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I am watching my girlfriend's life unravel!


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Sounds wonderful!  But are you prepared to never be needed and thus appreciated for all you want to be to her?  Because if she won't budge on this issue, you'll have to accept her as is or it'll be a deal breaker.

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We did have a nice light hearted text exchange tonight. No serious stuff.

We played a few rounds of, "Would You Rather"

Me: Would you rather look like Jar Jar Binks or talk like Jar Jar Binks?

Her: Would you rather have no sense of taste or no sense of smell?

Me: Would you rather never enjoy your favorite meal again or your favorite desert? 

Her: Would you rather show up to your next business meeting in a clown suit or be no call no show?

Me: Would you rather lick the floor of a subway car or get licked in the face by all the strangers on the subway car?

and so on.

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So much of what you just said in a previous entry above could have been me and my BF. Our first phone conversation I said jokingly, if you're going to vote for ___ for president we have nothing to discuss and he laughed.  Same views, same smarts, same love of laughing and animals.  When we first began seeing each other and would go out to eat we would order the same thing every time. It was weird and I'd never had that with anyone before either. There were times I would decide what I was having then would ask him what he was and yes, it was the same. The trippiest times were when I would think something and he would answer my question out loud. I hadn't spoken it! That happened more than once. We were so connected and I thought it was forever. I miss him terribly.

I'm rooting for all of us to get through this and end up being happy with whatever happens.

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I have been keeping up with your story too. I know you recently passed six months of no contact. Do you intend to reach out to him at all or keep waiting? 

Personally I don't think I could keep waiting. It is gut wrenchingly painful to resist the urge to say things I know will make her feel pressured. To keep engaging in small talk day in and out but at least she is there. She knows I am here. She knows I am waiting for her to get through this... Even though there is a long road ahead of her.

I am so lonely - especially here in Florida. I am in a very nice house, in a very nice country club gated community. All multi-million dollar homes. I have a home theater. I have a pool. I have a jacuzzi. I have everything but her, and her son. It really drives home just how important she is to me.

To make it worse I am 15 miles from anything in the middle of the swamp. Someone had the idea to build a walled in country club compound in the middle of the swamp. It is like a gator filled moat with only one way in and out. Sure it is great for security but I choose not to drive. So I am trapped in this bastion of saturated humidity for the next few weeks.

I escape my prison on August 15th. In two weeks I will fly back to southern Arizona and bask in the comfort of furnace like 115 dry heat. 

The thing that gets me the most about meeting her, was exactly how. This is going to sound creepy and stalkerish as can possibly be, but I saw a photo of her online. Nothing risque or pornographic - just her on a bicycle. And somehow that photo captured everything about her and blew me away. It was tagged in a manner that I could find her and so I reached out with a very simple introductory message.

She responded we started talking and that was when we decided to register for a dating site to use the matching algorithms. (Geeky science nerd alert)

We have no common history before I saw that photo. We grew up in different places in the world 2000 miles apart, she had moved north, I had moved south. We never went to school together. No connections what-so-ever except that moment and everything that has followed. 

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7 hours ago, I Don't Believe This said:

I am 15 miles from anything in the middle of the swamp. Someone had the idea to build a walled in country club compound in the middle of the swamp. It is like a gator filled moat with only one way in and out. Sure it is great for security but I choose not to drive. So I am trapped in this bastion of saturated humidity for the next few weeks.

You're making my 38 year old mobile home that needs painted and new flooring and the back of the garage replaced, look pretty good!  I'm in the mountains on a forested property abutting a year-around creek with deer and elk coming into my yard.  I may not like the 80s and 90s (no A/C), but at least it's not humid and it's not 115!  And a swamp with gators???  No thanks!  
 

I hear you about missing her.  It's ironic, isn't it, you're living in a beautiful home, surrounded by other beautiful homes and a Country Club, but it all means pretty much nothing without her and her son to share it with.  Oh, I get that!  I've felt much that way since my husband died, eleven years ago.  Yet I do find comfort being here, in nature, where he and I shared this home and this land.

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9 hours ago, I Don't Believe This said:

I have been keeping up with your story too. I know you recently passed six months of no contact. Do you intend to reach out to him at all or keep waiting? 

Personally I don't think I could keep waiting.

Yes, six months since we last spoke. I reached out early on with no response, so it's been a solid 5 months since I contacted him.  I gave myself 9/25 as a date to re-evaluate whether I reach out again or not.  Lately I've been thinking if I don't hear from him I'll send a holiday or birthday card for his birthday in January, but all of that is a maybe at the moment.  By no means am I waiting. I've been very busy lately going out with friends and meeting new people while researching for my project.  For me this is huge because I hadn't felt like going anywhere except to the barn for quite awhile. I had a full life before this relationship and intend to continue to focus on what I need to feel fulfilled again.

I've probably said this elsewhere but it deserves repeating.  This grieving process for me has brought so many other undealt with feelings to the surface.  In a way he and I are quite alike in being stoic and pretending we're strong and fine when in fact we're not - and maybe at the time the other incidents happened - weren't equipped to deal with the pain in a healthy way.  This time around I'm feeling everything, examining and releasing it so I can move forward.  I needed to go through this for myself in order to get to a really healthy place emotionally.  Once I feel that way the majority of the time will be when I decide whether I want to begin dating again. I'm a firm believer in "what's meant to happen will happen" and if we're meant to be together at some point we will reconnect, but I'm not going to try to force anything.  I would prefer that he reaches out to me when he is ready and healed himself.

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55 minutes ago, ChinUp54 said:

I've probably said this elsewhere but it deserves repeating.  This grieving process for me has brought so many other undealt with feelings to the surface.  In a way he and I are quite alike in being stoic and pretending we're strong and fine when in fact we're not - and maybe at the time the other incidents happened - weren't equipped to deal with the pain in a healthy way.  This time around I'm feeling everything, examining and releasing it so I can move forward.  I needed to go through this for myself in order to get to a really healthy place emotionally.  Once I feel that way the majority of the time will be when I decide whether I want to begin dating again. I'm a firm believer in "what's meant to happen will happen" and if we're meant to be together at some point we will reconnect, but I'm not going to try to force anything.  I would prefer that he reaches out to me when he is ready and healed himself.

I have been experiencing something similar. Mine not so much related to the loss itself. But from my toxic family. I never realized how much abandonment I felt from my childhood until I felt my girlfriend pull away from me so fast. These events triggered a response I had never felt before and my first reaction in May was to grab a hold of her as tight as I could. It was all fear. I have not spoken with her about it in depth, but we have spoken about it enough so I know she knows I was feeling a lot of anxiety and not being myself.

 

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That's exactly it.  I'm from a toxic family as well, with a couple narcissists, and abandonment is huge for me.  I thought I had it all worked out until this breakup happened. In a way it's a blessing for me. I'm going to come out of this healthier and stronger. :)

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I've eaten all kinds of wild game, but never gator!
 

It seems everything we go through in life colors the things we go through now, so that can affect our responses, so that in actuality, we're not just responding to something we're currently going through, but everything up to that point factors in as well.  Sometimes we have to make a conscious effort to separate it all and just respond to the one thing rather than it all piling up and hitting us at once.

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Not true for horses...back in the early 70s they sold horse meat at Fred Meyer's, tough & stringy. Now I'm sorry I ever tried it because I've been attached to some horses the last few years.  I'm in a dilemma with pigs because pork tastes so good but I love pigs!  Mostly I'm vegetarian so I don't have to worry about it, but I raised my kids on elk and deer meat.  But I love them and I don't think I personally could shoot one.  My back yard is a safe zone. :)

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If I had to kill something in order to eat it I too would be vegetarian. Kayc I didn't realize horse meat was sold in the U.S.  One rescue group I'm involved with saves horses from being sent to slaughter in Mexico. The meat is shipped to Asia and Europe. Horses aren't raised as food, so the meat is often toxic due to the drugs horses are given in their lifetimes.

I grew up in the upper peninsula of Michigan where hunting is a staple for most people, so I understand the culture.  As for me, I stick to chicken mostly. The more I learn about how animals are treated when raised for food, the more I refuse to eat. Yes, I live in Boulder. ;)

I hope everyone is having a great day. :)

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I like horses. I think horses are beautiful and graceful animals. I have even considered buying myself a riding horse in a few years when I get to the point I am building a remote home on some property. But I wouldn't call them cute like lamb or pigs. 

So horses do not apply to the statement about cuter = tastier. I bet koala's are really tasty. 

That said, horses have been a staple in many cultures. I have had the opportunity to travel and eat all sorts of strange things like bugs, snakes and so on. My kids were raised with the idea of, "The picky eater starves first" My youngest was readily and happily consuming Korean stir fry of octopus, squid, mussels, scallops in hot chili paste by the time he was 8 years old. My older son eats bugs. All the time. A few years ago when I was chief engineer at a small aerospace company, I had a friend come back from Asia with bags of fried crickets as a gag for office. I brought in my 12 year old son and he ate them all.

The reality is, if we globally accepted bugs as a protein source we could actually solve a large portion of the global food problem. 

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ChinUp,

That's mostly what I stick to also...I used to raise chickens, I see them as food.  I know people who are attached to their chickens as pets, I never was.  I used to have pigeons too, I ate squab when I was young and before I knew what it was...I don't think I could again no matter how it tastes!  I don't know that I could eat a bug.  In fact, I liked Escargot before I found out what it was. :)

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2 hours ago, I Don't Believe This said:

My kids were raised with the idea of, "The picky eater starves first" My youngest was readily and happily consuming Korean stir fry of octopus, squid, mussels, scallops in hot chili paste by the time he was 8 years old.

I've always enjoyed seafood, particularly growing up on the Great Lakes, so I should add the seafood you named to my food choices.  My daughter has always been an adventurous eater.  She began eating sushi as a grade-schooler and people would comment as their kids were so particular.

Growing up on the UP of Michigan I've eaten many things that most people haven't. I was fooled one time by my parents and grandparents into trying pickled cow tongue. I don't remember what the proper name for it was, but I never trusted them again to try something without knowing what it was first. They thought it was funny. I thought it was disgusting and spit it out. Oh the things we remember from childhood!

How about Rocky Mountain oysters? ;)

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I have a rocky mountain oyster story...

We were driving through the Texas panhandle - Amarillo to be precise - and there is a famous steakhouse there. We stopped and I bought a big plate of rocky mountain oysters. My kids were 12 and 13 at the time. The plate was placed in front of us and I told them exactly what they were. I have never tricked my kids into eating something, I always told them what it was they were eating.

Each of them took one, took a first bite to decide, and then finished the entire order.

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I think you start them out as babies...when my kids went to solid food, I didn't buy baby food.  I ground up whatever we were eating and that's what they ate.  It got them used to different tastes from the get go!

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It has been a bad week. Yesterday we had a very tear filled conversation.

She is pushing me away hard. She feels guilty that she is holding me back. That she is dragging me down with her and I am not out having fun. She feels like I should be doing what I want to do and forgetting about her and that she has nothing but apathy for everything in life right now. Even her son.

She wants to break up. 

I have countered with I am ok with taking a break and being no-contact until October when she gets out of the inpatient program and then reevaluating. 

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Its over.

I have moved my flight schedules around to get back to Arizona first thing tomorrow morning. Cost me a lot of money but I just need to hug my dog. 

I am not going to fight it any more.

The end was this - she wanted me to be just her friend.

So I said, "I have to tell you the truth. It is not meant to be an ultimatum its just reality. I cannot be just your friend. It hurts too much. I have been in pain for months and I cannot keep it up."

She accused me of trying to emotionally blackmail her and we are done. Of course every time she has start with the "I have to you the truth and it is not something you want to hear" I don't get the same defense in return.

I won't be back here for a while.

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