Jellybeans

You're welcome

Hopefull363

Take care of the birth control yourself. She's already laid the cards out for you. Look at them.

Quick story. I know a man quite stupid. He was going out with this girl for a couple of months. Then one day he says to me I don't understand why do they make the birth control pill if it's not effective? I told him it's 99.7 percent effective if taken properly. Then he tells me she had a scare the month before when she was on it and this month the pregnancy test came back positive. I told him your in it for life now. He should have taken control of the birth control after the first scare.

Now he's married to a complete utter lunatic and miserable.

Look at the cards!

505

This girl is definitely not taking the relationship seriously. You know it, your heart knows it. I would 100% recommend that you leave her.

turtle05lj

Goodmorning,


I had some soul searching to do lastnight. Informed her of what I was doing in searching for some answers. She asked who I talked to and I informed her that I had talked to my sister as well as talking to people on this forum. She became extremely defensive and irritated and could not sleep and was a monster this morning!! I gave her the site address and advised that it may help her if she ever needed to talk to an unbiased party or group of people. I explained to her that is why I chose a forum/blog for suggestions.

I basically told her that I was writing a "letter of relationship expectations" and asked her to do the same for me. Asked her to write out a pro's and con's of our relationship along with it.

In preperation of having her do what is expected and not go along with trying to fix what is wrong in the relationship I already have a place to go. Why even go through the motions you may ask if I feel she won't. To give her a chance. Maybe in seeing me do this she will get that I am serious about it. We are meeting on it on Friday.

Yes I have spent time and money on working on myself but I (nor anyone else) am not perfect when it comes to dealings of the heart. I do love her as there are things about her that I have not spelled out on here but I am also willing to check out if she is not willing to participate in making this a better and solid relationship.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

sisters359

If she still needs to flirt with other men, then she has self-esteem issues. This is the real threat. She is right to resist what she sees as your "controlling" behavior, but she has mislabelled your concern b/c she does not see how her behavior is inappropriate.

I am 100% supportive of women (and men) resisting controlling behavior--but that is based on the assumption that the behavior really IS controlling, and not a reaction to what is inappropriate behavior from a spouse. Women who need attention from other men lack the self-confidence of someone who is truly mature.

If you just "lay down the law," so to speak w/o encouraging her to get counseling, you are putting a bandaid on a potentially serious problem.

Good luck.

MEM11363

Turtle,
You have invested a lot in this relationship and it makes sense that you want to give it a chance.

I can tell by your writing style that you are the type of person who is very considerate of other people. While this is a beautiful trait, it has one very unfortunate side effect. And that is, you find it difficult to express and enforce "bright line" boundaries. They feel like an implied ultimatum to you, and that is contrary to your core nature. However, without boundaries, over time this relationship will be terribly toxic for YOU. Not for your significant other. For you.

So let me make a couple observations:
- Best case it will take at the very least a full year to have any confidence that you have morphed this very one-sided relationship into something remotely resembling parity.
- In the meantime there is one boundary that is completely foundational to the entire re-balancing effort. And that boundary is simple to define and enforce, it is utterly reasonable and if it is not agreeable to her, nothing else you do will matter. And that boundary is:
Going forward I am unwilling to have sex without a condom unless we have resolved our differences, the resolution has shown itself to be stable and long lasting and we have BOTH decided we want a child.

If she won't respect THAT boundary, I don't see how you can re-balance. In fact, I would guess that the degree of resistance you get on that single issue, will highly correlate to the level of "self focus" she displays during your attempt to re-balance. In a way, it will be your "proxy" for her overall level of respect and commitment to you. Most likely, she fights a little at first, and then begins to steadily increase the pressure on you to give up the condoms. My guess (please don't be offended - this is intended to be descriptive - not judgmental) is that she is very adept at using subtle as well as blunt means to align your behavior with her wishes.

In this case blunt will be:
(her) I don't like having sex with condoms, so I understand your point, but I guess we need to stop having sex until this is resolved.

Less blunt will be:
(her) a series of comments about how she is hurt that you don't "trust" her, and that it is hard for her to be intimate with someone who doesn't trust her.

Subtle will be:
(her) Getting angry/upset and "hurt", and then avoiding sex with a long series of excuses to make you anxious via deprivation. And then waiting until you try to initiate a conversation about her rejection. And in that conversation, bringing up your lack of trust, and how it deeply hurts her, without explicit mention of the condom. If she is skillful, she will give you a lightly sexualized vibe during this conversation. After being starved for a while, that vibe is powerful. And if she explains the "hurt" effectively, that will be just as powerful. Unless you know what is going to happen in advance and have steeled yourself, you will find the combination of having voltage running across your sexual circuitry and your "protector" circuitry impossible to resist.

turnera

Read this book; it describes why you two are at odds: Buyers, Renter, and Freeloaders - by Willard F. Harley, Jr. Ph.D.

turnera

If she brings up controlling again, just say "In my view of a committed relationship, neither party flirts with outside people, and I will defend that position. If that's not your view, then we need to break up. That is not controlling, it's defending what I need in a relationship. You're free to go find someone else who will let you have an open relationship."

turtle05lj

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

I couldn't wait till Friday :-)

So we had the talk last night. She was very receptive to the letter and my requests. " Holy crap a 3 page letter" she stated. LOL I held it up and said that is how much this means to me. She said ok and we began.

I first informed her of how I felt the flirting and mindset that she has about "being dead" was very disrespectful and hurtful to me and us. I told her how much the text thing from her "friend bothered me and why it bothered me. She asked why I was mad at her for something he did. So I explained to her that it was more her response and refrain from asking him to respect us. Told her due to that particular aspect of the situation I was no longer comfortable with the friendship continuing. She sat down in front of me and typed a message to her "friend/ex BF/FB" that they could no longer be friends. She deleted his contact info from her phone and email and FB. She also took all her passcodes off her phone and wrote her email password on a sticky note on the computer (I hadn't even asked her to do this yet - but was going to.) She said I was free to any and all of her convo's. She has already had access to mine as I have never had any locks on anything so that is now free standing.

She had no issues with the boundaries I laid forth. Back up, When I started the boundaries convo she started off with "great more rules." So in preperation, as I knew she would view it this way I had a dictionary handy :-) She had the pleasure of reading the definition of both rules and boundaries. So the convo continued after her reading and she said that she saw no problems with the boundaries and I asked her to throw some in of her own. She had none but I am sure once she has some sessions she may (I can only hope). She stated that she grew up in a very disfunctional familiy and has never known how to have healthy boundaries. She said she will try to find a counselor to talk to if it meant that much to me. I told her only to do it if it meant that much to her. We will see....

With everything else talked about that I had issues with we had a great night of some of the best sex thus far and had a wonderful morning of the same.

She still hated the idea of the forum but now says she understands why I came here and not to my family & friends (i told her that I didn't want my F&F to have any ill will or judements on her were we to work through this as she seems to want to).

Thanks all for chiming in.

turnera

Very well done!

COguy

Here's your biggest problem, don't need to read any more of the thread:

"I am not the type of person to tell my partner that she can not be friends with someone as I feel it is controlling."

Start the journey of your manhood today. Read No More Mr. Nice Guy before you do anything else.

You can't have a successful relationship as a doormat.

Jellybeans

Kudos! You handled it well.................

NOW... wait.

Did she come on TAM and read any of our responses?

MEM11363

Turtle,
Did you ask for "parity" in birth control, or did you leave that 100 percent in her hands?

Your confidence is based on her positive response to a single conversation. My lack of optimism in the result is based solely on the length of your letter and the conclusion she drew about you based on the length of the letter.

There is a massively high correlation between brevity and firmness. Bright line boundaries are not about feelings, do not require lengthy explanations and most importantly cannot include lengthy justifications.

When you say: The reason that I need you to do "....xyz..."
Your far more powerful partner hears: This is still all about you, no matter what happens, it is all about you
And she concludes: Even when I totally violate him, his trust and his boundaries he is still almost entirely focused on me and how I feel.

The most impactful boundary letter is a short paragraph followed by a list of bullet points.

It might start with: I love you and want this relationship to work. All of these boundaries are mutual, meaning that I will apply them to my own behavior. I accept that you may not value this relationship enough to find these boundaries acceptable. If that is the case, I simply ask that you show me the minimal respect of being truthful about it. In order to be comfortable moving ahead together, I need you to respect the following boundaries:
1. Communication with other men who:
- You have had a prior romantic/sexual relationship with
- Have expressed sexual interest in you, whether or not you have reciprocated
- Sexual or not, they are contacting you very frequently
- Are communicating in a manner, that if I became aware of it, I would insist that it stop immediately. If you have any doubts about this point, I need to know you will share the communication with me and ask if I am ok with it

2. Trips away without me: (this one is difficult - there is no easy answer here so I won't pretend otherwise)

3. Transparency: Harmless or not, I need to be aware of any communication with another male (except for family members) that is happening more than once a week.

4. Respect level shown me when I raise concerns: Use of the phrases "don't be an idiot..."

5. Use of birth control will be completely mutual

....

Toffer

It's obvious that SHE isn't in a serious relationship even though you are.

I would be dam sure not to marry her or have a kid with her

She is definitely keeping her other options wide open