The Void asks: I am in a relationship with this girl for 8 months, she is the love of my life. But lately it seems that she has lost all attraction towards me, she keeps blaming me for everything I do. All the time she brings back the past mistakes I made and the fights we had. She does not want to meet me nor does she want to talk to me. Last month she got really sick and was hospitalized for that, I took care of her in the hospital for the whole month, not a single person from her family came, her friends did not even contact her. I was doing a job and I took a whole month off, which made my position in the company worse. And now, since she has gotten better, she wants to break up with me. She claims that she lost all trust in me because of something I hid about my academic history. She thinks that I am only using her because I have no one else. She has made this whole relationship a platonic one and now it has come to the point where she is not allowing me to hold her hand. She breaks all contact whenever it is convenient for her. She never expresses that she loves me like she used to. I feel used and mistreated. I want to die, I want to kill myself. Living is becoming more and more painful. I have invested so much time and effort into trying to make this work and got nothing in return. My friends tell me to break all contact with her and move on but honestly I don’t want it to end like this. I have made her my whole life when I am being treated like a slave. If I leave her, then that is the end of it and it will just mean that I got nothing out of this relationship other than pain and suffering. If I don’t leave, then she will continuously make me suffer. And I just don’t know what I will do. I think I will kill myself. But I have posted this because I don’t want to. Help!
Hi The Void –
This is an awful situation, no question about it. You have done all you can to try to win this woman over, while she refuses to allow you in, saying you’ve betrayed her trust with that academic issue. And your being there for her during her illness, as no one else was, hasn’t been enough to change her mind. In fact, it almost sounds as though that made things worse.
So I have one question for you: is there any part of her that’s interested in salvaging your relationship? Is she even saying “If you hadn’t hid that thing, we’d be okay, but since you did, we’re done?” Because if so, then I’d urge you to set up couples therapy for you two. With a therapist who neither of you know (or at least you both know equally), so there’s no sense of a bias, who could work to improve your communication and move things past this.
But again, this is only if she’s at least acknowledging that she wishes things were better between you.
If not, then I’m afraid there is nothing you can do, at least for now. I know it feels awful, but I’d have to side with your friends who say to let the relationship go.
But if you do, I want to alter your thinking drastically. You’re afraid that if you do, the last few years will have meant nothing. That’s just not true: they mean exactly what
you say they do. Imagine if (and I’m certainly not wishing for this), she had passed away from that illness. Would you then say it was all for nothing? You’d have to move on in your life, but you’d have all your best memories with her, all you’d learned from her, all the mistakes you’d made… every bit of that is still true! You get all those things now.
And included in those lessons you’ve learned is that you don’t ever want to feel like a slave in an unrequited love again. For some reason, you were willing to accept that in the past; you never have to again now. So instead of seeing this as the end of your life, I’d say to see it as the beginning of a way better one. A life leading to a better girlfriend, a happier relationship, a sense of your value.
Every day, people get divorced, often losing property and contact with their children in the deal. You’re not losing anything like that. You’re able to start anew in a much better way.
In fact, that’s what I want for you regardless. Either you start a new life through couples therapy with this woman, or you start it alone. But either way, things are going to be far better, just around the next corner.
With all my Best Wishes,
Shirelle