Ok Here is My Novel (VERY VERY LONG but some people told me to post it anyway)
My girlfriend of 7 yrs broke up with me @ 6 weeks ago. I am 39 and she is 31. She was cheating on me for the last month and ended up with the guy. The guy, to complicate matters, happens to be her best friends cousin and they met at her best friends "family" birthday party. She couldn't break up w/me and then finally did. It wasn't that convincing I guess so I sent a dozen roses to her work the next morning. I knew something was up when I received no phone call only an email to say TY. Nice email but still not what I expected. So I start to snoop her email for which she had given me her password to help her with some things earlier. I found an email from the guy and I was pissed obviously. I called her cell and left a message asking how they were doing at his house tonight and stated his address that was in the email on her voicemail. She calls back and says I'm sorry etc. So morning comes and I am hurting, she calls me and it is a Tuesday morning early. He lives about an hour from where she lived and I still do. Not together but she used to live in same city. First thing out of her mouth is "I love you". I reply with the same in return. She and I talk as she drives and she finally says "do you want to go to my counselor with me right now". Me being emotional and stupid at the moment I agree to go with her. We go to the counselor and discuss our break-up and I start to figure out that she recruited her counselor to help tell me it's over. Evidently she had been asking her counselor or telling her that she had been thinking of breaking up for about a month. What a coincidence, same amount of time she had been seeing R (new guy we will call R from here on). So we go over some things and finally leave the counselors office. I am still very unresolved as to our ending, why, how, etc. but whatever.
As we are leaving the counselors office she reaches to take my arm. She notices the window and the fact we are in clear view of her counselor and she pulls back from reaching for my arm. I tell her I don't care if she sees, grab my arm if you want to. She does but by then we are out of the view from counselors window. In the car on the way back home she kisses me and holds my hand as I drive. We get back to my house from counselor and we talk and kiss and roll on the bed. We cry, we laugh and we eventually have sex a couple times. After a couple hours of emotional hugs and embraces, sex and laughter she has to go to 2 more appt’s with various doctors or dentists. I ask her if she is planning to come back by and if so I will get our favorite Chinese take-out for us. She readily agrees and kisses me goodbye as she heads out for her doctors appointments.
When she leaves I feel hurt but ok because I can see she is confused and loves me still. Maybe she made a mistake and knows it now or at least is thinking she may have? I also think back to her counselor and our talks in the office. I feel I was argumentative and arrogant and came off poorly. Under the circumstances I was probably ok but still didn’t want to leave that impression of me with anyone. I write out a thank you card and say I was confrontational and upset etc. I thank her for her time etc. and I drop the card off (the office was closed dropped it in mail slot) and make my way home. As I drive I have something happened to me. I started to see some of the things my ex had problems with in a new light. I know everyone will say this is because I got hurt and would never have realized these things otherwise. I am not sure if they were brought up correctly at some point I wouldn’t have seen them. I asked to go with my ex to counseling as a couple many times and she never took me up on it. I just didn’t give her the attention she wanted and needed in the end. But more than that my attitude had changed with even my close friends and I saw that I had become someone I wasn't happy with or liked realizing at all. Not just in the relationship with my girlfriend but in all areas of my life. It wasn't me at all and it wasn’t a part of who I am or desired to be. I was not happy with myself or my situation and got complacent. It was an epiphany and I never have believed in stuff like that or life changing moments or whatever. Well my ex gets back and I tell her a bunch of things that I now see how she felt a certain way or wanted me to see something etc. She cried and said, “Now you get it!”. I gave specific examples of things we had argued about or she had resented about me in the past. She thanked me for going through so many and truly knew I had come to realize some very important things about myself and our relationship. You have to understand I am very confident and opinionated when it comes to some things and I never back down, so this was huge to her.
We kiss, cry, hug, etc and have sex a couple more times. She continues to tell me she loves me and had earlier stated she just wasn't in love with me anymore. Well at one point in the evening she states, I am "in love" with you still. Then at various times says, "I don't know if I did the right thing". I say hey we will take things day by day and see what happens. I realize I had become complacent and I will have to prove to you I have had a huge wake-up call and I am the guy you fell in love with. So we have sex again and then cry, etc. etc. etc. She says can I call R since it is late and he knew where I was going today. I say sure I will even leave the room for you. When I come back in she says he must be on the phone and says he must be talking to V (her best friend will be from here on known as V). I have no idea the relationship between the two at this point. She calls her friend and tells her to get off the phone with R and she calls him. I come back in the room and she says he is a nice guy Drew. I say cool, so am I. She says I know you are and he knows I am here and he let me come here today. I said I hold no grudge against him, he wasn't the one in a committed relationship. She says you want to let him know that because he is afraid of you and you being upset (my ex probably told him I was a boxer and kickboxer but that was YEARS AGO). I say I will and she dials him up and tells him that I want to talk to him. I say No grudge etc. and he says to me "What I would hope is the two of you give it another try, 7 yrs is a long time" I reply, I don't know if that will happen but TY. She gets off the phone and things have changed a little. Not a lot because we still kiss and stuff and like 2 hours go by it's like 1:30 am & I can tell her wheels are turning big time. He told her to ask me what he had told me on the phone. She asks me what he said and I tell her. She says, "Ah he is probably hurting and calls him and no answer. So she says this which is weird, "will you leave a message on his machine and let him know nothing happened and tell him I love him" I say whoa, you crossed the line there, I'll tell him you have feelings for him and thank him for letting you come by but no lying and nothing about you loving him is being said. I do it to show I am strong and confident I guess because it sucked big time to do it. She says right before I do it, “good show him he has competition”. I was kinda pissed at that but let it go I was emotionally drained at this point and didn’t want another long drawn out explanation of the meaning of her words.
continued
"A gentleman is one who considers the rights of others before his own feelings; and the feelings of others before his own rights"