Lauren

Time to pull wayyyy back. Give her her space. She obviously is very unsure about a long term commitment. She can still be in love with you but unsure..... You need to give her alot of time and space. It sounds like you are being a bit too intense. Give her some time to miss you and call you up and come to you instead. Dont tell her you are going to give her space. just ease off ALOT. but still be cheery and happy when you do call or see her to let her know that you arent mad or anything. let the wedding arrangments take a back seat for a bit.

If she means alot to you, keep them in a box under the cupboard or whatever. One day you will be happy to pull them out and look at them. At least youve got the option!

Ive seen this happen a few times and I think the people involved should have put a stop to it the second it started. It completely RUINS an entire family. I have seen it. It is never too late to put a stop to it. Think about the future. You being with him is just one big unhappy problem with everybody involved. You are 17, that is VERY YOUNG, you have no idea how much your ideals and wants and needs will change by the time you are 30. Dont make this mistake.

I dont even know where to begin cause its so complex. Firstly i met my BF 18 months ago in August 2001. When he asked for my number i said, 'Do you have a girlfriend? 'He said 'No.' So i gave it to him. For nearly 5 months after that I kept saying I just wanted to be friends (I was still hooked on someone else i wanted to date) but we were dating/seeing each other very often. From Dec 2001 - April 2002 he would regularly go away on weekends to go diving and spent NYE away. I knew that his ex went diving and lived up the coast so i was always very suspicious and cold to him once he got back from his weekends away. I also felt it was none of my business since we werent officially going out. Occasionally id ask questions but would get the 'right' answers. he claimed he hadnt seen his ex in ages and that things were over long ago with her and that he would go up with friends but that she lived much more further up than where they went. I was always suspicious. In Feb 2002 on valentines day, we went out and had a fun first Valentines date. Then later that night i caught him calling up his ex. He had told me he needed to go and get somethign from his car but it was really an excuse to make this call. i wanted to know why he was talking to her on Vday. He told me that she had called him earlier and he said he would call her back. Apparently she had been really upset cause she just broke up with someone and that she just wants to get back with him and give it all up and move back to our city for him. He told her he didnt want her to 'move for him' if she was going to move, it had to be for herself. In March 2002 he officially asked me to be his gf. Everything was really wonderful- he really is the perfect BF in loads of ways. Id see him every day and he stayed over most nights. He would do everything for me, it was kind of intense. All along though, i still felt unsure about my feelings and felt like we were just Best Friends and didnt feel like I could commit to him "forever". I was annoyed that I had found this great guy but couldnt feel anything for him and avoided having sex with him but he stayed over almost every night anyway. In July 2002 he said his friend was going overseas for 2-4 months, he said he needed a holiday and asked me what i wanted him to do and if i had the money to go with him too. I was upset at the first thought of 'being alone' but then i thought i needed the break, the space and time to sort out my feelings for him. He went away and we were on an official 'break' at my request. I was hoping to catch up with and finally settle and bury my feelings for two other guys that I had always been hung up on. While he was away he called and emailed often. He said he was dying without me, missed me, loves me more than ever, wants to be with me forever, wished he was home already etc. I also realised in this time that yes, this is the one i want to be with. When he got back in Nov 2002, things were just perfect and got better and better every single day. We would spend almost 20 hours a day together! I met his parents the week he got back from O/S, he showed me all his schools and where he used to live. He would always talk about having kids and getting married and recently we started looking at propertys and he was even writing up a wedding guest list and talking about who we would have on our bridal party etc. He was beaming whenever we'd talk about this stuff, he was so happy that we were talking about this kind of thing and that i was excited about this stuff too. So since Nov 2002, I have been with him every minute of every day and he even got me a job at his work. Xmas day and NYE were the best ive ever had. Everyone loves him, my family loves him, whenever i go anywhere without him, everyone wants to know where he is. Everyone has given him the thumbs up! But Ive always had this gut instinct that there was more to his weekends away from early 2002 and that there were things i needed to find out and put to rest before i went committing to propertys and whatever else was in store. In January 2003, I noticed that his ex's number in his phone was the area code for our city, but he always told me she lived up the coast. I asked him why this was and he said the calls go to that number and get diverted all over the country but she lives up the coast still. I wanted to know when he saw her last and when he spoke last. He said he saw her at the beginning of 2002 about 1 time and that he spoke to her before he went overseas. I wanted to know if he used to meet her to go diving. He said no, then I wouldnt drop it, he said well maybe once or twice. I got mad at all these different answers, we argued etc and he said I always had questions and i never believe what he says so that I should just go and do whatever it took to find out the truth, call whoever etc. Well, I got a friend of mine to call up his ex. She asked her 'When did you last see your ex?' They got talking, my friend told her I had been with this guy for 18 months. After this phone call she asked that I call her back in an hour, the girl went to his house and confronted him with this news. When i did call back, she was at his house, she told me that she went overseas with him for four months, they had been going out for 10 YEARS, were engaged to be married this year- that he proposed to her overseas, that they had a property together and that she had recently given up everything to move back to our city to be with him. She said she was very close with his family and visits them all the time. (he is never home though!) She went on a bit...... !!!! She even put his mum on the phone and the mum told me the same thing about the engagement, and that theyve been together for 10 years since highschool and she is his first ever gf! The mum said she has never heard of me. And she just went 'OH. yes....... I have met you..........." So all this time she never realised i was his GF!! I just assumed when she met me, she would have heard of my name a million times before but she must have thought i was just some 'new friend' ?!?!. (In the end alot of what the ex said to me was untrue or 'exaggerated' to sound like it was more serious than it was, she even said things i knew for a fact werent true or possible.) It sounds like the family loved this ex and always wanted them to be together. This is why he was driven out of his house, was never ever home and always at mine. I spose because he didnt want to marry her or be with her and be under all this pressure from family but he wanted to be friends with her. Even his own parents kept thinking he was just on a break and would come around and go back to this ex. He told me that he could never see himself marrying this girl or imagine having kids to her and would clam up at the thought. So he had alot of explaining to do. He told me that with his ex it was only 4 years of commitment until she had to move, then it was on again off again a month here, a big break there, a month here since then and that his mother and this ex keep on pestering him for a proposal and kept thinking that he would come around and realise and marry her. He is never ever home because he cant stand the 'youre 25 when are you going to marry!!!!!!!" The ex was overseas at the same time he was and they met up as friends and he was only with her for nearly 2 months not 4 like she said......so I spose things happened since they hung out so much, he said she started demanding to know when he was going to marry her and was nagging him day in and day out , 'Ive moved back to your city for you, what is wrong with me, why wont you propose, why do you get mad every time i bring this up, i want this more than anything in the world blablab' etc On this trip he apparently just said 'fine, wateva... you go and organise it' He said it moreso just to shut her up. He really made a mistake here, he said he doesnt know why he said this but it just seemed like an easy way out at the time and realises how stupid it was. Ever since the day he got back from that trip, he has avoided her like the plague and has been with me practically 24/7. He has seen her only once or twice since that holiday and apparently he has told her that he doesnt want to be with her. He was hoping she would get the hint and go away. The ex has ALWAYS believed that he just needed a break and needed space and needed time to realise that he wanted her and that he would come back etc..... The story she gave me on the phone was really bizaare to me because I AM THE ONE that has been with him every day and night that he has been in the country except for that summer when he went away on weekends (to see her) and when he went overseas (and was with her) each time when we werent a 'couple'. Technically I dont think he has cheated on me since we were on 'our breaks' or werent officially a couple when he was going away on weekends. But its the constant lying that is the issue and the fact that i DO feel cheated on anyway. He never told her about me, he never told me when he saw her and especially failed to mention he spent an entire two months with her overseas! Apparently she moved back to our city right before the trip. But since this has all came out he has made it clear to me, my parents and his parents, that I am the one he wants, he said its obvious because i am the one he is always with and that he realised that I am the one he wants to be with when he was overseas with her. He has officially explained and apologised to my family and me and his family. He is doing everything he can to make amends -this includes counselling, selling the property he has with his ex, answering every single question i have about everything. He has apologized loads of times and says he couldnt bear to tell her he had a gf but wanted to stay friends with her partly cause he felt slack, and he couldnt bring himself to tell me when things started up again with her. Most of the time he didnt know where he stood with me because I'd always say i want to be friends or i need a break or Im not sure. Sometimes he thought well maybe he should just go back to someone who wants him like this ex. Its still very strange to me that he never told his parents about me and that he never mentioned me to this ex. (Although all of his friends know me and I see them every 3 months or so) Not alot of this saga makes sense to me. At first he thought he would really lose me if i knew he was still hanging around her. Then he dug himself into a deeper hole with more lies each time i asked him a question. I think he needs to work on saying a firmer NO to people. Everyone knows that it isnt in his nature to lie. We cant understand how he got himself into this hole. I hope the counselling will help. My immediate gut instinct told me to stick with this guy because in every other way he exceeds alll expectations. I stuck with my gut instinct that there was something i needed to know- and i was right. I have the same gut instinct to give him another chance. Its going to take ALOT of time for me to build up the trust. Im not sure if i will be able to do this, I think the fact that he was with her for 2 months overseas and I had NO CLUE the entire time until now, is the hardest part to deal with. That was an absolute shock. Here i was waiting for him to come back, thinking he was just with his guy friend. Meanwhile it was quite different. But ive given myself 2 months. Im going to take a break from him for 2 months, and i wont consider what to do about us until my huge list of things is satisfied (eg, he finishes the counselling and learns from it, he sells the property he has with her, i meet the family properly, he calls off being a godparent with this ex to a friends kid etc. Theyve already agreed that she will stop hanging out with his family and driving him out of home and also agreed to sell the property as soon as possible.) Even once these things on my list are satisfied it would be too early to decide on our future. Its going to take alot. ALOT. I am in alot of pain and cant stop thinking things like, 'I would never want to go to those countries he was with her in, I dont know if i will be able to sleep with him again without feeling sick and thinking of HER and what hes done the entire time; when he proposes to me in the future, the first thing i will likely think of is this whole saga with HER and that he has been 'engaged' before etc etc etc I WISH i could stay with him and i want to stay with him. I know he wont do something like this again, the problem will be living with the fact that it has happened. Thoughts anyone?