SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Yes, I'll give you anything, even STDs! Well... anything other than faithfulness or honesty. But anything else! Honest

Great Job holding your own when she comes knocking, as we told you she would/will. I'm so very damn happy for you man!

I will always wish the best for you and respect you and want to be your friend

.

I feel I need to get your Ex a dictionary so she can look up the words respect and friend. This statement makes her out to be the innocent party in your break up. Her behaviour towards you was not respectful or friendly in any way.

I hope that someday you can reconsider your perspective toward me.

Because in her little pretend world you are the person in the wrong right now. She gave you three months and now you are ment to forgive her. Plus things obviously aren't working out for her right now but you have got your business going and are obviously doing well without her.

I love you. I am sure you probably don't want to hear that, but it's the truth.

Once again she needs a dictionary for what love and truth means.

Her whole reply tries to paint her as the caring victim and you as the sulking meanie. She has a lot to learn if she is ever to be a safe partner for someone.

Now will you block her TooPool?

Sorry - I'd be inclined to send her a Taylor Swift song appropriately named "We are never getting back together".

High school drama stuff, indeed.

but best response is crickets.

Right, I don't want you to contact me again unless something important comes up.

I've never thought of you as evil, and yes, things have gotten better for me over the past few months. But I don't feel any desire to reconnect, and I don't think I'd be happier if we did. I certainly won't be nasty if we ever run into each other, but I don't want to be friends.

Wonderful reply....her reply back...not so much. I've followed your story since the beginning and the main thing I noticed about your Ex is that she is EXTREMELY manipulative. In the past if she could get you in a room to "talk" she could convince you of anything... I'm glad you've shut that door.

You sound great in your most recent posts. You might want to look at a post titled "I confronted her last night". A very similar story to yours ... it would be nice for you to post and let him know that moving on isn't the worse thing in the world... that you can move on and be happy again.

Hi, Toopol,

I am VERY late to this thread, but this morning, I took in the entire thing. I've nothing to weigh in on, and no advice to give...

I just want to tell you how inspiring it was for me to read through your entire story, and the nearly 400 responses! It stimulated a lot of internal thought about my own situation. Really, it means a lot to me.

At any rate, I'm sending you a ton of brotherly best wishes. It sure looks like you have successfully navigated the tricky emotional waters, and I am inspired by your strength, and your good nature as well.

Peace, Toopol!

~SilverEagle

Toopol,

I continue to be impressed as to how you are handling her communications to you. Well done.

She's shown you who she is and even now is still not respecting your boundaries. and that's because it's all about her - not you. Her texts are all a variation of a pity party disguised as concern for you. Good that you saw right through it and stayed firm. It is honestly the best move. I also liked that you weren't cruel and harsh. Just firm. No need to get down in the mud.

I wish you the best as you move on to bigger and better things. It may be too soon to think about, but whomever you do end up with will be a lucky girl, indeed.

Thank you all for the encouragement! She knows how to manipulate me, and her "I love you" was stuck in my head for a day. I'm deeply sad for her. But I'm also wary, and exasperated, and pissed off. For the first time in a little while, I thought back to all the stuff that happened around the time of her second affair. She was so fucking awful to me! Going back to her is almost unimaginable, but if I did imagine it, I could only expect her to become her old self again, take me for granted, and send us right back into hell.

She insists that she's not "evil", and although I assured her that I agree, I'm genuinely on the fence about it. I think that she made choices that hurt me. Those choices could be traced back to her own human weaknesses, and I'm sympathetic to that, but surely that can't give her a free pass, right? She seems to regret it, but how much of that is egocentric self-pity? And if she regretted it the first time, why did she do it again? If I say that she's a basically good-at-heart person who did a horrible thing, doesn't that apply to any number of other evil acts? Every villain thinks that they're the hero, but that doesn't make them any less of a villain.

Not that any of that matters. I deserve a better girl, and she deserves the punishment of losing me forever. We spent 7 years together, full of happiness and full of heartbreak, and in the final accounting, I wish that I had never met her. I don't miss her, and I don't want her back. She made her own tragedy. I cannot, will not, and ought not rescue her from it.

Hi toopol

I'm late to this thread and I apologize if you've already answered this previously but I hope you can answer something for me. I have read in other peoples posts that they were willing to work towards an R if the wandering partner came clean and was remorseful. I see that your XGF had a lot of missteps but there seem to come a time when she reached that state. What made you decide that she was beyond redemption as far as your relationship was concerned?

1) How do you know when someone has truly changed? In my case, my XGF had an affair, confessed, apologized, and promised to do the work necessary to reconcile. Everyone told me that I should run, but I stayed. Then she had another affair, I found out about it, she apologized, and she promised to do the work necessary to reconcile. We had had other "lowest points" before this, and I was not interested in taking another ride on the merry-go-round. Even if I believed that she was sincere (and I did), I did not believe that she would actually be able to keep her promises over the long haul. I didn't give her another chance because she proved she didn't deserve one. She can get another chance with another guy.

2) I got "lucky" because my XGF made the decision easy on me. Toward the end of our relationship, she was getting weird and saying painful things. I realized that I needed to heal and that she was not giving me the support I required. Still, I tried hard to be sympathetic and understanding. I was a saint! But I drew a line in the sand: if she broke her promise to never contact the other guy, I would leave. Eventually, she told me that she planned to contact him, and thereby crossed my line. The relationship was over. And then, I discovered that not only had she been treating me terribly, not only had she crossed the line, but she had actually been seeing him and sleeping with him for ten days already! Suddenly, leaving did not feel like a hard decision. She blew waaaaaaaay past my line in the sand, and leaving her was an easy choice.

3) Everyone has a different threshold. Maybe if we had kids I would have been willing to give it one more chance. Maybe if we were married. Maybe if we had a different history, or a different style of relationship up to this point. And on the other hand, maybe I would never have stayed so long if we hadn't been together for 7 years, or if I didn't believe so strongly in forgiveness and giving people the benefit of the doubt. After this experience, I will not be quick to judge people on their decisions to leave or to stay. Only they can make that choice. In my unique personal situation, it was a very difficult choice, until suddenly it wasn't. Other people will have other experiences.

Hi Topol,

Thank you for the reply. I was in a relationship with someone for 6 years and I allowed myself to be doormatted through most of it. I finally woke up, grew a pair and got myself out of that mess. I proposed to her as well and I thank my lucky stars every day that we never married. She never really apologized to me or tried to change which is the reason for my questions. I'm not implying that your ex is sincere, it's just not something I ever experienced. I am always in favor of reconciliation wherever possible but not at the expense of yourself. If your gut tells you that she hasn't changed, go with it. If there are nagging doubts, err on the side of caution. You have already made a clean break, don't waver. I wish you much happiness in your life.