I have been in a very similar situation and take it from me that when you are in the situation you cannot seem to see yourself without the other person; but once you are out of the relationship and things normalize you will wonder what the heck you were thinking.
I dated the same man for nearly 6 years. It was always a very tumultuous relationship, in fact the night we met he vomited on me which should’ve been my first clue…Every time a significant event in my life would come up, or a stressful period would be happening, such as law school exams, he would break up with me. Then a couple weeks later he would roll back around. One summer he went so far as to track me down in France and profess his undying love, etc…Well I got home and he broke up with me a few weeks later. Then I was headed to Alaska for a summer internship and he sure enough broke up with me, but not before he called me one night before I left crying to come visit him and when it was obvious another girl had been there he made up some ridiculous lie, later confessing when he popped up in Alaska for a surprise visit and saying he could not tell me because he just wanted to be close to me and he had only done it because he was so depressed over us…Well as soon as he saw signs I was moving on, there he was back again. The next year he broke up with me around my birthday so he could go out drinking with a casual acquaintance, the day of our law school graduation (a day before we were supposed to go on a trip to Argentina that I paid for) all culminating one year later when he shows up a day late for my birthday party and announces he is moving to Atlanta with no prior warning. Once he is there though he still keeps me hanging on, has me flying all around the country to see him, etc, until I find an invoice for a dating service in his apartment…Well you would think that would have been the end of it…Oh know flash forward another year when he starts breaking into my email and discovers that I have indeed been moving on. Well he reappears in Seattle yet again and we get a long for a short time until he becomes enraged with me at a bar over issues related to his family and how he thinks I love Bruce, yes my dog too much. He screams at me in public, the whole bit. Well we sort of reconcile and he goes back to Georgia and I receive an email with him detailing how upset he is about the bar situation and how I forced him to be a jerk to me and he will never see or speak to me again…That was about the point I woke up to the reality of the situation. Now almost two years later I am one thousand times happier, have moved on and met someone that is deserving of my love and attention and feel so much better about myself…And guess who resurfaced, still alone, still somewhat unhappy and still trying to be involved in my life?
The reason I tell you this is because men who are like this, who are fickle, who put you through what amounts to emotional torture are one thing… They are selfish. Selfish and narcissistic to the point that they almost cannot see what they are putting their partners through and most like wouldn’t care if they could. From experience I know that constantly putting up with this sort of behavior and forgiving it in a relationship will not ever fix it but rather set the expectation that they can have their cake and eat it too. There really is something to the idea that we teach people how to treat us. Sure it hurts now, but you make up your mind that you are not going to put up with this crap and that you deserve better, and eventually it will stop hurting and better still it will never be able to hurt you again! Trust me, once you start treating yourself with respect and realize your own value the next guy you meet will too. Do not let 3 years turn into 6 years or 10 years. |