I am 54, divorced since 2001, and have been in a "serious" relationship for 3 1/2 years with a woman who is also divorced. About a year and a half into the relationship, it was going great, and I was madly in love. I had taken her to Italy and believed that she loved me, though she had only lip-synched it to me once, over a romantic dinner in Florence. But then, a few months after we got back, an old boyfriend turned up, one with whom she had had a brief, but passionate affair right after her marriage broke up. Suddenly, every time I was with her, there was a phone call from him. How do I know? She would actually take the call! Day or night, whether we were on our way to dinner in the car, just hanging out, or even very late at night, right after we had made love! Now here's another complication. She is Russian, and so all the calls were spoken in Russian, so I have no idea what was said. But from the tone of her voice, she communicated to this guy with great tenderness and feeling.
When I complained that she was spoiling our relationship, she dismissed this as my problem, not hers, that I was being jealous and insecure over something that was just a friendship. But my belief is that by doing this she was communicating 2 things. To him, she had obviously let him know that even though they had parted ways earlier, that he was still very special, and could enter her "space" at any time, day or night, even if she was with me. To me, she was communicating that I was not as special as I thought, and that even though she would tell me that I'm number one, she had the power to knock me back to number 2 at any time she wanted. When I finally asked her to break off communication with him, saying this was a cancer that would destroy our relationship, she refused, saying she has a "strong intellectual and emotional connection" to him, and that I have no right to tell her to dump a friend. But I loved her, so I backed down.
Now, after 3 and a half years of tolerating this, and her constantly lying that this is merely an irrelevant friendship of no concern to me, and that she hardly ever talks to him, that she communicates just over email, and that she's deleted him from her speed-dial (even though I see his name pop up in her cellphone log every single time she checks to see if her children have called her, and even though he has privately admitted to me that they speak all the time), I feel I cannot trust her because of these lies. In fact, she admits to the lies, but blames me for forcing her to lie, because I am so opposed to this "friendship." And I certainly don't feel special (there was even an incident one time when she interrupted our late-night phone call to take a call from him. How do I know? She hit the wrong button and I was still on the line to hear her purr a very sexy "helloooooooo" when she thought she'd switched over to him. I've told her because of the fact that she won't let go of him and that I can't trust her because of all the times she's lied to me, that it's time to break up. In fact, I feel like a doormat, and that I should have broken up with her 2 years ago, when she first brought him back into her life, and threw this in my face. And yet, I love her madly, which is why I've put up with this for so long. She says I'm throwing away something beautiful and incredible and that I'm giving in to an over-active imagination. What do you think?
Feeling Like A Doormat
