GF lied to me and broke up (semi re-post of another thread)

(This is a summary of another thread i posted here earlier. I think this forum section is now more relevant...)

Hello,

Last weekend i found out about a lie my girlfriend, with which i had a relationship for about 12 months, had told me. I confronted her with it and after she confessed and explained the lie i forgave her. However...she felt we could not carry on as a couple anymore. :eek:

You see, we used to chat over the internet before we moved to real world dating, and she once send me a picture of a girl that looked alot like her, but slimmer and younger. The resemblence was amazing.
Now my girlfriend is suffering from a depression and hates lying of any kind, no matter how severe the lie. And she herself never lies about anything.....except for the picture of course.

She explained she didnt have a picture of herself but wanted to "hook me" because she was madly in love with me. So a friend of hers gave me a picture she found on the internet. After that she felt trapped and couldnt bring up the courage to tell me, fearing she would hurt me and fearing she would lose me.

I eventually did find out because a friend of mine saw the picture on a website.

My girlfriend was feeling so shocked, embarrassed, upset and guilty about lying that she decided she couldnt have a relationship with me, because she hurt me and she fears we will do something stupid in the future and hurt each other. So she feels she is protecting me from getting hurt by breaking my heart....her sense of logic is not why i fell in love with her. :confused:

For a day or two i tried to convince her breaking up was not at all needed and that we wouldnt have to worry about what we might or might not do in the future, but insted focus on the here and now. My pleads fell on deaf ears and she practically begged me to just let her go, and be her friend and look out for her. She said she needed me as a friend and that she really hopes that she can get out of this mess and she wants me to ask her about trying to restart our relationship by then. Till then she promised she was going to remain single, and wasnt interested in anyone else because i was still the only one she wanted. She wants me to be her friend and give her time and support to get through this and not go too fast.

After i let her go she seemed very relieved but she was still very shaken and we didnt contact each other for about 48 hours. I figured i would let her make the first move.

Tonight she contacted me and we met up and spend some time together with some friends of hers. All contact she and i had was strictly 100% friend only.
And it kinda suprised me yet again how easily women can shut down all romantic/sexual emotions and turn a guy from "future husband" to "good friend" in a mere 2 days. In the meantime im struggling to make sense of all that is happening.

We got drunk and she asked me if i wanted to have "casual meaningless sex with a good friend", i hesitated but eventually decided it would only be like giving myself false hope. I feel a bit like a jerk for thinking this but maybe denying her the sex helps motivate her to work harder on getting back together. I even joked about this and she thought it was funny. She understood i could not have sex with her while we are "just friends". I had a little alcohol inspired moment of weakness in which i got emotional and told her how hard it was to cope with all this. Again she understood and was kind to me. I quickly recovered and apoligized for getting emotional. After that we went home and i have spent the past few hours writing this post on several love-forums to gather advice.

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Wow that was a long one, hope you are all still awake.

Anyway, i really want to help her through this and rekindle my relationship with her. Staying just friends with her is kinda awkward at the moment as in my mind i often still refer to her as my girlfriend. But i want to really achieve my goals:

A: Help my ex-girlfriend cope with lying and forgive herself.
B: Help easy my ex-girlfriend's concerns that we might hurt eachother in the future if we get back together.

Do i back off as much as possible? Be there for her as much as possible? Let her be the one initiating contact all the time? Or surprise her and give her lots of attention? Also, how much of my pain and hurt do i show when she asks me how i feel?

Help a guy out here.

Maybe i should tell you how my gf and i met.

When we started chatting online she was still in a relationship, she wasnt really happy with that relationship but didnt want to leave a guy because she fell in love with someone else. We fell in love but we never did anything, i treated her as a good friend even though we both knew we were in love.

So, she caught between a rock and a hard place. I noticed she was "stuck" so i told her id just be friends and she should stay with her boyfriend. Dispite feeling a bit crappy i didnt get to date her i stayed her friend.

..well that made her love me even more appearantly, her doomed relationship finally ended and a few months later she and i hooked up for a date and we have been a couple ever since.

And owh boy, it's been absolutely amazing the entire relationship. Yeah duh, we had a little arguement here and there but tbh they were few and we resolved them by talking it out and afterwards we'd be totally happy again.

The only "crisis" we ever had was when i confessed about a lie i made at the start of our relationship. I had always told her i had sex a few times before her, but i was in fact a virgin. The reasons i lied were funnily enough the same as the reasons why she lied about the picture. Afraid of dissapointing and losing the other.

It took a long time for her to properly forgive me for that, and it did result in three weeks of "low contact". After that she said she failed to overcome it, however i convinced her to try it my way and keep seeing each other as much as before and work through it that way. That worked brilliantly and she was amazed she was able to stay with someone who had lied to her.

It must be bitter irony for her to also have to confess she lied about something in the same period of our relationship.

Anyway, bringing up the subject about lies or restarting the relationship will likely further annoy her for the time being. I need to find a way to control myself and not bring up the subject for a while. In the mean time i need to decide whether to give her lots of attention, or very little.


Choice i need to make: level of contact

It seems SHE prefers to still recieve attention, cuddles, hugs and compliments from me. However that is something she gets from all her male friends, so it doesnt make me stand out. It might firmly push me into the friends-zone but it might also be exactly what she needs and will might help me keep her in the long run.

Of course, i could also make her miss me by only letting her initiate contact, but otherwise be a warm, caring and charming friend. Like i was when she fell in love with me. It might help remind her i shouldnt be taken for granted. But as someone posted, it might make her feel i dont care as much anymore.

Tough choice.

Choice i need to make: showing emotion

The 2nd choice i need to make is decide whether to show i am hurt and worse off without her, or show im ok and strong for her. Showing hurt might make her realize breaking up failed to "protect me from hurt" as she thought it would. But it might also increase her guilt and make her feel she is nothing but trouble to me and im better off without her.

I know 99% of the girls on this planet would only act this way if she was playing with my feelings or just stringing me along till she found something better. However, knowing her and her issues/quirks a bit better, i am honestly convinced she really feels she is protecting me from harm this way. When she says she is staying away from other guys, and wants to work through this and try again if she feels confident it is for the best, i believe her.

That probably makes me naive as hell, but there you have it. I think it is worth trying. In the meantime i am trying to prepare myself for a bad result by starting to chat with other ladies and trying not to get any false hope.

She is not interested in you and then want to have meaningless sex. Get rid of her, dude. It'll hurt you even more. And we don't want that.

Just saying from my experience and many other experiences I've read and seen, if she wants to not be in a relationship, than you need to back off. It's a typical response to not want to be with somebody in a relationship and then still have them around as a friend or a cushion to be there for them in case their choice is wrong. Bottom line, if she made her choice she needs to stick with it. If you are interested in her as more than a friend, which you are, being friends will not get you anywhere. You should be angry that she wants to have casual sex with a friend when she knows how you feel. That's bullshit. Let your ego rile you up on this.

Level of contact, zero. You need your space too to get her out of your head, which ironically will probably make her want you more. But you need this space as much as she does to get your life back on track because more than likely other aspects of your life are suffering because of the time and energy being spent on dealing with this and thinking and wanting an answer. If she keeps bothering you, tell her to respect your space. As hard as this is, you don't need her to be happy. Don't be dependant on her.

Emotion, zero. She's already seen you emotional, she already knows you care. Try not to let your guard down anymore because as long as she knows you are upset and pining for her, she is less likely to be attracted to you. This of course wouldn't be necessary anyway because if you get your space from her you won't even need to be emotional or not in the first place. Even if you were emotional and she gave in based on that, it would be based on pity. That's not what relationship are about.

You both need this space to have some growth because you guys are not growing together. She needs some growing up to do because as long as she is the same person, to be with her again and expect different results is the definition of what insanity is.

First of all, I commend you for not giving into her when she asked for "meaningless friendship sex." If you really love her, want her back, and think she's worth it.. It's my personal opinion that you cut off all the physical contact whatsoever. Let her know what you want and that you won't settle for being friends with benefits.

Hey DutchYankee112

Sounds like your in an incrediably difficult place right now, you say your convinced she protecting you by dumping you from her life? Or at least you believe her rather strange reasoning, if she wanted to be with you would she be pushing you away?

Suspect she want the best of both worlds, she wants sex with you when she wants it and all the emotional support, care and love she see's within you but ask yourself what do get in return? She asked you for "meaningless friendship sex" so I guess thats now how she see's it between you both meaningless, you don't see it that way... You both want very different things out of the relationship you have and ask yourself do you see it working with the way things have gone?

Refusing to play her game is the smarter choice in this, cut communication between you and her and dont respond to her in anyway. End it properly with her, perhaps tell her you cannot continue like this and cannot be just friends and you don't want her to contact you again. Her real feelings for you will come out as soon as you are unavailable and she realises she cannot just toy with you when she wants too. She taken you for granted at the moment and is just using you. Don't settle for that...

Chazza2k speaks the truth.
You can do better mate. Very hard but has to be done.