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Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been going out with my "boyfriend" for almost five months. He is 31; I am 26. We met in a strip bar where I was a dancer and he was a bouncer. He said he had never been out with a dancer, a personal rule, and I believe him. I enjoyed having him there to watch over me and watch me on stage and buy me roses...all his attention was mine. He made me feel so special...for a while.

After we started going out, girls were all over him, and we fought about it all the time. I found it disrespectful. He seemed to encourage it but denied that. Then he got fired and found another job at another bar, and it's driving me crazy to wonder what is going on there. Instead of four nights a week like before, he is working 6 nights a week. He has never invited me to work at the new bar, so it is a big mystery to me. I wonder who he is now watching awestruck on the stage, who he is buying drinks for. Even if I am at my club, I get agitated and have a knot in my stomach.

I can have a lot of other guys, but I truly am not interested in anyone else. I thought I had met my best friend. I don't sleep (he comes in at 5 AM); I don't eat; it's eating ME up. He doesn't acknowledge the effect this is having on me. In April, he told me I was the girl he had been waiting for all his life, his sweet love, and that he wanted to marry me. Now I am "the bitch."

I am obsessed with him and know it would be no problem for him to bring home a different girl every night. This terrifies and haunts me because I want to be the only one in his eyes and bed. My Pisces intuition doesn't trust him (or any man), but then again he does come to my place 95% of his late nights. I'm so confused. In the meantime, I love him and am trying to do the right thing, but I so don't want to get burned. He scares me because he can really break my heart and he's already been careless with me. Do these kinds of situations ever work out for the better?!

--Lessa

Dear Lessa,

I’m a little stuck here. See, either (a) this guy is bad and mean and closed-off and careless, in which case, as far as why you "love" him and stick around, we’d have to work on your self-esteem, or (b) this guy is doing his job — as boyfriend ("boyfriend?") and bouncer; you’re freaked out and jealous just because you no longer have the luxury of being able to keep your eye on his, in which case, as far as what’s making you so unfoundedly insecure, we’d have to work on your self-esteem.

Um, so. Is he the one giving you reason for concern (like, not just Pisces intuition, but Lipstick collar)? Is he good to you? Are you good to you? Or do not think you’re good enough to stay in his mind when you’re out of his sight, just ‘cause? Actually, it’s probably a little of all of the above. But what tips me toward worrying about you is the passive wait-and-see sense in your letter. I get that you’ve tried to bring stuff up and talk stuff out. But you don’t have to, say, see how you feel about other guys in order to decide how you feel about this one. You don’t have to have a "best friend" who doesn’t acknowledge how you feel. You don’t have to not eat until you find out whether or not you’re going to "get burned." Is this relationship good enough for you, Lessa? Do you want it? Yes, it is up to you. I know he’s the one whose job is to decide who stays and who goes. But you have the power to do that at home. And — if necessary — to bounce back.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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