dizzylizzy

Kellbell, you are so right as it has definitely affected my since of security and I hate living a life of constant doubts and wondering. And I know people don't change especially when you are older your are set in your ways. He tells me that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks and that he wants to be a better person and that I am good for him as I keep him on track. Meow, he is trying and I have seen some definite improvements. The two areas we struggle with the most is communication with the ex, and he pretty much feels he has to take off of work to see his kids because he has to go to their place because they won't come to our place and he feels he needs to do this also during work hours because he feels bad excluding me if he goes on the weekends and evenings. Since he doesn't want to hurt my feelings he trys to tell me as little as possible as it is a reminder of their nonacceptance of me.

Meow, I have no problem with him seeing his kids and I never ask what was discussed. Just want more openess in the relationship. Kellbell, these have been issues from the start, I did discuss my expectations, concerns, worries, boundaries and have been discussing them from day one. He has used these discussions to try and justify some of his lies. I lied to you because I knew it would upset you, I don't tell you because I new it would upset you. Things have gotten better but once the doubt has been put there it is hard to get the trust back. He has told me that because I have set some bondaries and because he has put me first in his life that is why his kids are pulling away from him.

I ask myself the same questions. My counselor says I will when I am done when I have no more quarters to give. Kind of harder to break off a relationship once you get in so deep. His son is 21, married and has his own home. His daughter is 19 and still lives with her mother. I have no problem with his contact with his kids just wish it was done a little more openly. We have been living together for 2 years and for the most part they never call the home phone and they only call his office phone M-F from 8-5 (he works out of our home). He tells me he and his ex have very little contact but whenever I am off work unexpectedly she always seems to call, his office phone of course. And when he has his email up I see emails from her on his business account. Since he doesn't share any of this with me it makes me question how much contact there really is.

Scout, I definitely have some trust issues. And no I don't feel like I can trust him to the ends of the earth. He has a lot of communication via the phone and email with his ex all of which is done when I am never present and it is never discussed with me. Makes me uncomfortable due to some previous situations. Most of his communication and visits with his kids also take place when I am not around as they are not accepting of me. After 2 years of putting forth a lot of effort to be accepted this doesn't sit well with me so to a certain extent I think he hides some of the communication he has with the kids. Then there have been other trust issues that have broken as I have caught him breaking promises and lying about it. There is a pretty long list of broken trust.

kellbell, I have asked him politely in the past, which upset him and when I asked him if it was okay if I took the afternoon off and went shopping with the girls I don't need to call him before to give him a heads up so long as I am home at my regular time he said, no that he would not like that. Sometimes he tells me sometimes he doesn't. Meow18 - I have explained to him that all I would like is a simple email saying he's stepping out. His thought is because he has a cell phone he can be reached at anytime. I don't want to call his cell phone or hunt him down, just a simple I'll be gone ..... in an email just so I have a headsup. I think that there have been times that he leaves work and I don't know it and he hasn't told me where he went and a few months back I caught him lying about where he was, which where he was was no big deal as he was over at his sons, but I didn't appreciate the lying. I'm just looking for the same consideration that I give.

If, on a whim, you decide to leave work for the afternoon to go visit friends etc. should you call your significant other that you live with to let them know? This is something I have always done out of consideration but often times my BF leaves work on a whim for personal reasons and never calls to let me know that he will be somewhere else. His thought is as long as he is home by the time I get home what difference does it make. We pretty much communicate every day through email and for me it gets frustrating because I will email him, not get a reply for hours and I'm thinking he is swampped and come to find out he wasn't at work. Just kind of irritates me. What is the norm for this in a relationship?

Sounds to me like he does care and have an interest so if you are not looking for a commitment maybe you should look to someone else for that kind of relationship. I myself am not overly comfortable with my boyfriend having a lot of contact with other women but some of it I try to understand because socially he and I are completely different animals. I am very conservative and prefer one-on-one conversations and get nervous in big crowds. My BF is a sales person; thereforeeee, he is the social butterfly. It doesn't matter where we go he has to interact with everybody whether they want it or not. In a restaurant it is hard to have a conversation with him because he is paying more attention to the conversation going on at the next table. He is always interjecting into other peoples business whether they want it or not. I use to question if he was flirting but mostly I just think that it is personality. He needs that connection with others, and he needs and craves the attention he gets from it. When I think about it he is probably somewhat insecure and this is why this attention is so important to him. But he isn't a player.

Unfortunately life isn't fair. I believe that as long as you do your best, treat other right eventually you get your just reward. He may not see it now but he may see it in two years from now. Everything happens for a reason and he needs to have faith and trust in this.

Just looking for some opinions. My B/F and I have been living together for two years. His kids are 19 and 21 don't live with us, my kids are 17 and 20 and the 17 year old lives with us. My kids accept him, his kids for the most part haven't accepted me. Every holiday, B/F birthday etc. I have extended invites to his kids and family to join us. His family always accepts, for the most part his kids decline or blame me when they blow off their dad. I have finally hit a point of where I am tired of extending myself to them. Next month is his 50th birthday and I want to do something special to mark the 50th but really am not looking forward to going through the process with his kids again (I invite, we arrange and rearrange our plans and schedules to meet their needs and it still ends up not working out) so I'm looking at my options 1) Just he and I do something and let his kids make their own plans to do what they want with their dad 2) I make plans for a special day and invite his family, excluding the kids and let them make their own plans with him or 3) I make plans for the special day and invite everyone and continue to endure the disappointment and disrespect. His daughter usually accepts the invitations after putting us through the ringer but has made it clear to both of us that she prefers it be just her and her dad and to exclude me, and his son has told him that he doesn't accept most invitations because he is having trouble dealing with divorce. I guess I am tired of the fight and figure what is wrong with giving them what they want. I will do my thing, they can do their thing. Since their dads birthday hits on a weekday I figure this shouldn't be a problem as whatever I do will be on the weekend and they can have his birthday or one of the days on the weekend. I welcome everyone's thoughts and input.

Don't compromise your standards. Myself I don't care for the porn but talking sexually to other women is really pusing the bondaries. Unfortunately with the internet everything is just a little to accessible and people are getting to caught up in the sexual side of it. It's like with drugs you keep needing a little more and a little more to reach that state of euphoria that they are looking for.

I have two big concerns 1) the two of you have some very different moral standards and 2) it sounds like he is probably addicted to porn. He needs counseling for the addition and you both need to take a hard look to see if your moral standards are compatible. This is a big issue and one that would not be acceptable for me.

I asked my long time counselor this vary question and this is what she told me. When you go to Las Vegas and you have a roll of quarters and you are playing the slot machines and it feeds you a little here and a little there and you continue to play but gradually your pile of quarters is starting to shrink so you comtemplate moving to another machine then suddenly you look down and your quarters are gone. How do you know when it is time to leave? When you are all out of quarters to give. You will know when it is time.

Probably. It is like he has two different lives, one that includes me, him and my kids and one that is him and his kids, both over 18. I have extended myself on many occasions to his son, daughter in-law and grandaughter and for the most part the daughter in-law won't have anything do do with either one of us. At first the son said the his wife had issues then when my B/F pushed it and wanted to talk to her about it (so we could maybe come to some kind of resolve) then the son said that he had issues but wouldn't tell my B/F what the issues are and refused to to discuss it. It is very strange though because one week the son will call his dad every day then all of sudden he doesn't call at all. Doesn't share in anything that is going on in his life yet he had no problem accepting $15K from his dad for the house he bought less than a year ago. Just been a struggle all the way around.

Because his son has had a hard time accepting our relationship and he pretty much knows that the only way he can have a relationship with his son is if it doesn't include me so he avoided telling me the truth.

Unless there is good reason for her to go to school elsewhere i.e. it is a better school, the school is highly recognized then I would ask her not to go. If she can give you a good reason for attending a school that is out of town then I would stand behind her and assure that your love is strong enough to get through a long distance relationship and take it from there.

Because so much has happened in the past two years I am going to abbreviate things as much as possible to keep it short. The first feelings of no trust started when he felt the need to tell me about every girl that came on to him, basically he had to tell every conversation with every girl he came in contact with, how all the girls at the local coffee shop knew him, how the young girl with a boob job asked him out but he specified to me that he didn't want a hottie (that made me feel real good), how he got this favor from this girl and that favor from that girl when I finally said enough was enough he slowed it down. After 6 months of his divorce going no where I started to have some uncomfortable feelings so I watched his online chatting and he while he was bragging about all he had and all he was losing in the divorce he state that "he thought that he wasn't fighting the divorce becaue he thought that he still 'LOVED' her". He says that he didn't mean what he said and that he just wanted the people online to know that he had a heart. The people online did not like him. After this happened (it was a lounge where people play cards) he told me that he quit the card league and would not go on the site again. Three months later while he is out of town I go into the same chat room and he has rejoined the league; however, of course he wasn't lying because he did quit the league he just failed to tell me that he rejoined a couple of weeks later. This is a league that he admits to being addicted to which concerned me in the first place. And then he works from home and I caught him lying about being at home working when he really wasn't. Don't really care about what he was doing as he was visiting his son but I do care that he lied about it.

From about 2 months into our relationship he has wanted to marry me but I had not been able to say "I do" due to trust issues (I've caught him in some lies etc). He also had a 25 year marriage between his first marriage and our relationship. We have talked in the past about his first marriage and his regrets over not trying harder. Something he had apparently expressed a few too many times with his second wife because after discussing it with me the first time he said that his second wife didn't appreciate his regrets about his first divorce because she also felt like he was sorry he had married her. We have had so many trust issues that this hasn't helped me to trust in the relationship.

Over the weekend my boyfriend and I (together for two years) go up to the mountains for a picnic and some quality alone time. During the picnic we drink a bottle of wine and decide we would like to make a night of it so we get a room with a wonderful jacuzzi and fireplace. We go out to dinner and share another bottle of wine. During dinner he proposes and I say yes, we proceed to the room etc etc and to make a long story short the evening ended with us in bed and him crying because he didn't try hard enough in his first marriage that ended 30 years ago. Initially I tried very hard to be understanding but when the crying continued I blew up. He says he isn't holding on to the first marriage just the fact that he failed it. At some point don't you have to move past your failures and let them go. And am I wrong in being hurt by his timing of all this. I understand there was a lot of alcohol but jeezs isn't 30 years long enough to get over it? And you would have thought that his mind would have been on happier things. I am so disappointed and discouraged yet I am sitting here beating myself up because I blew up at the situation.

I'm not sure what I want to do. I have been divorced for 12 years and have spent most of that time focusing on raising my two boys and now that they are pretty much on their way I want a good, solid, relationship. I don't want to settle for less than I deserve and I don't want to have to continually ask for respect and consideration when it comes to his relationship with his ex. It just seems like I have had to fight to be first in every asepct of his life and whan that to be given to me freely. But after two years my heart is very attached and I don't look forward to starting all over again. I don't fall for anybody and I don't get over my relationships very easily. I know how difficult it is to find that person that you connect with on so many levels i.e. conversation, sense of humor, spiritually, sexually, athletically. There is so much that we enjoy doing together but I can't help but feel that he is never going to be able to break the connection with his ex. I want to be number one for once. It just seems ridiculous that after he and I being together for two years that thoughts of his ex should be interfering with our sex lives. How long do you wait for someone to get over their ex? I'm not getting any younger. I want to move forward and build a strong healthy relationship and in the past two years we haven't grown at all as a couple. Unfortunately our struggles go beyond just his ex, the step kids aren't accepting, and then there are broken promises and lies so the trust isn't there. Very frustrating because he has so many great qualities and we connect on so many levels but on the other hand we have so many issues. If anything I feel like we have gone backwards.

He has been present at every dealing or meeting that I have had with my ex. My ex has been in our home, due to certain situations we have all sat down to dinner together and my ex calls my home. His ex only calls his office phone (he works in the home) and she only calls Monday - Friday from 8 to 5, when I am not around. I know nothing of any of there dealings because it is always done when I am not around. I feel like our living together is ignored. It has recently gotten better as one of the children has had some medical issue so she has had to see me at the hospital and has allowed me to come into her home when he has visited the daughter.

The wedding incident just happened a week ago. What makes it more difficult is I have tried talking to him and he tells me that I am wrong. I don't think he is being honest with himself. When we first got together I wanted him to live on his own for a year and we would date. I wanted this so he would have time to grieve and become his own again, which was highly recommended by my family counselor but he insisted on living together and I moved forward with that because I wanted to give the relationship a chance. I have caught him breaking a promise to me and lying to me about where he has been so this has only added to the already existing trust issues. His ex still loves him and wants him back, at least this is what he has told me and I have told him that if they both still love each other than together is where they belong but he still says no. I had to fight get the divorce finalized because they both dragged their feet. Two years and he still has belongings at their former home and at his ex inlaws. I just can't help but feel that they both are hanging on. Until a month ago he still had a key to let himself into what was their home.

She didn't want to meet me. The only reason we met was because every time he went down there to pickup or drop off an adult child or to pick something up I was told I had to wait out in the car. I finally insisted on going in if he was going in and going through rooms etc especially since he was still paying the housepayment so finally he took me in and she wasn't expecting to see me and wasn't happy about it either. We never were together under the roof they shared. When I met her we had been living together for about a year and when we got home to our place he wasn't able to function. How do I post so that I can put your quote in my reply and distinguish between your quotes and my quotes

A little over a year ago I was eavesdropping on a conversation he was having in chat room and he was bragging about all these cars he had etc and how his wife was going to get everything in the divorce etc. the guy responded with "what are you stupid" and he replied with "I think I'm not fighting her in the divorce because I think I still "LOVE" her". I flipped and confronted him with it and he said that he didn't mean anything by it and that he just wanted the people online to see that he had a heart. I had seen other conversations of his in this same chat room and he is not well liked and is continously cussed up and down. When we first moved in together I continually found framed picutres of the ex in all of his office drawers (he works out of the home). We have since moved past that and the divorce is final but it has put that doubt in my head and these situations only help to support my doubts. I have tried to talk to him about it but all he says is No that it has nothing to do with her and he doesn't know why it is happening. I don't think my thoughts and feelings are abnormal or uncalled for do you?

Good for you for looking into myspace and other areas of the internet. My BF seemed to be addicted to the internet but assured me that all was on the up and up so one day I created a false logon and decided to watch some of his activity and while watching one of his online conversations he stated that the reason why he wasn't fighting for his divorce was because he thought that he still "LOVED" his soon to be ex wife. In doing more searching I found out that he was addicted to porn and viewed it on a regular basis (at least 3+ times a week). Needless to say we are still together, I guess I am stubborn and will fight for what I want until the bitter end. It has caused a lot of trust issues between us but I trusted my gut and my instincts and found out that I was right. I did not feel wrong in what I did because it was a public chat room and I had every right to be there. Good luck.

My boyfriend and I have been together for two years. During this time he was still married but separated from his wife of 25 years and up until we met they were still living under the same roof but in separate bedrooms. Sexually he has never had any difficulties in fact his stamina etc is amazing for his age; however there have been three occasions when he was not able to function. The first time was when he took me into the house that they lived in together and introduced me to his soon to be exwife, that night it wasn't happening and couldn't explain why, the second time I can't remember the circumstances but there were dealings once again with the soon to be exwife the third time happened after attending a wedding of a friend of his. The whole night he was very attentive and it was very known between the two of us that it would be happenig that night but offortunately he was not able to function. My thoughts of the first and second incident are that he felt guilty and that he was betraying his soon to be exwife. The third time, with the divorce becoming final a couple of months ago I think the wedding brought back memories of his 25 year marriage and some possible regrets over the divorce etc. Not sure what else to think because this is not the norm for him and is so out of character. He can function (and not just once but 2 - 3 times) on many hours of sleep deprivation and alcohol has never been a problem plus he didn't have much to drink. I was somewhat disappointed because we have hopes of getting married and I thought the wedding would have had us looking to the future and instead I feel like it has brought up maybe some unresolved feeling towards his ex and maybe some regrets. If this was something that happened occasionaly I would not be concerned but of the circumstance surronding the three times that it has happened I can't help but wonder if he still has strong feelings for his ex. I love him and don't want to lose him but if his heart is still with his ex then that is where he should be. I just don't want to continue in relationship that has no hopes of a future. I welcome any thoughts out there.