She says she loves me - Confused about breakup

[Trauma]

Hi there,

First time poster. I guess I only really come to these forums when I'm seeking advice about a relationship and as you can tell by my title, mine turned sour last night.

My girlfriend (23y/o) and I (24) had been dating about 7 months until last night when it ended. We are both very stubborn and hard-headed people, often with different views on things, but we normally always respected each other's views and felt that we balanced each other out. I'm a very analytical person, who likes to examine problems and find the root causes in order to fix them. She has self-identified as a more emotional, "I act based on how I feel about situations" kind of personality.

We recently (I'd say for about 2 weeks now) been fighting quite a lot over fairly petty things. I've noticed communication start to dip recently as well, as in, I've noticed that she is more hesitant to tell me about the problems in her life and discuss them with me. This sent up red flags for me. Just this past friday, she took a trip to Vermont with two of her friends, and we had planned on hanging out yesterday (Monday) when she got back.

Anyway, during the day yesterday, I told her through text that I was glad she was coming over tonight because there were things we needed to talk about. I told her about how I wanted to be the person she could turn to when she needed to talk and I'm not sure what had happened between us to turn us off that kind of relationship that we used to have, but I would be willing to work on whatever it took to be there for her.

She proceeded to tell me (over text) that she found it hard to talk to me. She told me of how early on in the relationship (maybe, the first month), she confided in me a very personal confession about her ex-boyfriend. She had broken up with him over two years ago, but continued to sleep with him, even after we began seeing each other. Nothing was official between us, so in my mind, she was within her rights to do so, but I had a very knee-jerk reaction at the time that, im ashamed to say, probably resembled disgust. Immediately after it happened, i realized what I had done and apologized profusely, begging her forgiveness. I told her it was not my place to judge her for her history, and what is done is done. Anyway, after telling me yesterday that she found it hard to talk to me, she told me she would talk to me when she came over that night.

Basically, I knew that her "talk" with me tonight, would be a breakup. I spent the rest of the afternoon psyching myself up, in preparation to simply be hard as stone with her and if she wanted to leave, she could leave. The moment I opened my apartment door for her, she kissed me. Absolutely dumbfounded, I gestured for her to have a seat on the couch. We both sat, and she wrapped her hands around my waist and began sobbing. I asked, "what's wrong, sweetheart?" I knew what was wrong.

She told me she till loved me, but she didn't think that we would be able to continue seeing each other. She found it hard to talk to me because she felt I would judge anything she told me and attack her for having different values than me. I told her I realized I had been judgmental in the past, but I had been working on it, and she agreed I had improved over time. At this point, she said she didn't know whether she wanted to break up with me or not. She told all her friends and mom that she would when she went to Vermont this past weekend, but she said she didn't want to; she had to. I told her I didn't understand. She told me she really wanted to hug and kiss me. I told her, wouldn't I just be manipulating her heart? If her brain wanted to break up with me, me kissing her would just be delaying the inevitable. She asked again, so I kissed her. She asked me if she could just think about things for the next couple of days before making her decision. I told her, "I have been tortured all afternoon, psyching myself up for this. There is no way I want to extend that torture over the next few days; that's not fair to me. If you're going to break up with me, you should do it now."

Two hours, she sat there, talking with me about how she has trouble talking to me about her problems. I told her I would be willing to simply sit there, and listen, and if she'd wish, I would never bring the conversation up ever again and never say a word, judgemental or not. The more I talked to her, the more I seemed to convince her that the relationship had already been soured and there was no way to repair it. I told her, if you don't feel that you can talk to me anymore, and you don't think that working at it with me will solve the problem, then you should break up with me and leave right now -- no need to extend this any further.

She did. She went to my room, grabbed her stuff, all the while crying. She came back downstairs and stood in the doorway, told me she loved me, that she'd miss me, and that she didn't want to do this. I told her to take care of herself, and shut the door.

I guess I'm looking for you guys to help me understand this breakup. Perhaps it's my male genetics, but how is it possible that someone "love me", "miss me" and be unwilling to work on our problems. To me, it seems like an enormous waste of a relationship. We worked really well together, and the love was apparently mutual. Was all that stuff about not being able to talk to me a canard for problem she just didn't want to discuss with me? Was her telling me she loved me before breaking up with me just an easier way for her to "let me down easy"? Another girl's perpective would be really helpful in deciphering what the hell happened. She told me that breaking up really only crossed her mind on her drive to Vermont a couple days ago.

Any help would be appreciated.

Tom

[HeartIsAching]

How controlling are her mother and sister? I'm kind of smelling an outside influence.

[Trauma]

Her sister, she's not so close with. She's said before she thinks her mom is her best friend, and it's entirely possible that if she didn't like me, she would break up with me. Though, I'm fairly certain her mother liked me.

Her two friends however, are probably more likely candidates for outside influence. She once described her relationship with one of them as similar to "sisterwives" in that if I was to date my girlfriend, I would simultaneously be dating her friend as well. If they liked me, I was good. If not, she would not hesitate to break up with me. She's said this before.

Again, I was fairly sure her friends liked me though. However, they live in a town three hours away so I never see them.

[michelle23]

Why are you settling for that BS? It is not okay for her to be sleeping with someone else while seeing/sleeping with you unless you know about it and say you are cool with it coz ur not "exclusive".

People make up their own rules to suit themselves and its BS. Its not a good way to start a relationship. It doesnt help build trust and it ****s up ant long-term chance of success.

Now shes guilt tripping you for a perfectly normal reaction. Anyone would react that way so stop being so naive and putting up with her crap.

Do you not think you deserve better then that?

Even with that issue aside-your obviously not compatable and sounds like a complete waste of time to me. The day you forgave her for not being upfront and honest with you from the start was the day she lost all respect for you and thinks your a freaking doormat.

I dont understand people who cling onto something thats really not working. Its stupid

[Trauma]

Why are you settling for that BS? It is not okay for her to be sleeping with someone else while seeing/sleeping with you unless you know about it and say you are cool with it coz ur not "exclusive".

People make up their own rules to suit themselves and its BS. Its not a good way to start a relationship. It doesnt help build trust and it ****s up ant long-term chance of success.

Now shes guilt tripping you for a perfectly normal reaction. Anyone would react that way so stop being so naive and putting up with her crap.

Do you not think you deserve better then that?

Even with that issue aside-your obviously not compatable and sounds like a complete waste of time to me. The day you forgave her for not being upfront and honest with you from the start was the day she lost all respect for you and thinks your a freaking doormat.

I dont understand people who cling onto something thats really not working. Its stupid

I think you're jumping to a few conclusions I didn't make.

She was sleeping with this guy on our second date... There was no committment at this point. All I asked her to do was go an see a movie. I had only kissed her once and this was our second date. The fact that she felt terrible about it, without even having any sort of committment to me was enough for me. My reaction, like I said, was a knee-jerk one.

Otherwise, I trusted her completely.

[HeartIsAching]

She's a bit... rabid on the subject of infidelity. Don't worry about it, I figured that's what you meant.

[toknow]

Don't even waste your time with this girl. If she really wanted the relationship, she wouldn't have let it go so easily.
You fight for what you care about. You struggle through it, but you don't let it go, and don't give up no matter how hard it gets. You feel like you are in hell, but continue to try because you love that person.
You'd rather fight with that person, then be with happy with anyone else. That's wanting the relationship.

I'd say forget her as soon as you can.

[Trauma]

Don't even waste your time with this girl. If she really wanted the relationship, she wouldn't have let it go so easily.
You fight for what you care about. You struggle through it, but you don't let it go. You feel like you are in hell, but continue to try because you love that person.
You'd rather fight with that person, then be with happy with someone else. That's desire to have the relationship.
I'd say forget her as soon as you can.

It just seems like such a waste of an otherwise good relationship. You're right though. If she wants it, she can fight for it. I have to look at this breakup like "she doesn't want it".

I was simply trying to understand her reasoning for breaking up. To me, it makes no sense. And I've been going over the whole thing in my head ever since...

[THX]

Trauma based on what you wrote, I don't think you handled it the right way. She came to you either on the fence, or pretending to be. You said choose a side. My question is why? If you want to position yourself in such a way where she can't take advantage of you, you got an A+.was her asking for a couple of days to think it over a slap in the face? Yes, assuming the person is good at communicating what they REALLY want. Is it possible she says stupid things she would say differently if life had a rewind button? I think she wanted to work things out. Threatened the relationship as a bargaining tool to get something she wanted accepted, and you called her bluff. Rather than seeing that she had painted your ego into a corner she translated your, "Go if that's what you want" as you don't care enough for the relationship to allow her to pick up her mess. Would an ideal person behave like she did? no. Do real people? All the time.

Just because you tell a car salesman you want to think a purchase through over night doesn't mean you don't fully intend on buying the car. You're giving yourself time to analise the deal to decide what your willing to part with and what you are not.

My advice to you, is to be the bigger person, if you think she is worth it (mistakes and all). If not things are already as they should be.

[Valixy]

So you are more analytical and she is more emotional. Between a man and a woman this is not normally considered a recipe for disaster. I don't think that you should still blame yourself for what happened at the beginning of your relationship, since you apologised and she forgave you (or at least that's what she said). Also you don't seem to be that judgemental from your comments since you were able to give yourself and trust her completely when quite a few guys would have carried the ex-boyfriend issue all along in the relationship.

For me the question is if she was realistic about your communication problems or she was expecting you to join in with comments like her female friends/mother would do or if you really opposed and attacked her frequently for thinking differently. Put in another way, was she too sensitive or were you too insensitive? Either way she ended up feeling hurt and you finally became aware of it. The real problem in my opinion is that she didn't speak about this as something that you needed to work on during the relationship but she bottled that up until she felt she needed to break-up with you. This together with the fact that she discussed your problems with her friends and family, including the break-up decision before even mentioning it to you, prove that she is quiet immature and if there have been some communication problems between you two, she must have been responsible for some of them, in my opinion. Also she must have caught you off guard and without being able to offer her a right`perspective on something as important, another bad move from her part, I think.

Too many women expect men to simply know what makes them happy and what hurts them when they should actually learn to communicate these things in the first place. So she could do with some communication skills improvement too. It's not your fault that you couldn't read her mind, unless there were very clear signs that she was unhappy and you failed to interpret them or you ignored them on purpose, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Trauma]

Trauma based on what you wrote, I don't think you handled it the right way. She came to you either on the fence, or pretending to be. You said choose a side. My question is why? If you want to position yourself in such a way where she can't take advantage of you, you got an A+.was her asking for a couple of days to think it over a slap in the face? Yes, assuming the person is good at communicating what they REALLY want. Is it possible she says stupid things she would say differently if life had a rewind button? I think she wanted to work things out. Threatened the relationship as a bargaining tool to get something she wanted accepted, and you called her bluff. Rather than seeing that she had painted your ego into a corner she translated your, "Go if that's what you want" as you don't care enough for the relationship to allow her to pick up her mess. Would an ideal person behave like she did? no. Do real people? All the time.

Just because you tell a car salesman you want to think a purchase through over night doesn't mean you don't fully intend on buying the car. You're giving yourself time to analise the deal to decide what your willing to part with and what you are not.

My advice to you, is to be the bigger person, if you think she is worth it (mistakes and all). If not things are already as they should be.

I would like to elaborate further, because I'm not quite sure your assessment is apt. I agree, she may have just been leveraging the relationship, because she wanted some sort of concession on my part. However, this was very unlikely. I communicated that I was very wiling to work our problems out. I was willing to try pretty much anything in the interest in salvaging our relationship. I simply refused to be "on the hook," so to speak, for an indeterminate amount of time for her to make up her mind. Wondering if someone is about to break up with you is absolute torture. Regardless, even if the relationship did end, had she really not meant to break up with me, would she not have called me back within a couple days to ask to work things out?

I do think she is worth it. But I refuse to be strung along. If she realizes in the next couple days that she made a huge mistake, she knows where she can reach me. However, I refuse to take breadcrumbs from her. Unless the first words out of her mouth are "I'm sorry, I made a huge mistake," then I feel like I should simply try to move on... as sad as that makes me feel...

[Trauma]

So you are more analytical and she is more emotional. Between a man and a woman this is not normally considered a recipe for disaster. I don't think that you should still blame yourself for what happened at the beginning of your relationship, since you apologised and she forgave you (or at least that's what she said). Also you don't seem to be that judgemental from your comments since you were able to give yourself and trust her completely when quite a few guys would have carried the ex-boyfriend issue all along in the relationship.

For me the question is if she was realistic about your communication problems or she was expecting you to join in with comments like her female friends/mother would do or if you really opposed and attacked her frequently for thinking differently. Put in another way, was she too sensitive or were you too insensitive? Either way she ended up feeling hurt and you finally became aware of it. The real problem in my opinion is that she didn't speak about this as something that you needed to work on during the relationship but she bottled that up until she felt she needed to break-up with you. This together with the fact that she discussed your problems with her friends and family, including the break-up decision before even mentioning it to you, prove that she is quiet immature and if there have been some communication problems between you two, she must have been responsible for some of them, in my opinion. Also she must have caught you off guard and without being able to offer her a right`perspective on something as important, another bad move from her part, I think.

Too many women expect men to simply know what makes them happy and what hurts them when they should actually learn to communicate these things in the first place. So she could do with some communication skills improvement too. It's not your fault that you couldn't read her mind, unless there were very clear signs that she was unhappy and you failed to interpret them or you ignored them on purpose, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'll give you an example of how I "attacked her" for thinking differently. She tells her mother everything. EVERYTHING! She talks to her mother about every intimate detail of her sex life, including with me. Now, while I communicated to her that I do not necessarily have a problem with her talking to her mom about these things if her mother is the person she feels comfortable talking about these things with, I did, however, mention that I didn't think this was normal. She was offended, and I clarified: "It's abnormal, in that if you were to poll girls our age, I don't think very many would have relationships that intimate with their mothers."

This was one of the comments she brought up the night we broke up. I told her over and over that I didn't think she was strange, or odd, or that I thought any less of her, or even that it bothered me. I just thought that her relationship with her mother was, for lack of a better term, abnormal. This wasn't good enough for her. She told me, "I feel like you're attacking me. You should just be happy with me the way I am and not think I'm weird." I assured her I was happy and didn't think her weird, but she didn't believe me. I'm more than willing to talk anything out. I loved the girl and would never overtly try to hurt her. Statistically speaking, I still believe her relationship with her mother to be abnormal, as in, not the norm.

Is that judgmental? I wasn't implying anything about her. Her relationship with her mother didn't really bother me, but she didn't believe me, it seems.

[Valixy]

It would have impossible for you to have a relationship with someone who sounds so immature and so dependent on her mother and her friends for everything and not feel that you had to interfere and express your different point of view or help her have a reality check every now and then. If becoming defensive and leaving the relationship was the best she felt she could do instead of understanding that she needed to grow up a little bit and adjust in order to have a better relationship, well, you have all the right to feel a little bit disappointed.

I don't think you two had communication problems. I think she was too attached to her way of being, could not take constructive criticism and she disrespected the privacy of your relationship.

[THX]

First of all Trauma I would like to appoligize for addressing a concern you didn't ask for advice on. You wanted to know why she would express still wanting to be with you but decide not to. I addressed what I think you did wrong which was wrong of me.

As to the question you actually did ask, I think there are two possabilities. A) She did something she know's you would not like and rather than take responsability for it, she shifts blame to you for not being understanding. this would be an attempt to get you to promise you wont over react before she delivers the bomb shell. B) She actuaaly feels as thought you can not, (or will not ) be able to accept the ways the two of you see things differently. In this case you can not force her to trust you. It is her decision to do so.

In either case she wishes for the relationship to continue, but feels as though it can't.