Hi Anita!

If I had to be honest, I literally came to see if you were still on here! I was thinking omg I wonder how Anita is and if she is still on this site. Somehow… as soon as I came on this site that other woman’s post was the first one on the relationship forum and I was like Omg what are the chances, I relate to this! And then saw your comment!

You were 10000% right. I’m glad I stuck it out. Our relationship is the best it’s ever been and he’s still the man I was raving about 3 years ago. Nothing has changed.

Life can never be easy though. Right as we were experiencing the highest point of our relationship and our recent engagement, I got the diagnosis of a lifetime. Premature ovarian failure. Was told I had a 5% chance of ever having children. It’s been devastating. It’s brought us even closer and even with all this, he has stuck by me and I couldn’t imagine going through this without him. I like to think God kept us together because he would know we were going to go through this together at such a young age and I couldn’t imagine anyone else by my side through this. He has been everything and more and so supportive. So at the current moment, we’re going through fertility treatments and trying to build our family.

I think about you often and am so appreciative of all the help and guidance you provided me throughout the years. You’re the best! 🙂

Hi Anita,

Absolutely not!

He actually makes more money than me, pays for actually everything… all we do is split rent and groceries. Every dinner, drink, outing, he pays for, he insists. Kind of our Spanish culture I guess… the man always wants to take care of the woman financially. Of course, we are young, so I do pay for my own part of the rent & my car, but if it was up to him and he could, he would pay for it all. I actually got laid off earlier this year (didn’t mention this), and he took care of me and our bills for 3 months with no issue. He’s very supportive when it comes to finances, so finically benefiting from me is most likely not even a reason in his head to be with me.

As to why he’s with me, I feel like when I am writing on here, it’s on my bad days. But truthfully we don’t have many of those… 2 years ago we did, but the last year and a half or more; it really isn’t like that. I feel like he was with me back then because he felt guilty for his own reasons, maybe the lying? But in the present, I could only speak for what he tells me, is that he’s very happy with me, he feels like he’s a better person because of me (not what you’re thinking) he says that I’ve taught him how to communicate, be truthful, be a better son to his parents (call them often, spend time with them, etc) he loves how dedicated I am, how persistent I am, how driven I am, how loyal, I mean I do have a lot of positive qualities, I’m not evil… I have the best intentions of anyone I know. His family loves me… and they know all our issues. People really do love us together. I think we compliment each other well, I think we’ve been through a lot, and have come together stronger. We both have our faults, but I don’t think either of us are terrible people. And I think he realizes I have anxiety and OCS, and some days are bad days.

Yes, that is true. I broke up with him that one time for the first time because he was always drunk and was extremely focused on his fraternity and wasn’t giving our relationship any of his time. But you stated that I broke up with him 4-5 times all the time, but that was him. He broke up with me 3 times for no reason, just wanting to be single or if we were arguing a lot, but he would say that he just wanted to be single and have fun with his friends. And then would come back a week or two later after realizing it wasn’t “fun”. I wasn’t the one easily disposing him every couple of months to “have fun”.

I absolutely will admit that I shouldn’t have broken up with him that first time, I should’ve communicated better and expressed my concerns. I also will take full responsibility for the times I did break up with him for telling the truth. Absolutely ridiculous of me to do so, because I ended up making him feel like he couldn’t tell me anything because I would leave him. So it’s a lose lose situation, he tells me and I leave, he doesn’t tell me and he lies but he hasn’t me. That’s not a good situation to be in.

I also wanted to add to his “change”. He doesn’t say he changed because of me, he says he changed once he realized what his actions (lying), breaking up with me, getting drunk, having meaningless hook ups, were making him feel. He said he felt like he was headed down the wrong path. He says he doesn’t think he would’ve graduated if he didn’t finally change. He says he changed because he wanted to be successful, have a happy relationship, remember his nights and not always be blacked out drunk, not getting with random girls. HE caused the change, not me. He randomly changed from one day to the next, around the time he told me about the first girl. He also says seeing what the lying did to me, made him realize that his decisions so impact other people, and he didn’t want to be so impulsive and careless. His dad has an affair on his mom, left her for the mistress, and now they’re happily married. He didn’t want to be that. He didn’t want to listen to his dad who always said to lie to avoid problems. He wanted to be BETTER. He wanted to be better than how he was being. He wanted to be a better partner because HE realized he wasn’t being one.

That is why I am confused as to why my abuse of questioning, caused the change. Because that’s not what I’m trying to imply.

Thanks for clearing all that up Anita.

So after reading your message, I can put a couple things into perspective. My boyfriend isn’t a bad person, never was. Has he made bad decisions? Yes. He says the decisions he made regarding the other women, were bad impulsive decisions. Because he wishes he would’ve thought more with his head (as in am I really over my girlfriend? Are we just arguing? Are we really done long term? Before adding other girls into the mix). I some what agree with him, I see where I would regret that too. But the bad decisions I think he made are all the times he lied to me . All the times he looked at me in the face and convinced me I was wrong, creating stories in my head, say I had anxiety for no reason because nothing happened, etc. do I understand why he was scaredy to tell me? Absolutely as well! I’m human, I understand how hard it is to say the truth when they might have such severe consequences (in this case, he was scared I would leave his life).

As as I have grown, I do realize he isn’t a bad person though. I don’t mean for his change to come across as a much needed spiritual moral change. When I mean he changed, I really mean his priorities. That first year his priority wasn’t school, me, his future, his family. It was drinking, and being the cool guy, and being obsessed with his fraternity and image and how many girls he could probably get with. He didn’t care to lie, because he wasn’t extremely invested in the relationship. He thought this was going to be a short term fling. When I say he changed a complete 180, I mean his priorities. He started focusing more on school, and what he wanted to do in life. Making money. Nuturing our relationship. Communicating. Being truthful. Spending more time with our family. Not trying to be the cool guy, but the smart loyal guy. The food boyfriend, son, son in law, friend, etc. & I do think he needed to do those things, to realize what was important in his life. He says it all the time, I have no clue who I was back then. He’s so happy that he has changed for the better. Now he’s the guy that gives idk extra tip to the nice waiter, asks people how their day is going, cries of happiness in movies (lol has feelings), isn’t scared to be emotional. Goes out of his way to decorate our entire house for my birthday, gets me those random flowers. Small things that he never cared about before. I hope this all makes sense.

I do understand from an outside perspective how what he did seems like no big deal, or not technically wrong. And it isn’t. I see that. But since it happened to be first hand, it feels a lot worse. I remember the texts, the way he would look at me, the nights I was crying, how he would laugh saying I was insane if I thought anything happened with that girl. The nights he would be blacked out drunk. The night I found out he texted an ex, or his friend saying a girl was hot. I remember these things. Are they important in the long run? probably not lol. Do I think he would do that ever again? No. Do I understand he was an immature 19 year old? Of course. Do I understand this was when we had been dating less than a year? Yes. Do I know I wasn’t the best girlfriend either? Absolutely. Do I know he’s changed? Yes. Do I know he would make a great husband and father? Absolutely. Do I know all people make mistakes? Yes. Do I think he’s sorry? Yes.

So after knowing all this…. why am I still caught up on it. Is it even this that’s causing my obsession? Is this a distraction? What is it. Why can’t I be happy and accept that we’ve grown so much and for the better. Why am I living in the past. Do I even want to break up? Am I just obsessed with the thought of breaking up because my OCD is latching on it? Is it true that you obsess most about things you care about?

Also, I do understand the posts I wrote over a year ago, and I can admit I have changed and grown a lot. I am no longer in college, have an extremely successful career, my boyfriend and I are on our own now, paying our own bills, living a very different life than in college. We’re at a different point in my life, and like I said in my post… I am so freaking happy when I’m not obsessing about the past and stuck in my own head. If I’m living in the actual moment, focusing on the present and the future, I feel absolute bliss. I’m happy.

Anita,

I would never want you to believe that your help and input was for nothing. There have been a countless about of times where you have brought light to a dark situation and clarity just where I needed it. You’ve taken me from pure panic, to peace. You’ve helped me understand a lot of things that I did not.

Regarding yesterday… please do not take any offense to that whatsoever I just really could not interpret what you were trying to say. And the fact that something in my situation made you feel too uncomfortable to write on the internet made me panic because I really had no idea what you were thinking. You’ve written so many difficult things for many people and had shed so much great light, that I am confused as to why you can’t do the same without having the power to “give other ideas to harm”. I was just curious as to what part of my story gives you pretty strong validity that nothing happened so maybe I can see that insight as well and realize “she’s totally right, how couldn’t I have noticed that before”.

The only thing I can think of is that from your understanding you said the fact that I can remember facts surrounding that day, I would’ve remembered that day/”possible incident” as well. But when you mention something about giving ideas to others etc, I got all confused because I wasn’t sure what in my situation could even deal with intentional harm!

So it kind of scares me that you think what he was trying to do to me, would give people ideas to harm others. Because no one really reacted to what he used to say to me because they just knew imhe was an ***hole. Eventually my grandpa talked to him & told him… stop it she doesn’t get your stupid humor and it’s hurting her. And after that he did stop. And I eventually actually would even go to my cousins house sleep there I would talk to him etc, of course I still didn’t like him but I wasn’t affected by his behavior because I just knew he was jealous of me and my family and I would honestly laugh to myself because of how dumb he was.

Anita,

I am extremely confused by your response. Because I have no idea what direction that it’s going. My uncle was horrible everyone. My grandma got very skinny after her divorce and he said “it looks like you have aids” lol… his humor is just like NOT funny. I don’t know if he was intentionally trying to hurt me, because he was like this to everyone around him. Just as a 10 year old of course I took everything he said VERY literal. Please if you could just emphasize what’s on your mind and not be specific if you think it’s going to give people ideas to harm someone… that scares me though and kind of triggered me a little bit because I really don’t know what you meant. Or who you are talking about, me, my uncle, or my mom, I’m not sure. And it gave me some anxiety. I’ll be waiting for your response and hopefully not giving it much thought to make my anxiety worse.