Advice

[lotsofrawrs]

Forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this, I'm just looking for advice.

 

About a year and a half ago I met my girlfriend playing the video game World of Warcraft. Neither one of us were looking for a relationship, she'd been in several before and I've never been in any. At any rate, she was seeing someone else at the time and a few months later after they broke up we gave in and started "seeing" each other. I use the quotations because we live accross the country from each other, so outside of the video game, phone calls, and skype we've never seen each other.

 

To give a bit of background information on us I'll start with myself. I'm younger than she is by a good deal, but that's never crossed my mind. I have never worked before and live with my parents and younger brothers, one of which is autistic. I'm quite honestly the only person in my family that my youngest (autistic) brother understands, and that, more importantly, understands him. I consider myself to have a big heart and be almost entirely selfless.

 

My girlfriend, being a bit older than I, has three children whom the youngest of which is closer to my age than she is to me. This also isn't an issue as I already see them as my own children and would do anything for them. She's been in a lot of relationships and had a lot of horrible things happen to her. Her kids live with their father and she only gets to see them once a week if she's lucky. She worked a lot of places over the years until a couple years ago when she got sick and hospitalized. She ended up taking that year off and almost exclusively staying at home playing WoW, since she still lives with one of her ex-boyfriends and he pays for everything. She recently started working again just a few months ago and is saving money to move out on her own.

 

Now we've been together for over a year living apart like this but we love each other and so have made it work. We aren't perfect and we fight all the time but usually over the distance and miscommunication. Just over a week ago now she said that it was time for us to move forward in our relationship. Since she doesn't have custody of her children she can't leave the state she's currently living in if she wants to see them, so I have to move. This is something we've been talking about for a while, I've been looking for jobs out there and she has been looking for places for us to move in to. It was just rushed since neither of us expected it to be happening this rapidly since we wanted to have jobs/places to live lined up before anything huge like moving.

 

My family knows about her and are supportive of us and only wish us the best, hers are a bit more apprehensive though she isn't as close to them as I am to mine.

 

I figured that we deserve the chance to make our relationship work, and the distance wasn't cutting it so I decided my pack my stuff and move. I'm currently sleeping on one of her friend's couches while we look for another place and I'm going through the interview process at the company she works for because she pulled some strings.

 

Now that I've done a little bit of explaining about our situation I'll talk about our dilemma.

 

I have never been in love before, and I haven't ever kissed someone I wasn't related to until I moved out here so I have no clue how I am supposed to feel. She on the other hand has, and says that she is completely in love with me, she hasn't had anyone that's cared about her before the way I have. We are sort of abstaining as I don't want to become confused on my feelings. What I do know is that I would do anything for her and I want to see her happy, and get everything that she deserves in life.

 

I'm not quite sure if I'm in love, or if I just love her though I am fairly certain it's the former. My real problem however is in abandonment issues. I feel like I left my younger brother out in the cold to grow up alone while I went off to get my very own happily ever after. As I mentioned he's autistic and I am the only person who can relate to him and understand what he's going through. When I was 6 my grandfather died and he was the only person in the world I felt that way with until my youngest brother was born and I don't want to leave him all alone in this scary place, especially since he is autistic. She's aware of this concern and said that she won't let him forget about me and we'll skype with him all the time and he can come visit any time. Neither of our families are well off so the visiting will be sparse but I relented and moved away.

 

Now it's been just over a week and I miss him more than ever, you can say he's not my kid nor my responsibility but I beg to differ. I may not know what it's like to father a child myself but I would die for my younger brother, I'd do anything for him. Anyway, my girlfriend told me that when her youngest turns 18, which is 8 years from now, we'll move back to be with my brother. He will be 13 in 8 years and I will have more or less missed his entire childhood. The thing is, I could probably do it and live the next 8 years here with her and start a life for us if I knew for certain that we'd go back when we said we would. The reason I have doubts is because in 8 years, any or all of her children could have children of their own, making her a grandmother. She says we'll move back because she isn't close to her family, but her children are her world and I know that if any of them have a child and stay here then we will never go back and I will have abandoned my brother.

 

This is all stuff I am planning to talk to her about, I just only recently thought about the grandchildren thing and have been trying to figure out how to do just that. I don't know how to talk about this without ruining our relationship and hurting her, possibly forever. At the same time if I don't ever mention it and end up spending the rest of my days here I'm hurting my brother. I don't know what to do. I guess I'm going to have this talk with her soon but I just need some advice and besides her and my five year old brother, my grandfather was the only person I could confide in. I pray constantly for guidance, though I lost my faith some time ago. I have no one else to talk to, no friends, no family, no one.

 

Any advice or opinion or thought at all would be of great assistance.

 

I thank you all for your time and apologize again if this is the wrong place to post this.