Trouble trusting on December 7, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been involved for a year and a half with a very gentle, caring man who I feel is trustworthy. However, I cannot seem to give up relentlessly accusing him of seeing other women. I know this is a contradiction. I do feel he is trustworthy, but I believe that I am experiencing a case of paranoia–as my past partners have been anything but trustworthy. Perhaps, I have recently taken a blow to my ego as of late, and my insecurities are surfacing in this relationship–but I honestly cannot figure out why I have been questioning my partner to the point of him wanting to give up. I have done damage to this relationship through this, and he is sick and tired of arguing–as am I. I want to repair the damage, but I seem to be unable to keep my mouth shut.

— Big Red

Dear Big Red,

We’re thinking you should open up that mouth to a therapist. Cause here’s what Belleruth says: “Your insight into the situation is admirable, but, evidently, not sufficient. Yours could be one of those self-fulfilling prophecy deals, where you create what you’re most scared of — i.e. rejection — out of perverse self-destructiveness. But if you get some help, you’ll have more control over your testing behavior and wayward mouth.” Here’s hoping that it’ll start saying things like, “I trust you.” Or, better yet, that things like “I trust you” will go without saying.

Love,
BR/BG

Neurotically freaking on December 7, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Oy! Where to start? Where to start?

I know! I was living with my boyfriend for three and a half years and then he dumped me! HE dumped ME! The nerve.

Things hadn’t been perfect with us for a while. There had been a lot of arguments. He was majorly clinically depressed and wouldn’t deal with it. Everytime I went out with my friends, I knew when I came home he’d pick a fight.

But he LOVED me. And I loved him. When we got together, we had both had crushes on each other for months and hadn’t known it. So when we finally figured it out, there was so much pent up emotion that we moved in with each other within three months.

Granted. Not the healthiest action. We were probably just majorly infatuated. But then we made it work for three years, and I always thought that was validation of our earlier adolescent actions (we’re both mid-twenties.)

But my problem isn’t with the ex. Well, it is, but it isn’t. My problem is with cutie-boy.

Cutie-boy is the older (early 30’s) boy who works in the office suite next door from me. We kept running into each other in the halls. He kept asking me to coffee and I kept forgetting to tell him I had a boyfriend. When I finally told him, cutieboy claimed that coffee wasn’t exactly a betrothal.

So I went and we had a good time, and to cut out a lot of extraneous info, we ended up sneaking into emergency exit stairways at work and making out. Harmless fun. I knew it was wrong, but told myself I was just getting a little attention that my (soon-to-dump-me) boyfriend wasn’t giving.

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Dear Breakup Girl,

I know you’re going to think this is totally crazy. But it’s true! I live in Chicago with my boyfriend. He is a filmmaker and I am a waitress. I’ve been in school for a few years, but I’m not sure what I want to do. He, on the other hand is quite confident and recently had an opportunity to go to Austin, TX and work on an independent film. He was to be gone for six weeks. I thought that was ok and that our relationship could handle it. Anyway, here’s where it gets crazy. The star of the movie was Parker Posey. We both really admire her work, although now, he admires it much more…if you get my drift. Anyway, he justified it as she is someone we both admire and if I had the day to hang out and do “girl stuff” with her I would (which is true). So he just hung out and did “guy stuff.” I really don’t feel like it’s an equal comparison, but he’s so persuasive. He said it doesn’t mean anything, but if I look at it his way, if I went shopping with her all afternoon, even that would mean something to me. Should I break up with him?

— Dina

Dear Dina,

Finally, a celebrity romance story that is my business!

But you know what, I actually don’t get your drift. What do you mean, “guy stuff?” What actually happened? Did they bond over WD-40 and play rotisserie baseball, or did they … hook up? Either way, I hesitate to say this, but I think you need to take your concern down a notch.

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MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you can find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn hears from a gal who’s scared-to-lose him, but she’s was burned by a cheater before:

I got out of an extremely bad relationship about three months ago with a man who cheated on me. I thought that I was going to stay single for a long time because I knew that I would have a hard time trusting again, yet that’s not how things worked out. I became friends with someone shortly after the break-up, and the more time we spent together, the more we both realized that we were meant to be together.

Now she’s grown suspicious of this new love and it’s driving him away. Is she unable to let the past go and what should she do? Read the full letter and response at Happen, then chime in with your own thoughts below.

The days of our lives, including October 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

This past year my life could have been a soap opera of the popular kind. It has included all of the standard characters; the bitch (me), the poor, explioted b/f (my ex), the hunky-but-mean crush (my HUGE mistake). Well, that’s the characters, now to the plot.

Me and my bf (let’s call him John) had been together for 1.5 years with everything that includes; almost breaking up, getting back together, going on vacation together, visiting his family who lives more than 1000 km from here, you know, all the pair-things. But then one day in all my stupidity and ignorance, I cheated on my bf. To my defence I will only say that this other hunky-but-showed-out-to-be-unbelievably-selfish guy is one who I had had a crush on a while before my bf and I got together, and my feelings for this guy weren’t totally non-existing (but mind you, I was NOT in love with him, it was just a stupid mistake; actually the biggest mistake of my life so far…). I would also like to stress that it was a no-sex thing, just kissing-and-clothes-on. I am not trying to excuse what I did, I am not proud of it. But as John is quite conservative on this, the whole thing ended with us breaking up, and me being THE BITCH.

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Getting over it on October 5, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Here’s a tough one. I can’t believe I’m writing, but I’m looking for some sort of outlet here, for a problem that no one seems to want to acknowledge or address: how to get over the end of an affair so I can move on with my life.

You see, I’ve been in a virtually sexless marriage for almost 7 years. We got married very young (23/22), and even though we were sexually active, and enjoyably so, before we got married, my attraction to him started to wane before we got married. Trying to be mature and patient, I attributed this to the new responsibilities we faced as adults and believed that we would get back on track once we were living together and got our lives moving. Unfortunately, we never ending up addressing the problem, and basically avoided sex and never really developed a sexual relationship in our marriage. In the meantime, we continued to build a good marriage in many other ways, and have been loving, compatible companions.

Anyway, here’s the real crisis (or the additional one): several months ago I had a very brief affair. I had felt so lost for so many years, had doubted my basically ability to feel desire, and once I did, and had the opportunity, I took it. I never thought I was the kind of person who would be unfaithful in a relationship, but now I’ve learned that it’s not really a “kind of person” kind of thing. The other guy was going through a divorce, and we had been friends at work for several years, and suddenly things started happening, and we both let it happen, fully conscious (I do take full responsibility and won’t fall back on the “it just happened” excuse). Anyway, he ended things, saying it was too hard for him that I wasn’t fully available to him, and that he knew I needed to work things through with my husband and find out where all that was going, and he wanted us to continue our friendship and put up some boundaries between us. I agreed in theory, but felt so lost and confused and rejected in a way, knowing all the while it didn’t make any sense, but feeling hurt all the same. Well, I couldn’t handle any of it — the deception, the doubts I was feeling about my attraction to my husband, the confusion, and when my husband asked me, I told him the truth. He was devastated, shocked beyond belief, and actually became violent and smashed things in our apartment and went to my office to dig around and find out who the guy was, and went to his house and punched him. He is not usually a violent person, though he has always been very jealous, but I must say that this was out of character for him (and me, as well, or so I thought).

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You say you want a resolution on September 21, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

It’s been just shy of two months since my ex-fiance and I broke up. He’d been cheating on me with some girl from the Internet as a way of avoiding the fact that we weren’t getting along as well as we used to. The relationship was troubled way before Ms. Naughty Chat came along: she was just the catalyst for what I didn’t want to believe was the inevitable. He’d given up on me long before I’d given up on him… he calls it “being further along in the grieving process” which frankly makes me want to puke from all the pop-psychological flavor of the statement.

Despite all that both of us did to f**k things up between us, both of us (really, truly) do want to be friends, because we were actually really good friends before everything fell apart and it would be a waste to not try to get some of that back, even though the romance will never be there again. (I miss him like that, too, but I don’t trust him in that department anymore.)

Part of the problem with this is that I feel that a lot of stuff between us is unresolved… there’s a lot of unanswered questions about why and when and how that he hasn’t answered yet. He says that it’s as answered as it’s going to be (i.e. hardly at all) and that we should try to move on. This reminds me of that ugly-ass statement that floated around in the political world a few years ago: “Now is a time for healing.” Except that politicians only said it after things like the Rodney King verdict and after bombing some country. The implied thing here is “Okay, I know I’ve just punched you in the gut, and you really either want to know why, or punch back, but NOW IS A TIME FOR HEALING, meaning you’ll just have to be a good sport and get over it.”

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Dear Breakup Girl,

Your column is great!! I’ve read and learned so much from your advice given to others, and now I need your help. Here’s the scoop: I’m 26, and 4 years ago I met a special guy who was my first. We dated for 3 years, moved in, and after 10 months I broke up with him. I realized that after living together, he was not the man to spend the rest of my life with…a lot of it was the little things, but there were some other issues as well. We moved out (apart) last Sept. I dated a few people after that, but nothing serious. Come march, my ex sent me an email (it was approaching our anniversary).

We ended up meeting, and well, I’m sure you know the rest. Also at that time I was feeling very lonely and was ecstatic to be with him again (although still unsure about the future thing). We started going out again. As exes, he had changed, for the better. After a while though, it just got too comfortable. He was settling in nicely into my 1 bedroom apartment. It was all too familiar. A couple weeks ago though, I met someone, we hit it off. After one night, we fooled around and I ended up spending the night. So, I was unfaithful to my ex, who had become not-so-much my ex anymore. I told him, of course, and now I feel like crap. He was extremely angry with me, called me every name under the sun, and also sent his friend an email with horrible things written about me, and copied me on it. (This is not like him at all!) Yes, I am sorry, he was a great guy…he loved me so much. Now I’ve thrown it away. The question is, I don’t know why! Was I afraid of commitment, or did I just need to have fun? I don’t know, but I wish I hadn’t now. I’ve wrecked my ex’s life twice, why? This new guy doesn’t even mean anything to me!!! What do you think is wrong with me??

— Sorry

Dear Sorry,

Nothing is wrong with you. You’re allowed (vs. recommended) one rebound; you’re allowed (vs. recommended) one relapse. It’s just in your case, these two incidents happened to, um, overlap. Tell your ex you’re truly sorry (let’s hope he apologizes for the little e-mail incident), and give yourself some serious space. Also, a break.

Love,
Breakup Girl

This advice was originally published September 14, 1998.

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have recently found out that I WAS (is the key word) dating a recently married man for 4 months. I can’t help but entertain the thought of somehow letting the cat out of the bag and exposing this jerk. I noticed that this subject was just addressed on another site), and was wondering what your take would be on the following advise that was guaranteed to shrink the libido of the married ex? It stated that one should call the guy at work and tell him that you’ve written a 3 page tell-all letter to his lovely wife and then invite him to convince you not to send it. After he’s sputtered, pleaded and wet himself, sigh and say,”That was moving, but I have to get to the post office. Take care.” Then, sit back and know that this guy’s every move would be fraught with panic. He would end up crying,”Why me?” instead of the one who was lied to. I always value your advice and am interested in what you think.

–GingerAil

Dear Ginger,

Here’s what I think: don’t even think about it. No, scratch that. Do think about it. Just don’t do it.

Love,
Breakup Girl

This advice was originally published September 14, 1998.

Dear Breakup Girl,

This guy that I was seeing ended up breaking up with me. He told me that he didn’t want a girlfriend right now, but he still wanted to go out sometimes. I just found out today that the real reason he ended our relationship was that he cheated on me. I still like this guy a lot and if he asked me back out I would probably tell him yes. Do you think this is the wisest thing to do?

— Heather

Dear Heather,

Not so much.

Love,
Breakup Girl

This advice was originally published September 14, 1998.