Dear Adam92:

I re-read your posts from the beginning of this thread. I did not read my own posts to you or others’ posts to you, only yours.
And I read your update from yesterday.

This is how I view your girlfriend at this point, from your shares:

My Best View – she is as innocent, inexperienced, insecure, new to relationships with … anyone girl. Inexperienced, she has few to no interpersonal skills and understanding of people and relationships, be it work or romantic relationships. She is as clueless as can be. When you left the workplace and she talked repeatedly, in glowing terms, about the other man, it was not because she wanted to hurt or manipulate you, but that she was bored at work, she felt good about getting attention from anyone at all, and responded positively to that attention, enjoying an interaction that was fun because she was otherwise lonely in her life, and work was boring. And she missed you.

This is the best case scenario. And I will accept it completely, not argue with it but add to it. I will add to it the following: she told you (you wrote) that she intentionally tried to make you feel jealous with the first guy. She said so. This means, in no uncertain terms, that her innocence is not perfect, not complete. She intentionally manipulated you emotionally, triggered in you feelings of jealousy for the purpose of attaching you to her.

So we have one intentional manipulation on her part.

Then there was the guy at work. It is possible, not unrealistic to consider a possibility that this too is an act of manipulation. It is also possible that all of the following are true: she was bored, she missed you, she was excited about getting attention from anyone because of lonely childhood/ life, she didn’t intend to be physically intimate with him… and she talked in glowing terms to you about him as an act of manipulation. In such a possible act of manipulation, her intent is not to hurt you first, but to help herself feel safer by attaching you to her. See the difference?

Then she told you she had no feelings for the guy at work. As you heard her talk about him, you know from her tone of voice, from her need to talk about him, from the glowing terms she used, you know she had feelings for him. She may not have intended to have a physical relationship with him. She may not have had romantic feelings for him, but feelings she had. You know it. When she told you she had NO feelings for him, and when you try to believe something you know is not true, you experience cognitive dissonance and the resulting anxiety.

And what if, she is inexperienced, clumsy, lonely, feeling great attachment to you while she is also manipulative? I personally know an extremely manipulative woman who while being extremely manipulative also was inexperienced, naive, etc.

If you marry her, you want to do that from a place of confidence, not from a place of self doubt.

When you talk to her, my advice is, don’t talk to her from a place looking to feel better, to dispel your suspicions. Talk to her in a different way than before, ask her questions so to get to know her. Ask her questions about her life, her childhood, her view of people, get to know how she thinks.

Don’t get stuck in one view of her. Get to know more and more of her…

anita