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AIBU?

AIBU: to want to address the problems in our relationship and not let go?

33 replies

HopelessToad · 10/10/2017 18:15

I feel like such a piece of scum.
It feels like it's mostly my fault as well.

I've been childish, neglectful, irresponsible, a selfish lover just to name a few of my many mistakes.

I'm so ashamed of myself.

I've let the most perfect person leave my side. Ruined the best relationship I could possibly ask for and lost my family as a result.

I need help.

Our finances were not great to begin with. I had spent some time in prison for a minor offence related to social justice protesting. Before I met my Ex I was going off the rails with activist related activity coupled within a cycle of self destruction and Ex got me out of this silliness. During the spell in prison my Ex acquired a new home for us. Upon my return it was difficult for me to find full time work because of lack of previous employment. I had never had a proper job before this point. It took 3 months until I was bringing in a full time wage between 2 jobs but 6 months until I had a secure full time job. This lasted for a further 2 and a half months as I decided to pursue a degree to make the most of what feels like a very still period before my conviction becomes spent. I was forced to cut back my hours to study but coupled with my loan it just about balanced if not just under. If we were to make some lifestyle changes like not going out so much it wouldn't have been a problem. It didn't greatly affect our ability to pay bills as we could previously but we were still both flippant when spending.

Despite our poor organisation and management we were really happy with where we were going. My Ex was training into a new amazing career I found and encouraged her into. She's going to shine there. We were discussing getting married and talking about our future goals in depth.

It all started last year. I set aside enough of my student loan to pay off a big chunk of our rent, the tenancy is in her name so I pestered her for a 2 weeks to make the arrangements with the estate agents. This never happened. Long story short, we both spent all this money indulging ourselves...stupid I know and with it being in my account I take full responsibility for allowing it to happen but yeh then... I discovered that during our brief time apart she had cheated. Which, now, I don't blame her for. She was alone, with our DC (2 dogs, 4 cats) in pretty poor circumstances before getting our home.
This was fresh news to me and I'm a very emotional person. She begged me not to break up with her, and, I didn't but it did effect me.
I got very untrustworthy, paranoid and would have panic attacks at work. I started to become quite lazy and apathetic but despite that I was still passionately in love with Her(and I still am now). She gave me her online social media account details voluntarily as a gesture to show that nothing would happen again.
I lost my job due to lateness over this period and, Although obtaining a new job relatively quickly, lost that due to an argument with the manager in some frankly childish circumstances thatre my fault entirely although I wasn't in a great mood working here as my ex had been in touch with the person shed cheated with while she was working here the year previously. I was then out of work for 3-4 months and during this time my ex spent her inheritance to cover our bills and grovelled to her family. It was awful.

Due to this immense pressure I offered to put my degree on hold until she finished her training so that we wouldn't be in any financial difficulties.

Despite that i went through helpless episodes where I thought everything was repeating itself and that she would up and leave so I decided to reapply for my degree after affirmation from other people that this was a good decision to make. I then discovered while researching that if I transferred elsewhere I would be able to get a better degree, work less and still contribute more than a 40 hour minimum wage job over a 12 month period.

She discovered the application before I spoke to her about it and of course, you can imagine what entailed.

Shortly after this I returned back to work but over the course of this time we had frequent, but dispersed arguments about random small things, it actually ridiculous. I felt like this was just stress and pressure and felt like we were working through everything. Slowly but surely. She was still talking about getting married next year, it just felt like a rough area to get through.

Nothing much else was said about the university issue but eventually I decided to go after realising my income would be far better than working a 40 hour a week job because of our change of circumstances on the year before. Due to the arguments about this previously I got very scared about bringing this up and shamefully revealed it in a text message at midnight while next to her in bed two weeks before I was due to start.

It wasn't good of me.

During this time she spent a lot of time talking to male colleagues...perfectly innocent but it upset me and made me feel uncomfortable so I asked her to reduce this and, well, she felt I was asking her to not have any friends at all and it caused further problems.

We both got a little secretive with our phones at this point..Ect...but nothing majorly problematic, we still did everything together.

Despite all this we talked and she hesitantly agreed to trial university...

I should mention that over these few months we had one major argument and I said some really nasty things that I didn't mean and I'm so disgusted by.

The couple weeks before I was due to go to university I stopped working so much, 1 day a week. I didn't communicate this but it was because I was anticipating my student loan coming through and wanted to spend as much time with our pets and getting everything else in order before I left.

Anyway, so she took me to university, begged me the entire way not to go, begged me to come home with her the whole time. I foolishly thought this was just nerves because of all the stress we were going through.

The first week passed. I come home. Everything is great, we're cuddling, kissing nothing unusual and over the course of the night she gets really cold with me and...after pressing for a conversation she says she wants to go on a break...I felt something else was up and asked but she said no. When she went to bed, I checked her social media to discover she had been talking to a colleague for weeks about how much she wanted to do stuff with...you know and had even been having an explicit conversation while we were talking about 'us'.

I completely flipped out, woke her up shouting and said more stuff I don't mean and regret massively. I then messaged some of our friends and her parents it's fucking disgraceful. I don't know what came over me. It felt like a repeat of January except happening in real time and I was crumbling to pieces.

It feels like in the last couple months we just kept going tit-for-tat on issues instead of really talking to each other as we had always previously done.

She uses her phone excessively so I do.

She goes to other people for advice so I do.

She messaged some of my friends saying I was neglecting our family so in the end I message her friends saying she's cheated.

Frankly, it's a childish disgrace and should have never come to that in the first place.

My problem is that:

It's nothing that can't be addressed

But for the past 6 months we've been expressing our frustration with other people...and just our frustration so obviously we are going to be biased toward ourselves

This means that

I have people telling me she's a bad person and to leave

She has people telling her that I'm a bad person and encouraging her to be with her now new partner of, incidentally 3 weeks.

I have no doubt that the new guy is a nice guy and he's done some great things but I know my ex so well and I'm sure that while she may feel something now, he just happened to give an ear at the right time. He is much better as a friend to her than a partner and I'm sure they would both be better off as friends and colleagues for life than a rebound relationship...then again am I just in denial?

Before January...everything was on the up...everything...

And despite everything that's happened in this small space of time...

I understand her emotionally like no one else does

She understands me emotionally like no one else does

We'd began to build a family, aspire to a future

And we had an extensive list of memories that so many people would envy!

The break up, 3 weeks in, has made me realise what really matters to me.

And I can let go of everything and would do absolutely anything for the slightest opportunity to try, just, one more time. Even if we just began as friends.

AIBU to think that there is any hope and to try, even if it means waiting, to get back to what we had before we both allowed external influences to dictate how we acted?

All I want to do is address, directly every single mistake that I made and try one more time, without the baggage I was bringing.

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CompletelyUniqueUserName · 10/10/2017 18:32

Leave her alone.