“Pull the stick out of yourself, learn to commit, & marry the wench,” has to be up there though, as far as some of the best advice given in the thread. Am I right? 
Don’t be her back up plan. You don’t get to take breaks in relationships when you feel like getting some different dick.
Are you saying you’re both virgins? So the sex you’re having with her is not penetrative sex? That would change the whole dynamic here.
Uh… and they have been together for 7 years? 
I’d say don’t be surprised if she tries the same thing around Christmas.
Both of you don’t seem to want to face reality, so I’ll offer a compromise. Agree to stay apart for six months. No texting, no calling, no birthday card, no nothing. Promise each other that six months from today you’ll get together, have a nice dinner and discuss your relationship.
Then see if either one of you actually want to get back together after six months.
I was trying to figure that one out, too. I think Cbud’s definition of “having sex” isn’t the same as mine.
You ain’t learned nothin’, have you?
She is using you for a backup, in re: her online dude, and/or then the next one.
Next time you feel depressed, don’t spill all your guts out in a text. You just broke down and cried like a woman, didn’t you? Snap out of it.
And, “she still doesn’t know”?
You are thinking that you gave an ultimatum-in reality, you are begging, and begging gets you nowhere.
And, is *she *saying the same thing, now?
Hey guys! Another update!
So first off, no we’re not virgins… i’m saying “eventually we had sex” as in eventually that happened later in that very night.
ANYWAY, I appreciate all the advice given… some of you have really changed the way I think about things and have also helped me cope with all of this.
SO here’s the latest update. We’ve been talking and I’ve been finding out more and more about what’s going on up in her head.
Last night, her and I had probably the most honest, heart to heart talk we’ve had in years… She started to cry and explain to me that she’s been confusing herself with her own feelings and that she’s seeing that shes making some serious mistakes.
Obviously you guys can never know everything I do about her but there are some things here that she mentioned and admitted to that really change the situation. She says she never wanted anything more than a friendship with this guy but it turned into something else because she could not set boundries between them. She said she really enjoyed the affection and acceptance she got from him but admittedly used her attractiveness to him as a way of maintaining that.
She also said that she believes she just has a personality flaw and can’t say no to people or hurt them in anyway. She said she felt like if she stopped sharing certain things with him he would lose interest in their friendship and also be hurt that she wasn’t returning his affection. She said she doesn’t want to hurt anybody but realizes it was much more important to her to not hurt me than him, but avoided that fact for too long and ended up hurting me.
Basically, she’s telling me she fucked up and wants me in her life… but still didn’t want to hurt him because she feels like hes really attached to her. She also admitted she does feel some attachment to him but that I was more important.
At this point, shes basically telling me that she wants to be with me again… and that if she could just cut ties with this guy all together without hurting him, she would. I told her that is not an option… I said the only way we could be together again is if she proved to me that I am what she wants and she cuts all ties with the other guy no matter what.
She said she needed a little time to mentally prepare herself to cut him off. That same night she went home and talked to him and told him the truth about what was going on. She told me he said he understood but didn’t want to lose her completely out of his life.
Since then we haven’t talked yet but I plan on telling her this is all or nothing. I said I already have doubts about her loyalty to me and that if we were going to move forward at all together she has to cut him off completely, there can be no friendship between them no matter how much she thinks she could maybe manage it without hurting me.
Anyway… let me know what you guys think.
Thanks again <3 you guys are awesome.
She’s stalling.
She may or may not mean what she’s saying but she’s still putting off making a decision because the attention she’d getting from the other guy is that important to her. It’s nor really about hurting him as much as it is about losing the attention she’s getting.
I’m sorry dude. This is quite fucked up for you now. You may be able to play this out a little longer and she may even agree to cut this guy loose. But there will be resentment (on both sides) and there will be another one that takes his place, sooner or later.
You can keep at it and figure this out for yourself. Perhaps it’s an important lesson for you to learn through your own experience and not from a bunch of nosy anonymous strangers on some random message board. OR, you can call “break” and step away from each other for as long as it takes for your own heads to clear and figure out if it’s time for you to finally move on. Chances are, if you call a break, she’ll seize the opportunity to get closer with that other guy. That may be the only real and honest answer you’ll get to any of your questions (with respect to your GF, not people in this thread).
I think if not splitting up for good you guys really do need to take a break for a while.
Sounds like while she doesn’t want to lose you completely she does want to get the “have only ever been with one other guy” thing out of her system. Better to do it now when you can officially be not together than trying to do it if you’re engaged or married.
Maybe she finds the grass is greener on the other side, maybe not. At least she’ll know.
Not to say you need to be her back-up plan but maybe she needs to see what life without you is like to realize that she indeed wants a life with you.
For what it’s worth, I once posted a very similar thread here:
The outcome of thread was that my girlfriend broke up with me to be with the other guy. However, shortly thereafter she realized that she’d made a huge mistake. She begged for me to forgive her, and I did. That was three years ago, and now we’re married with a beautiful little girl and our relationship is great.
Yes, it took a long time for me to fully trust her again, and I’ll certainly never forget that it happened… but I also would have missed out on many of the happiest moments in my life thus far had I refused to give her another chance. Sometimes people fuck up, you know?
This is no guarantee that things will go the same for you if you give your girlfriend another chance. I just wanted to sound off and let you know that it IS possible for a relationship to recover from something like this – but you have to be willing to forgive and move on, and she has to learn how to set boundaries with others and respect your feelings.
If you don’t what the right thing to do is, usually the harder of the choices, is the right one.
Do you think in retrospect that it was somewhat of a good idea to let her fuck up before you got married and had a kid? Not just in a better then than now sense but also that she knid of got it out of her system in a way?
That sounds a lot like an excuse to me. She couldn’t say no to the new guy and set appropriate boundaries with him, but she could hurt you to the point where you’re willing to break up with her? I’m calling bullshit.
As was said earlier, if you have to ask then it’s already over.
Nobody here can say for certain she’s going to do wrong by you. But what is certain is that YOU can’t say so. A part of you, whether justified or not, doesn’t trust her. That’s what kills the relationship. And I don’t mean to imply you’re the problem. In my experience, that little something is your spidey sense and you would do well to listen to it. Plus, all women under 30 are capricious and full of fleas.
Her excuses are thin and truly ridiculous. She couldn’t end/limit contact with him because he’s grown attached to her and she doesn’t want to hurt his* feelings*? Give me a break. She didn’t end contact with him because she didn’t WANT to end contact with him. He excites her. And if he lived in town, they’d have already hooked up. Guaranteed.
I mean, seriously, let’s think of all the ways she could have limited contact with him without ever hurting his feelings:
a) Not responding to his emails so quickly and so prolifically
b) Limiting contact with him to emails
c) Not divulging her real name
d) Not divulging her personal cell phone number
e) Texting “Busy. TTYL” instead of texting him back and forth for hours on end
f) Not accepting him as a Skype buddy
g) Saying, “Duck Dynasty just came on and I have to go.” instead of Skyping with him for hours on end
h) Telling him that the relationship is hurting her boyfriend and she needs to curtail communication.
Besides, if she really is so immature that she can’t set boundaries, then where does that leave you? With a flaky girlfriend who continually chooses to hurt YOU instead of the new flavor of the week.
I understand her completely. She’s trying to have her cake and eat it, too. What I don’t understand is why you continue to let her have all the power in this relationship. If my boyfriend had ever told me that he needed to “mentally prepare” to cut off contact with a new woman, I’d tell him to take all the time in the world because I was dumping his ass.
P.S. It’s not “Her and I talked” but rather “She and I talked.” Petty, I know, but it bugs.
She wants to f*** other dudes, so dump her ass and let her see if the grass really is greener.
Otherwise, you will be in limbo for a long time, and it will suck.
One thing you may also want to consider: Can the grass be greener for you over another fence? You might be better off going out and meeting some new people, dating other girls and find out if she is right for *you *or are you also settling for a security blanket who wil come over and give you sex? You may find out that you are better off somewhere else. She has already decided she needs to graze a bit. You may want to take this opportunity to find out who you are without her. You have power in this, as well.
She wants you in her life because you are “Attachment”. It is very hard for either of you to let go of 7 years of bonding. You are also physically present.
She wants to be with the other guy too, but he is “Lusty Attraction”. He is new and makes her blood race with hormones. His attention literally stimulates her brain’s pleasure center - intensely. You once were that exciting guy - but you shifted to attachment 1-3 years after you met - whole different set of chemicals you stimulate in her brain - still nice but not the same.
A person is either ready to settle down for the long haul with attachment, or they are not.