Is there any part of you that’s afraid to break up with her because what you’re really afraid of is that she’ll shrug and say okay like it’s no big deal and thus reveal how little you and the relationship actually mean to her?
That has never crossed my mind. If the relationship and me meant little towards her then I’d be in a way relieved because then she wouldn’t be IM’ing me all the time asking for a second chance like she did last time. If our relationship is over and I’m starting to think it may be we need a clean break.
Well, you may not be single AND happy. But sounds like you’r emiserable anyway so you might as well have an opportunity to meet new people.
Are you her “reserve boyfriend”, or something? She’ll just hold onto you and take you for granted until you try to assert yourself and break away, then she scrambles to hold onto you, then falls back into taking you for granted once she’s sure you’re back in line again? Cause if that’s your relationship dynamic, you really do need to look after yourself. Instead of looking at being single as being without something, maybe look at being single as having every possibility available to you. If you were single, you would be available to meet your dream girl, right?
Let me tell you from my personal experience of trying to make a doomed relationship work for three years, that it doesn’t get any better. If it ain’t gonna work, it ain’t gonna work. I broke up with the guy for good finally, then met my husband a couple of months later. I wouldn’t have been looking for him if I was still holding onto forlorn hope of making something work that had little chance of working.
As for the time invested in the relationship, I believe we learn something from every relationship and experience we have - your time with her wasn’t wasted. You’ve learned things about life and about yourself from this experience. Maybe it’s time to move on and learn about other things now.
I’m going to take a different tack from everyone else.
What I see a lot of in your story, is assumptions. What I do not see a lot of, is communication. You didn’t tell her what you wanted to do in New York. Suppose - like me - she thinks the Arches are stupid and not worth a trip anywhere, even across the street? Suppose she’d not have gone if she’d been given a chance to know?
What do you mean when you say ‘boyfriend’? I can’t tell how old you are, or how serious you consider the relationship. Why do you feel your relationship outranks other relationships in her life? This is not an accusation, I’m trying to get to the heart of something here. If you are good friends, and you happen to be male and she is female, then that’s different from if you have a close emotional and sexual relationship. Not everybody means the same thing when they say ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’. Maybe you mean one thing when you say it, and she means another. I don’t know. If you feel the relationship is worth the effort to find out, then I suggest a real conversation, wherein you actually communicate. People have suggested ways to bring it up. In my life, I find most relationships are not worth the effort to communicate without second-guessing, without making assumptions. The ones that are, though - they’re important.
So you didn’t tell her what you wanted to do. She already had potential plans with friends. You inquired again, she still didn’t have an answer. Eventually, she made plans with somebody else again, and didn’t tell you. I can imagine reasons why, and none of them are evil, subversive, or particularly self-centered: try this one on for size: She made plans with person Y, which, while not the plans she expected with person A and B, still fit the bill of ‘previous plans’. When were those plans made? Particularly when you apparently never gave a better reason for going to New York than “oh, you know.” Maybe she doesn’t like to go wander around? We don’t know, we don’t know her.
Do you feel that because you would drop everything for her, she has an obligation to do the same for you? If so, is this your expectation alone - or have you ever discussed this expectation with her, and has she agreed to it? If you have never discussed it, yet feel she should meet your expectations naturally without discussion, then clearly she is not the right girl for you, and it’s time to move on.
Do you think she deliberately withheld the information about the movie, or simply forgot to mention it? Is it worth it to you to try to find out, without accusations or assumptions?
Look. I’ve been married 12 years. In that time, my husband and I have learned all kinds of compromises. Like, he goes geocaching, an activity that interests me not in the least. I don’t like to have geocaching outings sprung on me when we’re out driving around. But I think it’s great that he likes to do it, and I encourage him to go do his thing. I don’t like a lot of the music he listens to - I am happy for him to listen to it with earphones on. He likes to do things spontaneously, and he likes surprises and big parties and so on. I don’t. I really don’t like surprises. On weekends, I like to go out for a couple of hours by myself. Sometimes I spend 3, 4, even 5 hours out, and I don’t call home every time I go from one store or yard sale or whatever, to the next. I don’t feel an obligation to account for that time. He worries, because he’s afraid I might get in a car crash or something and he wouldn’t know where I was, but he doesn’t care how I spend my free time. Yet we have managed to communicate and compromise and encourage each other to have freedom within our satisfying relationship. It’s okay if your girlfriend doesn’t want to do everything you want to, especially if she prefers to choose her own entertainments. It’s okay if she doesn’t drop other plans, or other friends, in favor of a boyfriend who - as you admit yourself - isn’t interested in moving the relationship to a more serious situation. But if it’s not okay with you, then it’s not, and like others are saying, move on.
But don’t be pissed off with her. She’s entitled to live her life, same as you are. If you haven’t worked out mutually-acceptable parameters of the relationship, and you find it unsatisfying as is, and don’t want to take the time and effort it would require to find out if you can make it mutually satisfying - with no guarantee that it will work…then well, I won’t belabor the point worse than I’ve already done.
But this is not all her fault. Please don’t try to tell yourself it is. You could have called her again. Sent email. IM’d her. Told her “I want to go to the City to see the Gates in Central Park on Sunday. I’ll go with or without you, but I’ll be leaving at 10am, and I’d love you to go with me. We haven’t seen much of each other lately.” It didn’t happen. And she didn’t tell you what she ought to have, either. So, there you go.
You are right there was little communication from both of us regarding this. I didn’t tell her I was going to do X Y and Z I said I was looking at seeing one of the off broadway shows from my discount club, walking around Times Square and the WTC area. Not once did I mention the Arches to her because I was going to mention them there. I couldn’t tell her what show because when I first asked her they didn’t have the weekend ones listed and after being told that she didn’t hear from Laura or Tammy I wasn’t going to ask again, because at that point she should let me know when she hears from them, but if she did not hear from them she should have let me know before making plans with anyone else.
When she spoke to me Sunday night she asked me what I thought of them and I said it was intresting, and she wanted to know if I was going back because she would go this time.
And I’m not pissed WITH her but AT her Pissed at the actions not the person.
Ok, this is the part where you lost me. I am a big believer in making a relationship work, doing everything you can to see things through, yadda yadda yadda [/Elaine].
However, IMNSHO once a relationship has deteriorated to the point that one of the parties feels the need to end the relationship, it’s unlikely that it can be put back together. Now, you say that you took her back because she said she would change and that she did change for a while. But what happens now? Things are pretty much the same as they were before? Changing isn’t easy to do, especially if she didn’t change for her. It sounds like she only changed her behavior to get you back. Those types of changes are rarely permanent.
I agree that perhaps communication in this relationship is lacking, but it seems to me that maybe she doesn’t really think it’s important for you two to spend a lot of time together. Is that accurate? If so, is that acceptable to you? If not, you need to make a change.
Now, if the trip to NY was a big deal to you, you should have explained to her that it was, and that you would really like her to go. If after that time, she still wants to check with her friends to see what they are doing first, it would seem to me that something is just not quite right.
I agree that change isn’t easy but If she wanted us to stay together she had to do some things like
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Not changing the radio station when I’m singing along until she finds something I don’t know even if it’s in a langage she doesn’t understand.
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Making an effort to go places with me
We don’t have to spend every minute we have free together but we both expect if the other has a free day we will see each other unless there is an event only one is invited to like when her friend takes her to NY to tapings of Hope & Faith which BTW she has canceled plans with me to attend.,
She knows that I don’t like going to New York alone so if she said no I would not be going at all, and she knows I can’t request the tickets unless I know how many I need.
What frustrated me is when she told me when she heard from Laura & Tammy if she was seeing them she would let me know. It seems to me that spending time with me has become less important than in the past.
And I know I should talk to her rather than talking about it here but by doing this it helps me sout out what I want and how to rationally talk about it
Changing the radio when you’re singing along is petty but rude.
It shouldn’t be an effort to do things with you.
My husband and I do things separately all the time (just tonight he was off at baseball and I went to a self-help group meeting). We both know that spending time together as a couple is a priority, and if one of us is starting to feel shorted, we’ll make an effort to do some things together.
Not a bad idea, to know what you want from her and where you stand when you sit down with her to discuss it.
Welcome to the board!
LOL.
Almost 11 years later…
Is she Mrs MannyL? A long departed ex with the underlying in this post being related to the cause? Maybe things went great for a long time after this and they parted amicably?
Inquiring minds want to know. Inquiring zombies want to eat inquiring minds.
Well, there’s something we can all agree on.