Hi,
This going to take a while, so please forgive me, but I really need some advice desperately as I am currently so unhappy it is beyond belief. If anyone would take the time to read through my whole story and give me some advice, I would be so grateful.
In September 2001, I got into a relationship with a girl and at the time she was 16-years-old and I was 19-years-old. We live about 45 minutes drive from each other, so it wasn’t ideal, but she would get the bus to mine every weekend as her mum would stay at her boyfriends most weekends, meaning that my girlfriend would be on her own at home anyway and she would rather come and stay at my house as she had gotten very close to my family and was basically a pat of the furniture!
My parents were very, very good about it and never complained that she would stay here every Friday and Saturday night, despite the fact that they would be paying for her food and some weekends we would get a takeaway and they would pay for her food etc. On Saturday’s, I would go to the football with my dad, and my girlfriend would go shopping with my mum and a lot of the time my mum would buy her a top or a skirt etc. if she saw one that she liked as my mum is a very kind person like that and they had become very close.
Me and my girlfriend were so solid and everyday we would say we loved each other and it was always very special when we were intimate together. I was very much in love and I was sure she felt the same about me.
We were happy like this for two years, until she turned 18. I had never become close with her friends, in fact, I barely saw them over the two-year period as my girlfriend was usually at mine and would come out with my friends, and also her friends didn’t really like me as I had had a falling out when I was 18 with one of them (who they were all very close to). Anyway, when she turned 18 she had a holiday abroad arranged with all of these friends as it was the summer and they’d finished school and were preparing to go away and have some fun together before they all went off to university.
Halfway through her holiday, I received a phone call from her saying she had got the flu and wasn’t feeling well and that she was going to come home on her own (this was after a week of the fortnight holiday). I was obviously worried and spoke to her constantly, and as soon as she came home I spoke to her for a good while! However, she expected me to go and see her that week, but she had come home on the Monday (this was last July) and I had started a summer job that very day as part of my university course. I therefore couldn’t just walk out and see her that day or in fact that week as I was just too preoccupied with the job. I said I’d see her at the weekend, but that seemingly wasn’t good enough.
Anyway, this was when I first noticed her changing. She then passed her driving test and I was so pleased for her as she had failed the first couple of times and I knew how upset she had been over that. I arranged with my sister’s boyfriend that he would sell her his old car for half the price it was worth, so she got a very good deal out of it.
She then started going very, very weird indeed. She had taken a year out after finishing school (she starts at uni in September) and so she got a full-time job working in a department store to make some money for when she goes to university.
I then barely ever saw her and she went from phoning me all the time, to never phoning me at all. I would always have to ring her or I wouldn’t hear from her and I didn’t understand why she was like that.
She stopped coming around at weekends then and began going out with her mates to nightclubs 2/3 times a week and if I ever sent her a text message on her phone when she was out, she would just say, “I am with friends now, I’ll speak to you tomorrow” whereas on the odd-occasion she would go out with her friends previously, she’d still send a few texts and ask what I was doing, and what her night had been like so far etc.
I began noticing she was becoming more and more distant and then whenever I asked if I could come out to the clubs with her and her friends, she would tell me that it would spoil it for her and that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it as she couldn’t go off and chat to all the people she knows there because I would be clinging to her all night. I said for goodness sakes, I do have a personality, I can talk to your friends, you only have to introduce me to your friends, like I introduced you to mine, but she refused to budge.
She then started saying how I was always hassling her and she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t do anything she wanted to do, even though I never stopped her going out and she was out 3 to 4 nights a week. She said she was 18 now and independent and had her job and her little car and she wasn’t the same 16-year-old girl I had met.
After this went on for a couple of weeks, I said I couldn’t go on like this, just seeing her when she could be bothered to fit me in (which was like a Tuesday night or Wednesday night now and again). She said OK, let’s have a break for a month or so, but we won’t obviously see other people/pull other people.
Anyway, this was in December last year, and I didn’t really see her over Christmas, although we spoke a little. She was still, however, going out every weekend and some weeknights clubbing.
She was still saying that she loved me and that she now wanted to see me again. I then found out in January from one of her ex-friends just a couple of hours before I had an exam at university, that she had slept with her best friend after a night clubbing in December (it is a guy by the way, not a girl!). I rang her, in tears on the phone, and she admitted it and said it was a stupid, drunken one-night stand and had only happened because she was upset that we were on a break, even though she suggested it!
I also then found out that an ex-boyfriend of hers had been out a few times at the nightclub over Christmas/early January and that she had kissed him a few times, and when I asked her about that, she admitted it, even though she had sworn to me that I knew everything after I found out about her sleeping with her best mate.
I felt gutted again and my heart sank. I also then found out that she hadn’t used contraception with her best mate and she had to take the morning after pill, and maybe I am being stupid about that, but that really hurts me as well as I find it really personal that she didn’t even make him use contraception, or is that just me?
We then started seeing each other again after I stupidly accepted her excuses that we weren’t together when this happened and she’d never cheat on me and still loved me etc. Things seemed like they were getting back to normal again, but she was STILL going out every weekend with her friends clubbing and it was even worse now as she would also go out with so-called new friends from work on a Tuesday and Wednesday night. She would go to the cinema to see a film and would say she’d text me when she got home and she would be home about 11, yet she would text me at 1.30am saying she was talking to her girl friend from work and didn’t realise the time! This happened a few times, and I was thinking what the hell are you doing until that time on a Tuesday night! This has still not been explained!
I would see her twice a week if I was lucky and that would be to fit me in on a Tuesday night if nothing better came along. She’d never ring me and I would always have to ring her. Yet she still maintained she loved me.
Anyway, about two weeks ago this came to a head. I said I was fed up with the way things were and she said she agreed and that I was “Doing her head in” because she needed space and all I do is hassle her and she wants to be able to go out when she wants, without having to ask anyone. This shocked me, as I have never stopped her from going out, ever – even though every time she does I feel sick at the thought of what she is doing.
She said she wanted a break from this relationship and that she doesn’t want to be in a relationship right now with anyone and that she loves me and she wants to go until June/July without talking to me or seeing me so that she can sort her head out and then she knows she’ll want to get back with me in June/July and everything will be back to the way it was before. I have asked her 10,000 times if she is seeing anyone else/likes anyone else and she says that there is absolutely nobody and that I am really driving her mad asking her. She said that she started feeling like this when I didn’t bother going to see her when she came back ill from holiday, but I’ve told her a thousand times that I had started a new job that week and couldn’t just up and leave to see her, and that obviously if she was seriously ill I would have, but she only had flu and I couldn’t just walk out of a new job to see her.
A couple of times I have got upset on the phone and ended up in tears and she shouts at me and tells me how I am 21, not 2, and to stop crying because it is really getting on her nerves. This obviously makes me feel worse as I can’t help getting upset – I love her.
I get even more upset as well as in September she is going to university, which will be 3 hours drive away, so we’ll really only see each other at holidays then. I just can’t believe she doesn’t care that in June/July, we’ll only have a couple of months together then anyway before she is off to uni. I just want to shake her and make her realise we should be spending time together now!
I really need some advice…what should I do and what do you think she is thinking? Does she love me, am I being possessive or is she in the wrong? And what do you think this break thing is all about? Do you think there is someone else? She denies it categorically, and I have asked her friends and they all say they don’t have a clue.
Part two below...