[ryan]

Experts, lend me your ears!

I’m going to try and keep this as concise as possible, but it’s not something that’s very easy to make concise, brief, or short.

In February 2008 I started dating a wonderful, educated and determined girl. She was 20 years old and attended a university in my city where she was there on full scholarship (she didn’t want to go there but because of some of her family’s financial issues, this is relevant for later). Sheepishly shortly after meeting her I asked her out on a date and was fortunate to get it.

We were seeing each other casually, but I soon found out she had a long distance relationship with someone, and that their relationship was on the rocks. After seeing each other for about 2 months, she broke things off with me for a few reasons but none more prevalent than the fact her ‘ex but not quite so ex’ was flying into town. He flew into town at the beginning of the summer for a few weeks, during that time I was ignored. Shortly there after, she flew down to the States to take part in a summer program at a prestigious university. I didn’t hear from her for nearly 4 months.

When she came back in September things went from cold and awkward, to hot and heavy fairly quickly. I soon, however, found out that she was messing around with another guy when she was at her summer program, hence why I never heard from her. I also found out from other people that she’d casually (aka messing around with) several other guys during her long distance relationship. Despite this, things went from cold and awkward to hot and heavy within about a month and a half. Her ‘ex but not so ex’ flew into town to see her, but quickly dispatched him. In Dec 2008 we started dating exclusively.

In April 2009, she graduated from University but applied for a work permit that allowed her to stay in the country. She loved me and wanted to stay with me. We ended up getting a VERY swanky apartment in the best part of the city (thanks to some financial aid from my parents), I wanted her to have the best life possible.

We flew down to visit her parents in the States, and I won’t lie, things did not go well. My family and her family come from very different backgrounds, and I said one or two things that while not rude in the circles I come from, may have came off as insensitive to them. Despite the fact we had a great time, it was tainted and set the tone for the future. I started to get frustrated when her former landlord ripped her off of her security deposit, and when her former roommate wouldn’t pay her part of the bills. I have a very low patience for BS, and seeing my ex girlfriend be treated this way was very upsetting for me. I didn’t hide the fact that I was irked.

This is where the problems started. Like I described earlier, my ex is a very ambitious person, and despite this she continued to work a menial job that got her through University. She became depressed, and lonely (she worked days, and I worked nights). This wasn’t a problem before because she went to school during the day. Other issues started cropping up, such as the fact she didn’t want to contribute to our rent/bill money when she wasn’t living at our apartment. At the time, I was near broke, and she got a sweet house sitting gig in a huge mansion from a friend that paid her $1400 dollars per month. This didn’t sit so well with me, and the tension level started to rise. Soon, she set me an ultimatum. I needed to treat her better (I started having some mood swings because of all the pressure I was under) and I needed to finish school ASAP (I had about 2 years left of school). A fire was lit under my ass.

I think you can see where this was going. Like any guy under an extreme amount of pressure I started to back into my ‘man cave’. I tried to encourage her to apply for jobs, and offered to go to social events with her to try and help out her social situation. She was very resistant as I she didn’t hide the fact that she didn’t want to remain in the city. I ended up finding a new job to accommodate our schedules better so that we could spend more time together, it also paid a lot better. I wanted to try and provide a better lifestyle for her. I started to contribute more to our budget, and I wanted to be able to be more generous (I am a notorious penny pincher).

By the time September 2009 came around, things got progressively worse. We started having sex A LOT less, and eventually, I started acting out. I started to do stupid stuff, such as going out to parties without her. I was frustrated. In the last 12 months of our relationship, she was house sitting 3/4ths of the year. When she would house sit she would ask me to spend the night. If I didn’t, she got sad. This led to me going to work wearing the same clothes sometimes 3-4 days at a time. It also meant that I never got the chance to study. I wanted to move with her, but between work, and taking care of her, I could really only take 1-2 classes a semester. Not because I lacked time to spend at school, but simply that I never had the opportunity to study. I think it was hard for her to understand, since she was such a stellar student and was so committed to her studies. (I didn’t mention she has an IQ of a genius and got 1600 on the SAT test, did I?)

I started to feel emasculated. Screwed if I do, screwed if I don’t. If I told her I was going home to study, she was sad. If I didn’t go home and study, it would compromise our ability to be together in the future. I’ve eventually come to know this as a co dependency complex. Things became so unbalanced it was hard. I had moments where I was the perfect boyfriend, and other moments I felt like I was paralyzed.

My ex was starting to flounder, she couldn’t make up her mind if she was going to stay, going to go home, or take off to Europe to travel. I started to isolate myself and brace for the worst. Despite this, she was still discussing marriage.

This situation hit a head when I deferred lunch with her in order to play in an alumni soccer game at my high school, where she flipped out that I wouldn’t come pick her up from work. This, directed at a guy that drove her to work (way out of my way) every day. I fired a salvo back. Things went downhill and the argument went on for a while, it even plagued us when I took her down (paid for half of her expensive ticket) to my family’s place in Hawaii for Christmas. She cried the entire flight down, and the morning after we returned home she flipped out at me.

We went to my uncle’s new year’s party, where she ended up getting drunk and puked on me (while she was asleep). Me being the guy I was didn’t care one iota. But things still started to go wrong. I got frustrated and one night just went with a bunch of my friends to a female friend’s cabin. Despite the fact I didn’t spend the night, my ex spent the entire night crying. She cried herself to sleep.

The Winter Olympics were in my city in 2010, I took her to a ton of events to try and keep her happy and interested. We had lots of fun, especially since she’s American and I am Canadian. It made for a fun rivalry.

I tried to fly her parents to Napa for my ex’s birthday to do a wine tasting tour, but even this caused an issue. I finally had money in my bank account and I wanted to lavish it on my princess. I ended up taking her up to a lavish ski resort for the weekend of her birthday and bought her a really expensive bottle of Champagne for her Birthday. We spent the time skiing and snuggling in front of the fire. There was no doubt in my mind that despite the fact things took its toll on us we loved each other. She still wanted to get married.

About a month though, things kind of hit a head. While she had FINALLY applied for a few jobs in town, I was on the fence about the whole thing. I really needed some space. The job she applied for was really prestigious, and the interview process was nearly 2.5 months long. I worked on her with it, and tried to do my best to support her. But the constant pressure of the relationship had me wavering. I wasn’t sure that even if she got the job I wanted to remain with her. I really needed some space to collect myself. Space was something that from the beginning of the relationship I was very clear about. I love to be alone, it lets me appreciate the time I spend with her.

I decided to take some time away from our relationship. We both agreed. Remarkably, things got a lot better. We had a ton of fun together! The pressure was off, we could be ourselves. This moment of bliss was shattered when she went home for her brother’s graduation. The company her dad worked for was going to shut down, her parents were going to have to declare bankruptcy.

Then they dangled a carrot in front of her, the owner would offer her a sweet heart deal if she wanted to buy it. My world got flipped upside down. My ex just loaned her parents $5,000 dollars, and she really desperately wanted to help them. With the interview process for this other job moving incredibly slowly, she started wavering. I told her I couldn’t have an opinion because I loved her and I know how much she cares about her family and that I didn’t want to be selfish and keep her from them. She said she didn’t want a long distance relationship.

I told her I couldn’t go with her. I wasn’t done school, this business thing was (and still is) anything less than certain and it’s now been almost 4 months since she got down there. I couldn’t go down until I knew how things were going.

I gave the girl the best send off a woman could ever have. It was great, a surprise dinner with all of her closest friends, my family, and her employers, which was a complete surprise and pulled off with perfect success. It was still hard on me. Having her pack her stuff in our apartment had to be the hardest thing in the world. My last surprise for her was a photo album that I’d secretly been compiling for a while, all of our pictures taken together from the very beginning to the very end.

Sorry this is where it gets hard for me. I sent her off with an amazing good bye; she cried her entire way out. She said she didn’t believe in mistakes, only learning experiences and that I would always be close to her heart. For a month and a half I fielded phone calls where she was crying about the situation, or that she was running out of money, or that her family was chastising her, or that she was horny and missed me. One night she even asked me if I wanted to marry her (via text).

At the same time, she’s calling my family (mom and grandma) and facebooking my brother telling him she wants to go travelling with him soon.

We kept in close contact, eventually a month after she got down, she asked me to fly down and visit her. We had a great time, but I didn’t want to bring up the long distance relationship she said she didn’t want to have. I took her family out for dinner and put a lot of effort into patching stuff up with them. I played with her sister, bought beer for her younger brother. We went out for dinner every night and got intimate. But every time an opportunity would come up to discuss what was going on she would say ‘I think you had some wrong expectations’ or when we had sex that ‘she hoped I could separate emotions and actions’. Given that the fact that the circumstances that affected our relationship hadn’t changed at all, that it was best I not say anything at all. One night when we went out she said that I was closed to her and that I still don’t talk very much (I closed my doors and stopped talking to her, it was true). I just told her that I cared about her a lot, that I want to be the man she loves, but that the underlying issues of school and the fact that she isn’t sure what’s going on with her life means that we just kind of need to tackle our own issues. She pulled me in for the most passionate kiss we’d had in almost a year. We slept in the same bed the entire trip.

I didn’t want to get back into a relationship where the same issues still existed. I wanted to make sure we weren’t codependent on each other. I wanted to know that she would be happy with herself before I became a part of the picture again.

Since she left I’d been helping her with the business plan she was working on to try and save her family. I wanted it to work out for her. But please note, that over the last 4 months this business thing has swung from absolutely not happening, to a small chance that it is.

My only regret is not telling her that I would love to move down there if this business thing worked out, I would love to move down there and be with her. But she really didn’t give me that opportunity to say anything. She wasn’t inviting and I wasn’t about to make the situation awkward.

The night I left, I carried her to bed because she was sick, tucked her in, cooked her dinner, and wrote her a 3 page note saying how much I cared about her, how much I loved her and how she was a great host and I really am going to miss her.

She drove me to the airport the next morning, gave me a big long kiss, and waited as I walked through the security line as both of us were on the verge of bursting into tears.

A day later, she called saying she wished I had stayed longer. That she missed me, that she cared about me. She called for another few days until she discovered that this business opportunity was not going to work, her family was going to have to declare bankruptcy, and that I needed to sell all of her old books, and all of the furniture she has up here. A few days later, I stopped hearing from her.

A week goes by and I don’t hear from her. Eventually she calls asking how I am doing, says she might come back up to my city and visit her old employers and wants to see my family.

2 weeks go by and I don’t hear from her, so I shoot her an email, no response. A quick phone call? No response. A few days later I finally hear back.

She’s ‘casually’ seeing someone. Not only that but she says I had a shot with her to patch things up while I was down visiting and that I didn’t seem to want to talk about it. The guy runs the swimming club that she swims at. Opportunist much? He’s 12 years older than her, and ugly duckling and his house was foreclosed on last year. I found it out from her younger brother.

That was a month ago and I’m still at a loss for words. I’ve broken off all contact with her, aside from a short email asking her what she wants me to do with some stuff she has here, and that if I don’t hear from her I’m going to throw it out, and that I ask her to not contact me again.

I never get a response to the email, but she did call me last week. I ignored it. A few days later I get a text, ‘not going to call me back?’ a few days later I respond saying I’m busy’. Which is truthful, since she left and pushed me aside I enrolled in classes again full time, work full time and play 3 sports.

Eventually she calls me again, and inquires how I’m doing, all the normal questions. I steered away from asking anything about her.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I should feel a little bit used. I supported her through this entire mess while she was down there, I fielded every teary phone call, every sad email, every lonely text.

I love(d?) this girl and care about her a lot. I just really needed to see that stuff was going to be stable and that she was going to be happy before I could fly down there no questions asked. I really do want things to work out, but I fear that it is no longer possible.

I didn’t feel that any more I was going to make was going to be well received, and that she wasn’t very inviting. Except now she’s saying I had an opportunity to talk about it!?

It was suggested to me that she and I outwaited each other. That I was waiting for her to try and make the best out of an opportunity up here, so I didn’t feel guilty about going to school. She was waiting for me to finish school so she could get out of here.

I feel paralyzed by what she has done (again) and I don’t know what to say to her when I talk to her next.

[Ask April Masini]

She’s dating someone else, and you’ve given it your best shot. If you feel used, then don’t put yourself back out there to be used any more.

My advice is that you move on and find someone else who is available in many ways that this ex-girlfriend no longer is.

I hope that helps. Let me know how things go. And join me on Facebook. Here’s that link: [url][/url].

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