A
male
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:I have been with this woman for 6 1/2 mths. we seem to get along about everything. she moved to my city to get away from her ex and start a new life. when we found each other we instantly clicked.we have been living together for a while now.recently,after a trip back to her home town,she told me that she was not sure if she wanted to be in a commited relationship right now. I later found out that she had seen her ex while there. Now she is on the phone with him day in and day out. She has more conversation with him in an hour or two, than she has with me in a week. She say's that they are just trying to remain friends and are helping each other with their divorce, and that she has no intentions of going back to him. It is really starting to bother me, and when i expressed that to her, she did not seem to understand, and that she was going to continue to talk to him.I need some advice on how to make her understand how I feel,as well as wether or not I am not seeing the big picture or not...... PLEASE HELP!!!!!!
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female
reader, k_c100  +, writes (27 August 2009):
 I'm afraid to say the big picture is......you are a rebound relationship. Surely you must realise that someone who has just left their husband is in no way emotionally ready for another serious committed relationship? You say you have been living together for "a while" - how long is a while? A while to me would be 6 months - 1 year, and you have only been together for 6 months!
You moved way to fast with this woman - moving in together so soon after she split up with her husband was foolish on both sides. You are old enough to know that when you split up with someone it takes a lot of time to heal, especially if this relationship was a marriage. So the next relationship you enter will just be a replacement for the relationship you have lost!
Basically she met you and she will have fallen for you, hard. She was lonely and upset about her marriage when it ended - then "boom" you came along and all was good again. When in reality you are the band aid covering a huge wound, and soon she will just have to rip that band aid off. After her marriage broke down she will have been questioning everything in life, and to find a man who really wants her and loves her, well that would have been fantastic for her. She will have got a companion again, and suddenly the pain from ending her marriage will have subsided. So you move in together and pretty much manage to fast track your relationship in the space of a couple of months because it "all feels so right when you are together".
But the problem is now, as you are finding out, she never got over her ex because she has not had the time to. Breaking up with someone requires some serious soul searching and time alone to fully move on from them - jumping from one relationship to the next will mean she will never get over her ex. She will have told you she is not ready for a committed relationship right now because that is the truth - she is nowhere near ready to be dating, let alone living with someone!
This is not your fault - I guess you were blinded by love and thought she felt the same too, and all your normal warning signs (like she is going through a divorce, she has jumped from a marriage to living with me right away....) went out the window. But now is the time to see that this woman cannot give you what you want - no woman with an ex (especially an ex as involved as he is) is in the right frame of mind or the right place emotionally to be in a relationship. As soon as a woman says "I'm still in touch with my ex, I'm still friends with my ex....etc then that should be a warning flag right there. Generally it means that there are still feelings between the two lurking around and she will never give up the ex for you.
She will not ever understand how you feel because to her, speaking to her husband (he still is her husband after all) is the most natural thing in the world to her and she will not be able to see how much it hurts you. To her, they are just talking and they are just friends so she will wonder why you are so upset. Whereas you know deep down that when she is spending all of her time talking to him, that is just bringing the feelings they had for each other back and that she will be reliving the good times in their marriage.
I suggest you stop living together (that was such a silly idea! living together after less than 6 months? Seriously?!) and tell her that you agree she shouldnt be in a committed relationship right now. Tell her you love her and would like to continue to see her but on a more casual basis. You need to do the right thing - it will hurt like hell but hey, it will hurt less than when you come home oneday to find her bags packed and she tells you she is leaving you for her ex! Give her the time she needs to make her choice - if she is single for a while then it will give her perspective on what she really wants. She might realise she is still in love with the ex, or she might realise that actually she doesnt want to go back to her past and she misses you so much she wants to try again.
Slow things right down and give her the time to heal from her last relationship, that is what she needs more than anything right now. And if you dont want to wait, well that is your choice. Just learn that next time, dont get involved with a woman who is going through a divorce or a woman that is still heavily involved with an ex; it always leads to disaster and the new guy is never the winner.
I'm sorry if this seems harsh, I guess the truth can be harsh sometimes. And you might think "what does she know" - well although I have never been married, I have been heavily involved with an ex whilst in a relationship, and the new guy hated me talking to my ex but I didnt see the problem because we were "just friends". And guess what - I left the new guy a year later for my ex. It might not happen to you - that is just my personal experience but I have known enough women with an ex in their lives to know that it never works out well for the new relationship. Women cant just be friends with the ex in the majority of cases, it doesnt work like that! And the new man will always hate the ex talking to his partner, and she will never understand why (until she leaves him for the ex of course!).
I hope this helps!
A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (27 August 2009): Thanks for your response. I was weighing that option very seriously. The hard part is I love and care for her very much. But as you said he is getting the time that i deserve. She has told me that she really loves me and I treat her way better in all aspects of our relationship than he did.I just dont know what to believe anymore..I could maybe deal with it better if she would give me some reassurance for time to time with out me saying anything...
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