Need Some Support

I dunno. She could be ‘determined’, or she may just be being manipulative. Manipulative people are very good at sounding convincing, it’s how they get to keep using you long after you should have been all used up.

Good luck!

Figure this one out, and you can have Dr. Phil’s time slot.

Would it be possible to find out how much she is planning to save? Because, if there’s any way you can swing it, you could just lend her the money and force her out the door. (And by “lend,” I mean “give her the money, and on the very off chance she pays any of it back, just consider it a windfall.”) 'Cause I don’t believe for a second that she’s actually going to move out in 6 weeks. 6 weeks gives her a nice chunk of time to come up with some other excuse for why she has to stay.
And I hear where you’re coming from with regard to “the eternal question.” It’s very hard to deal with. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Over time, it will start to make more sense to you.

In the meantime, try not to focus on the “good” in the past. Try to focus on the current situation, which is very “bad.” You have the whole rest of your life to remember her fondly and give her credit where credit is due. Give yourself permission to focus on the negative for a little while.

IMO, you broke up with her and that’s that. Whether she actually has cancer or not, the breakup was agreed upon and for good reasons.

If you want to remain supportive after you physically separate, good on you. But if she later turns into a totally nasty human being, you can decide it isn’t worth your peace of mind and absent yourself. I say, get her gone…nicely if you can, and not nicely if you must.

IF, as you say, she hates being pitied, then pity her and she’ll go away, right? Why do I doubt she’ll really do that? But maybe it’s that simple.

  1. You deserve to move on with your life, not have to walk on eggshells or hide relationships etc.

  2. Cancer, if it exists, is her burden to carry and not yours. Maybe she should move back to where she has a support system but if she doesn’t, that doesn’t mean you have to be the default 100% caregiver. She clearly knows your buttons and will push them, so don’t even go there.

  3. I’d also look down the line. Suppose after her death her family thinks that maybe some of YOUR stuff belonged to her. If she moves out now, then it’s clear she got everything to which she had a legitimate claim and you nip the doubts in the bud.

Best of luck!

If you’re in anything like the space I was in, one of the few remaining aspects of self-esteem that you have left, at least within the context of the relationship, is your sense of honor and integrity.

This will lead you, in the heat of an argument or a sob-fest, to make promises. Promises that may become very hard to keep as you get healthier.

They’ll become hard to keep because they were promises that were made under threat of physical or emotional damage. Maybe not even an explicit threat - after four or eight years, I knew all too well the implicit consequences of failing to promise to live up to whatever irrational demands my ex-wife made of me. To the extent that I began offering preemptive compromises and sacrificing my own needs to avoid the inevitable conflict.

What I’m trying to say is: don’t beat yourself up over breaking promises that you had no business making in the first place. If seeing somebody wonderful is what you need right now, then see somebody wonderful, and don’t apologize for it.

She’s an adult - none of her problems are your burden to carry. That can be your mantra when you’re dealing with guilt and manipulation (coincidence - she’s dramatically manipulative, and you’re dealing with massive guilt - who do you think gave you all this guilt in the first place?) - “This is not my burden to carry.” Her next apartment? “Not my burden to carry.” Her medical issues? “Not my burden to carry.” Her money problems? “Not my burden to carry.” Her emotional/psychological issues? “Not my burden to carry.” You sound like a nice person who wants to be nice to other people, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that letting other people walk all over you is nice. There’s a principle in Buddhism that says that doing no harm also means not allowing other people to harm themselves by harming you.

You need to take care of your self and look into researching Codependency issues.