’s a better policy, for me, than to be constantly questioning and worrying. If someone’s feelings are going to change, they’re going to change, and why stress about it in the meantime, possibly resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy? I know if someone was constantly poking at me to reassure them that I cared, that I wouldn’t leave them, that what I told them constantly was true, I’d probably end up getting so annoyed with it that I would eventually leave. I’m not saying that’s what happened here (though it may be a factor; there’s no real way to know); it’s simply the logic that drives my approach to relationships, based on my knowledge of myself.
Finn:
the assertion that we made you feel like shit makes me feel horrible. I never ever meant to berate you or belittle your feelings if I did. I do not remember doing so, but I acknowledge that my memory is far from perfect, and probably selective, and I apologize sincerely if I was hurtful in my disagreement with you. I hope that you trust me, that you believe me, whether I deserve it or not, when I say that it was never intentional.
I can relate.
I’ve been feeling like I’m coming down off an acid trip for about two weeks, like my hands weren’t my hands.
thanks much, responses follow
True enough… I’ve just lived for quite some time now ignoring or taking responsibility for her faults and trying to work my ass of in order to make things ok. I’ve got some work to do before I can finish a paradigm shift.
Yeah… I think that, in retrospect, a lot of our struggles were power struggles. I suppose that I had, really, no goddessdamn idea as to how to go about getting the respect, love, and commitment I needed. Just kept hoping that if I could keep my voice level, if I could avoid saying the ‘wrong things’, if I could show enough interest and kindness…
As a friend of mine recently told me, he was once involved with a woman who became a lesbian right after she left him. For years he thought that he’d “turned” her into a lesbian. When he finally told a friend of his this, the friend burst out into laughter and told him “Gee, you have a big ego!”
I think it might’ve been sort of that way with me.
Maybe none of this was ever about me.
And I suppose that time will tell with the two of them. nevermore is much more apt to compromise on certain issues than I am, and also much more apt to stick up for herself. I really do wish her luck.
Yeah… it’s slow going but I’m working at giving up the fantasy that Caro and I ever had anything beyond some warmth, some sex, and a desire to be together… I know that I deserve someone who’ll love me, really love me… I guess I just thought that she did.
Hell… I guess the only person who was really in love was me.
A very one-sided basis for a relationship.
And although she used the same phrases I did, I don’t think the same emotion was ever behind them.
Yeah, that’s part of what gets me…
I chose wrong, I chose very, very, very wrong.
And for a while I could have sworn that I had chosen right.
That all our fighting could somehow be fixed, that her constant anger-and-annoyance would one day fade, somehow…
It honestly bothers me more that I was so drasticaly wrong than what happened, although that bothers me too.
But yeah, trust, honesty, honor, are all very important things to me.
I’ve never been insecure like I was in this relationship, not once.
Maybe that was because, well, there wasn’t any real security in this relationship.
She’ll grow up one day…
still can’t help but have a corner of my mind hoping that we can hit it off again in a year, or five years…
have to let go of that part of me too.
Sooner or later I’ll be over this, not just sort of, but really and totally.
I will always have a place for her in my heart…
who knows.
I think it was a balance between strength and weakness…
I honestly like feeling needed, like feeling that I can help my partner, like I can contribute to them being happy.
I wasn’t so much entranced by her controlling nature as I was ignoring it…
I figured we all had problems, all had issues…
guess I was just never with someone that controlling before, probably won’t ever be again.
A good point.
I’d like to think that she thought the relationship could work, that she was dedicated to working at it. And maybe she was…
but she can be mercurial when the mood strikes her.
I’m not quite sure…
I think that many of my security issues stem from self-esteem issues…
But beyond that, I guess that I wanted to believe it could be fixed.
If it was just me being insecure I could work on it (and gods, did I ever work at it). If it was her leading me on, well… then I would have had to accept that I was being lied to and/or led on, and that I had to leave…
And I really never wanted to leave, I wanted to work at it, to make it work.
Maybe that was a mistake too.
The more I think of it, the more I see it that way.
My intuition really is spot-on most of the time, I can see patterns, trends and implications far before most other people do.
And I’ve been called a bunch of different pejoritive adjectives, more than once… that is until my observations are proven by later occurances.
When my mind, my intution, and my heart are all synched up, I’m pretty damn powerful myself.
Guess I just got all out-of-balance.
nevermore had a certain degree, I’m sure. I think she honestly wanted us to work out. The three of us to work out. But no… I don’t think she ever really would have stepped aside in the interest of my relationship with Caro. Evidently nevermore was very jealous of me at the beginning, wanted to be with Caro alone at the beginning. Evidently she got over that… but I don’t think she ever quite lost the desire to have Caro find her to be most-important. Who knows… Maybe she just honestly never accepted what I saw, didn’t want to believe it any more than I did.
Like I said, I think we’ve all made mistakes through the course of this. I don’t really blame her…
I think I saw all of this, but never wanted to admit it…
I had once talked to Caro about the possibility of bringing in a fourth person, someone who was primarily interested in me rather than her… She swore up and down that nevermore liked us both, that since we both loved and respected her we shouldn’t bring anybody else in…
I guess she always just wanted to have a third who was her lover, and who kinda liked me too.
And no, I’m not quite sure how much I should trust either of them… but at least nevermore’s only real ‘sin’ was to believe what Caro was telling her, telling me. I think that, to a certain degree, she loved and respected me. Not enough to not date my ex right after I broke up with her, but…
And yeah, now that I look back on it, many things should have tripped my ‘red-flag o’ meter’
Once when nevermore brought home a guy and took him into her room, closing the door for the night (although no sex went on) I was really upset… Caro on the other hand told me I was being a “bad friend” if I was upset at this and wanted nevermore out of the relationship. This was of course after and before she expounded at length about how anybody who cheats should instantly be banished and receive no trust.
All this, of course, after Carolyn was once ready to never talk to nevermore again because nevermore used a certain drug (no, I won’t say which) about four times a year. I was the one who, yelling and arguing, had to convince Caro not to abandon a friend just because she was worried about them, that the thing to do with a friend was support them and not abandon them…
Just kinda surreal.
A distinct possibility. I’m not quite sure it’s the deal, as she seems to honestly want to be friendly with me, while Caro has essentially said that she doubts we can be friends…
I do…
I am of course somewhat bummed by the fact that, all along, she took Caro’s side in pretty much every dispute we ever had, down to them using the exact same phrases, even if they had no idea what the other had said.
~soft smiles~
It’s weird how, even now, the idea of the two of them cuddling and cooing sweet nothings really hurts…
But then again, all through the relationship I was worried when I saw their conversations…
There was… something… there that Caro just didn’t have with me.
Although of course they both made me feel like shit for suggesting it.
I’m trying to get some perspective.
I’m also not sure how else to go about loving… I know it’s dangerous to make someone such an intrinsic part of your world, but she kept telling me she wanted to be my wife and the mother of my children… I didn’t see anything wrong with giving her what I saw as her proper due, all the respect and devotion and love that I could muster.
But yeah… I need to learn how to deal, or rather, how to stay away from people who’ll drain me dry like that.
good to hear that.
Yep… she’s a water sign if there ever was one… with a side of fire thrown in.
Still not totally easy to accept on a visceral level, hell, even my mind isn’t “entirely” convinced. I know this was eating me alive, that I kept giving and giving and having her be angry and annoyed at me all the time… hell, she snapped at me for not remember the lines of a book that I read a decade ago… for telling her, when she was cursing and frustrated from having her stick-shift car keep stalling, that she’d be a good driver and just had to get used to the dynamic…
And it didn’t help that my natural response to conflict is to be quiet and introspective. Or that I really can’t hide my displeasure. When I’m annoyed at something my entire body telegraphs it, despite my best efforts.
Yeah, I’ve been realizing that…
I hope that in the somewhat near future I can…
I do think I’ll always have a place for her in my heart, but who knows.
And yet…
But I guess there is no blame, I wanted to believe it too.
Maybe she didn’t lie, maybe she just didn’t ever consider what her feelings truly were.
Maybe she’s totally non-introspective.
But come on… she says she can’t be with me anymore, and that very day, a handfull of minutes later “realizes” that she’s needed you and simply must be with you?
If you were dating a guy who had a female friend that he was awfully close to, and who kept telling you there was nothing between them that could threaten you… and then he broke up with you and was in her bed in less than half an hour, would you think that something was up?
Would you chalk it up to him being ‘confused’?
Or to him not being honest with you, or himself, and playing games with very important emotions?
Would it matter if the three of you had been in a polyamorous relationship and for months he was telling you that he needed you, wanted you, only needed to be with you… and the minute he wasn’t with you he declared that he had a deeper, most abiding, longer lasting, more important love with her, but had just relaized it?
But thoise situations are not equal, and that hypothetical just won’t hold water.
What cause did I ever give her to doubt the love I felt for her, or to think that I was more interested in you than her?
We had this discussion many times, that I wouldn’t allow myself to get deeper into a relationship with you because it might threaten what I had with her, that I asked her to either put limits on what was appropriate or back out of the threesome.
You both made me feel horrible for even suggesting that she could or would limit her emotional involvement. All the while promising me that I had nothing to worry about.
But to a degree you were right. If she liked you better she should have certainly been free to go to you and leave me.
I should not have been clinging, should not have tried to hold on to someone who, it turns out, didn’t want to stay.
Live and learn.
And when they contradict themselves? When they give you two, or three, or four different things to believe? Do you choose to believe only the one that they’re telling you to believe, that would make things seem alright? Or do you accept the cognitive dissonance and try to think about what’s really going on?
And you wonder why I’ve been made to feel like shit?
Was I, baselessly, “constantly questioning and worrying” or did I see red-flags and omens for months?
Did I make all this up, or did I see a very real trend that was very disturbing to me?
Did I cause a self-fulfilling prophecy, or did I realize what was happening?
If I had never said a word about how passionate she was for you (and not me), if i had never said a word about how she was falling deeper and deeper into love with you (and getting farther away from me), if I had never said a word about how she used to enjoy making love to me but began to prefer you, if I had never said a word about how she was always kind and tender with you but always angry at me, would that have changed anything?
Honestly?
Or would I have only been that much more baffled when this all went down?
Again… cart-horse. (I keep writing caro-horse)
And again, wonder why I’d feel like shit with that being the constant refrain… “Don’t observe what’s happening or it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy!!!”
I wasn’t in general asking her to prove she loved me, or worrying about her interest in another person. We really were pretty good and I had zero insecurity before we brought in someone new.
And then of course she was more passionate with you than she ever was with me, and when I pointed that out, we started our great pattern… It was rationalized, denied, explained away.
As it was every time she came to visit, like how she would almost always face you, cling to you, when the three of us were cuddling in bed.
And of course I was made to feel like shit for daring to suggest that she was more affectionate with you.
And I was right from the beginning, to a certian degree.
Maybe she did love me then, or thought she did.
But honestly, did my pointing out her actions cause her to not love me anymore?
If that’s the case, doesn’t that mean that I had to remain ignorant and stupid in order for her to love me?
Would that really have been healthy for me?
Gah.
Again, you wonder why I’ve been made to feel like shit?
It may be a factor?
Let me ask you: what actions, possible, conceivable, imaginable, could I have commit that would have caused her to “need” you?
If I had killed her mom and roasted and eaten her sister, would that have made her “need” someone else?
Was there, ever, anything I could have done to affect how she felt about someone else?
If I noticed that she was falling for you harder than she ever fell for me, is it my fault for noticing it?
Should I be made to feel bad for pointing out that, hey, something’s not right?
Is it then my fault for realizing I’m being manipulated?
Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy if there’s no way I could fulfill or even affect it?
It’s okay, you know I forgive you.
But honestly, look at what you’re saying.
If she and I were a monogamous-couple, then yes, I could have caused her to leave me by being insecure.
But then again, I wasn’t really insecure with her until you two were together.
And, again, even if I could have caused her to leave me by being insecure, how could I have caused her to feel for you what she does?
Wouldn’t that imply that her love for you is only based on actions I took? Would you honestly feel comfortable in a relationship thinking that it was my doing that caused her to want to be with you?
I don’t think it was intentional.
but I do think on some level you wanted what Caro was giving you, and wanted more.
After all, you’re with her now, knowing that it’s much worse for me to have my best friend sleeping with my ex rather than some stranger I’ll never meet.
You’ve explained it in a number of different ways, telling me that it’s better for one person to be miserable than three, etc…
But honestly…
If you ‘couldn’t physically’ do what’s right be me now, why would you have before?
Not angry, just letting my intution do the work now.
And finally trusting myself.
I’m so sorry AveDementia
I was cutting and pasting and I must’ve used the quote=Zephyrine text instead of yours…
I will alert a mod (and shit I’m so sorry for bothering the mods twice for my stupid thread)
**Until the mods fix it, all quotes in post 110 are properly attributed to AveDementia **, very sorry for any confusion.
please don’t take any of this as an attack, but I think some things are being mis- or underrepresented, and then there are just some things that have been said that I don’t understand.
but…didn’t I? several times?
after February? after May? several times in between, and after?
do I just have a different definition of stepping aside…?
I really wish you’d tell the whole story if you’re going to bring this up…
I wish you’d tell that this was the day after you’d gone on at length about wanting to pursue one or more other lovers, to add or to replace me, saying that of course sleeping with other people wouldn’t change how the two of you felt about/related to me. This never really got addressed because this was the immediate precursor to you two admitting that you were in love with me and wanted this to be a monogamous threesome, and that little incident kind of fell by the wayside, but honestly… if your sleeping with someone else would’ve changed nothing, and my (hypothetical) doing so would’ve changed everything, I hope you can see that you were holding me to a different standard than that to which you held yourself, and if you honestly think I’m any less deserving of trust because of that incident, I think you should look at yourself a bit more closely.
do you honestly feel that you were attacked? by both of us?
does disagreeing with you, trying to convince you, trying to reassure you necessarily mean making you feel like shit? I really thought that was all I ever did, and until now you never gave me the impression that you felt otherwise… I know she was pretty vicious to you sometimes, but please, if you don’t feel like I did what she did, please don’t lump me in with her. if you genuinely do think I treated you like she did when you brought those things up… then I humbly and fervently beg your forgiveness, and I do not deserve your friendship or love.
I am glad, however, that you realize I do want to be your friend, and I do respect and love you. I am sorry that us continuing our relationship (please don’t represent it as me swooping in to date your ex…) worsens your pain. I wish everyone could be happy, and I wish I could be the kind of friend you want me to be. hopefully I will have a chance to regain some of the trust I have apparently lost in the future… and gods willing… may we never fall in the love with the same woman at the same time again. +_+
By the way, I’m typing this with a smile and find it rather ironic that you’re sitting not ten feet from me as we type…
~laughter~
onwards!
Allow me to clarify.
Yes, you bowed out of the relationship several times.
But that was always at my insistance.
Never once did you come to the conclusion yourself that it wasn’t good.
I’m not blaming you for that, simply stating that I doubt you’ve ever have gotten out of the way on your own.
No fault, no blame.
And I honestly don’t think you ever could have perceived honestly enough to realize the situation… not on purpose, but because that would have given you lots of guilt and made you leave immediately. If you weren’t a ‘threat’ to Caro and me, there was no reason for you to leave of your own free will.
And so you never saw what I saw.
Yes, that was indeed the context, but I do not understand how that changes anything.
I never asked for you to be replaced, indeed, if you remember, I was asking you to stay. You were the one who said that if there was ever anybody else you would leave.
So I assumed that you wanted to leave.
I didn’t mean to accuse you of cheating, but by your own statements at that time, we couldn’t have a relationship between the three of us if any of us brought in someone new, and so I assumed at the time that you wanted out of the relationship.
Hell, by Caro’s own statements, we probably couldn’t have had a fourth without ‘switching’ her for you.
No, it never got addressed because as soon as I tried to address it, Caro pounced on me and started calling me a bad friend.
Then of course she wondered why I was so interested in you, and then it went from there.
And I’m not holding you to any different standard, I was holding you to your own.
You were the one who told me that if anybody else were to be brought in it would end immediately.
Then you tried to bring someone else in.
Have I said that you are less deserving of trust because of that?
And looking at myself, I think you know that I never would have brought anybody else in, that even at the time I was telling both of you “I’d probably never do it, but I’d want the freedom to.”
Not blaming you for anything nevermore, you know I love and respect you.
Does making me feel like I’m treating her wrong, being insecure, pouncing on shadows, not trusting my mate, causing problems, making my mate unhappy, make me feel like shit?
I never said I was attacked by both of you, but god knows she was very cruel to me on more than one occasion.
I did, and do say that sort of stuff made and makes me feel like shit. I felt responsible for everything.
Hell, I apologized so many times for not being cool with everything.
Tried so hard to work on it, tried to ignore what I saw and what was going on.
Yes, she was purposefully cruel on more than one occasion.
And yes, that hurt a lot.
But just because of the kind of man, kind of boyfriend I am, it hurt me a hell of a lot more to think that I was being mean/bad to her than that she was being mean/bad to me.
Ya know?
I agonized as to why I couldn’t just be “cool”, why I had so many “insecurities” why I couldn’t just accept what she said, why I had to “overanalyze” her words.
I obsessed over the fact that I was “Treating her wrong” , “not trusting her”, not “having faith in her.”
I worried that I was hurting her, that my own stupid hangups were causing her problems, that she deserved better.
Yes, it hurt to be called names by her.
But it hurt far more to think I was doing wrong by her.
Oh please.
Cut the melodrama sweetheart.
You are deserving of both my friendship and my love, and you’ve got both of 'em, so quit yer bitching ~grins~
I’ve got nothing to forgive you for, you had no idea… you wanted to believe her I guess.
Just so happens that I was right.
I have also pointed out that what gets me is not that you were purposefully unkind, but that these ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ statements suggest that there was something that I did or did not do, that there was something that I could have or could not have done, that would have affected this situation.
I was the one who was lied to, cheated on, led on, manipulated, used.
Blaming me for being lied to, cheated on, led on, manipulated, and used just isn’t fair.
And yes, I am using “cheated on” in a rather loose sense.
But we had an explicit agreement as to the nature of our relationship, and she was evidently changing her mind on that for a long while, all the time lying to me.
So call it ‘emotional cheating’ or something, but it still feels like cheating.
Um… how should I represent it?
Were you not her girlfriend mere hours after she said she didn’t want to be with me alone?
Were you not her monogamous girlfriend mere days after she was swearing up and down that nothing had changed except that she wanted you a bit more?
Were you really continuing your relationship?
Because last time I checked,I was the one she kept telling she wanted to be with forever, to have a family with, to wake up next to every day.
Your relationship with her was always one of explicitly not being primary.
You didn’t continue your relationship, you took the relationship that I had, or rather, the one that I was always promised but never actually given.
Let me ask you, if she had been with you from the beginning, if she was promising you that you’d end up together, that she wanted you forever, and I was there for warmth and closeness and sex but not as a life-mate… and then she broke up with you, how would it be for me to take her (with her blessing) as my new life-mate?
Would I owe it to you as a friend to not hurt you like that, even if I would really really like it?
Or would it be totally cool for me to start making life-long plans with a woman who once told you she’d marry you?
I just have a different concept of friendship than you.
In my world, you do not date your friends’ ex’s without their explicit permission.
Especially not if the friend was left by the ex.
I gave you a similar situation:
If, when Carolyn had expressed an interest in a threesome with two guys (should’ve been another red flag) I had agreed to bring my best friend Carl into it…
If she’d then fallen in love with him, I could’ve been cool with that, I love him too, and I’d have just wanted to make sure he didn’t get in the way of us…
And then, let’s say, she and I didn’t work out…
And then Carl told me that he was going to ‘take the shot’ that I once had, since it was now his turn, and after all since he first met her he’d thought she was really cool.
What do you think that would do to my relationship with Carl?
I will also point out that both you and Caro had said, many times, that being together and leaving me alone was wrong.
At least you said that when you were doing it… that it was ‘wrong but felt right.’ I mean, honestly… both of you were bemoaning the fact that you were “so weak” and couldn’t leave each other.
Why do that if what you were doing wasn’t wrong?
I still can’t believe that the very first thing Caro said to me, instead of “I love you” or, “I still want to make this work” was “Please let me have nevermore.”
I’m there, heart breaking, losing the most important relationship in my world, and all she’s concerned about is keeping you. And she knew it was wrong. But asked anyways.
But you know I love you, respect you, and will always forgive you.
I don’t know if I can trust you like I used to, as you’ve made it very clear that you’re willing to hurt me if Caro asks you to.
You’ve claimed that you want to stay with me, to be ‘allowed to’ but that if Caro will leave you, then you have ‘no choice’.
What happens when/if Caro gets really pissed off at me, and demands that you never talk to me again?
Says she’ll leave you if you still talk with me?
Tells you that you can spend only one day a week hanging out with me, and we’re not allowed to go out drinking or to a club together…
How can I trust you fully?
And no, it’s not the same.
Yes, I would have left you for her, but I never knew what you two had. Nobody ever told me that it was this important. You know that from the beginning, from before I was with her, I offered to step aside so that you could see what you two had.
But under the definition of the relationship, Carolyn and I were primary. She was busy telling me she wanted to be my wife, bear my children.
If she had done (roughly) the same with you, do you think, in a million years, that I would have dated her after she broke your heart?
Eh…
I’m more than happy to discuss this in private, and if Dopers object to having us air our ‘dirty laundry’ here, I’ll be more than happy to stop.
But I’ve got nothing to hide. Nor do I intend to pit nevermore.
If she would like to give more information here, then it is certainly her right and responsibility to do so.
(I am unaware of any board rules that do not allow the friendly discussion of such matters between members of the board, on the board… if such regulations exist I will of course immediately cease any such actions.)
There’s also the fact that as long as it’s discussed in public on the Dope we have a chance to get everything out in the open, to have it examined by intelligent and objective outsiders.
There’s also the fact that her ex has been reading this thread it seems, and I’m sure that she wants to clear up certain things…
But yeah, if any mods have any problems with this, all they have to do is say the word and I’ll stop posting in this thread and/or stop talking with nevermore in it.
Just because something isn’t against the rules of this board doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
My intelligence is open to debate, but I am an objective outsider here and I’m suggesting that four your own good you and nevermore should stop discussing this in public and start discussing it in private. I mean, provided you have some higher goal in mind than just trying to get attention from people on the Internet.
I honestly don’t see how discussing the situation, from all sides, in a fair and friendly manner is a bad idea.
But again, if Dopers have a problem with reading it, I will respect their wishes.
Likewise with the mods.
But my current judgement is that this adds to the scope of the discussion.
My goal was never to just ‘get attention’
I have wanted help coping with this in a very dark time in my life, and I’ve wanted help in understanding what happened, and I’ve wanted help in figuring out where to go from here.
I would enjoy the ability to continue posting in this thread, as I’m still working things out and have really appreciated much of the advice I’ve been given.
And as long as I’m posting, I don’t see how it’s fair that nevermore shouldn’t be allowed to respond. And if she’s allowed to respond, I don’t see how it’s fair for me not to respond to her…
It’s all in the name of truth, and life, and the future, and fighting ignorance after all…
But again, if you have a problem reading this, if you think that, not for my sake, but for the board, I should not be talking with her, then I will take that into consideration.
Heck, if you would like you are more than welcome to email me or IM me in order to discuss this if you’d rather not clutter up this thread.
nevermore has asked me to point out that she never intentionally made me feel like shit… I may very well have not been correct from the beginning, I may very well have fought over things that I should not have… I may very well bear a large share of guilt.
It just drives me nuts… now, when I respect what they have and could actually work with it… I have no chance.
I honestly don’t think that nevermore is a bad person, hell, I probably am only angry at Caro because it makes it easier to accept that she’ll never be with me again…
Maybe I fought about things I shouldn’t have, maybe I was right… I just don’t know, nor do I know why I want so badly for it to work, for another chance…
I just don’t want people to think that either of them are bad people.