Trying to deal with the separartion

Hey everyone,
My gf of 10 years told me that she wanted to take a break to do something for herself for a bit. She says that she and I need to not be dependent on each other and that this will make us better people. 4 months ago she said that we should take a break. She had never been single and needed to know what it was like to do something for herself. We were living together and she started dating a friend of hers shortly after so things were in my face. By dating, I mean friends with benefits. He told her that was all she was to him. They became attached to each other though. They fought constantly because she would talk about how much she loved and missed me to him. She started going out constantly and was staying at friends' houses and I moved out of our apt in November. She told me to give her space and yet continued to tell me that she loved me and wanted everything between us to work out. Things got very bad over the past few months and she has decided to get away from me, this other guy and MA all together since her job let her go. Her job was terrible and they abused her constantly. She is now in Florida and is looking for work and hanging out with old friends. She is still very much in love with me and tells me that she wants me to visit her in a couple months so we can discuss me going down there so we can work everything out. She just needs to settle first. Then I can go down and she will go to counseling and wants to work it all out so we can be happier than ever. I'm not sure if I should believe her or not. Do you think she is playing me? Does she want to be with me but just needs to settle first? I don't know what to think anymore. I want to work it out more than anything and i would be more than happy to go down there to do so. When I say that she obviously doesn't want to be with me anymore she disagrees harshly and says that she does, i just need to give it time. I want to move on and be ok without her, but with her telling me these things about going down there I don't know how to. What should I do? What should I believe.

Ever heard of the phrase, "cake and eat it too?"

I understand that you still love her, and ten years is a long time to be with someone, so kudos. You two could actually try to make this work, but the question you should ask yourself is, "could you trust her again?"

A relationship doesn't mean that you have to be attached at the hip. You can each have separate activities, however, those activities don't mean you need to end the relationship. The fact that she wanted to do something and didn't want to be with you in order to do it would indicate, to me, that these activities weren't conscionable acts while in a relationship.

Please take your time to figure this out. It's easy to stick with something because it's comfortable.

Good luck.