darrenski

You've all been very helpful in probing me on this. I'm recovering quite well. My flat got bedbugs, so I'm living in my office now, hopefully will have a new flat by next week. Once I'm settled in there I think it'll be easier to move on and start working properly on pulling myself together. Thank you all very much, I'll do my best to pass the buck. - Darren

I'm pretty sure that stands for Real Time Relationships? I've only read UPB thus far - but I think I'll read that now. Like... right now. Thanks for the question.

We have considered couple's councilling. We still talk at least once a week in person about how each of us is feeling, how we are coping with the new situation and whether we need space or time together, how we're going to approach continuing being friends. So there is fairly good communication there Something I said to her recently is that I think I'm more of an introvert than I realised. I have a very strong filter between my thoughts and my words. I'm starting to think this occurs on a subconscious level where I may be disallowing certain thoughts to be conscious because I know they'll make her sad or mad and if I don't think it then I won't say it. Does that make any sense? Was I angry? Probably. I have a history of bottling up anger though so I'm not entirely sure. As a child I would have outbursts maybe once every few years. I've had one angry outburst during my professional life, at the office. I boiled over internally, excused myself as a stormed out the room, and then sat outside on the stairs to cool off. That was triggered by a disagreement of some mundane level, but it was a year of tension with a particular colleague. We're actually pretty close friends now, as far as work colleagues go. I don't feel like that about her though. It would seem fairly normal to be angry at your long term partner wanting to act on sexual interest in others I suppose, but I don't think I am. If I think about it now then there is definitely a flicker of anger about it. Towards the man she was interested in, not her. Obviously it's not his fault, and I'm sure he's a nice person. But I'm not going to lie there is a base-of-the-skull irrational part of me that wants to snap his neck I hope that doesn't make me sound like too much of a psychopath. Obviously I have no intention of acting on any violent impulse like that. I hope I don't end up like Jim Carrey in Me Myself and Irene.

Thanks for the replies. My parents divorced when I was two years old. I moved to the UK with my mother only. Only saw my dad every year or two for a few weeks growing up. He's a Jehovah's Witness (the divorce was caused by adultery on his part and religion helped his feelings of guilt). I was psychologically tortured by him forcing his religion on me whenever I stayed with him. My sister was indoctrinated by him but thankfully I survived. My girlfriend did not sleep with that colleague, no. I don't know everyone she slept with. Four people in total, three men and a woman (her good friend). I knew she was bicurious, but don't believe this to be of much significance.

Drew, thanks for the offer. I may take you up on that after a week or two. I need to settle a little first I think. Thank you both for your replies. I'd just like to say at this point that before listening to the podcasts I would have never applied a number to a woman's attractiveness. I was of the "that's objectifying women" camp in that regard. So that's the first time I've even considered what number she would have been. I just figured that's what Stefan often asks people. Also it's clear to me reading back that our problems were most likely sexual. Or maybe not. I don't know. We got together because she was funny and smart and had the most amazing big eyes. She spoke a lot and I didn't, but I liked to listen to her. She was kind and polite to nice people and verbally aggressive towards / non tolerant of nasty people. She was confident where I was shy. She probably liked me because I had just shot to highschool fame as a film maker, I played the guitar, and I was generally considered to be one of the nicest people in school. (I didn't find that out until I left) I stood up to the bullies, put myself between them and the nerds. I was a bit of an outcast, friendly to everyone. Generally speaking though it was because we were both nice people and were attracted to one another. I've got to go to work but will be back to discuss further. Thank you very much for your time. It is helping a lot to talk about it here.

Hi everyone. In the time it took to approve my registration my first question has changed from "should I end this relationship?" to "should I have just ended this relationship?" Yesterday I broke up with my partner of more than nine years. It was the single most difficult thing I've ever done. The reason I posted this in self knowledge is that I don't know why I don't want to be with her any more. She's a 9/10 looks wise, has varied in weight through the nine years and is attractive at many weights. She is now a personal trainer and so is probably the hottest she's ever been. She's intelligent, with an undergraduate degree from a good university, and all her PT qualifications. We talk about deep topics fairly often and she talks to a therapist monthly. I'm fairly confident she knows everything about me, and I her. We lost our virginity to eachother at 17, and the sex has always been good, if a little infrequent for both of our liking. In terms of our families - we both get on great with eachothers parents, and are well integrated into family events. We both agreed that we have gradually become more like best friends than partners. Three months ago she found herself being attracted to another man, at work. Since it had never happened before and she felt like it meant there was something wrong with our relationship, we decided maybe it was best to have a three month break to go satisfy some sexual curiosity we both had, with the aim to get back together afterwards having sorted those doubts out before getting married and starting a family. I moved out to a second flat in town. The idea was to have our mid life crises now rather than when we're both in our forties with kids. It seemed like all was going well for the first two months. At the end of the second month my partner said she wanted to stop early, that she'd settled her doubts and knew I was the one she wanted to be with forever. I felt like I wasn't finished experimenting yet. At that point I had slept with two other women and had arranged a meetup with a third, all through tinder. I felt like since my partner had basically started this experiment and now wanted to end it, I didn't have control of the situation and was doing whatever she told me to. So to try and stand my ground I said I wanted to continue with the break until the time we agreed was up. Another few weeks went past, I slept with two other women and felt like that was probably enough, and my partner broke down and essentially begged me for the break to be over. I didn't want to hurt her so I agreed to stop. I messages the girls I had been seeing (they all knew about each other and my long term partner - I used the truth is always better principle) and told them I was ending my single period sooner than expected. One of the girls was extremely upset, as despite her best efforts she had fallen for me. I didn't know until I said we had to end it, so that was a bit of a shock and I felt like I had behaved like a terrible person. So I was back with my long term girlfriend, she was outwardly over the moon happy and I cried in the shower every morning. I felt bad about what I had done to those other girls, as it turns out more than one of them had become attached. I felt like my long term partner and I had not actually solved the underlying problem, and that I didn't know what that even was. A week went by where I approached the subject numerous times, examining that I was miserable and I didn't know why. She was understandably upset by my doubts and wanted me to just decide whether I wanted to be with her or not. Every logical part of my brain was telling me I should be with her, but my gut feeling was that I wanted to be single. That weekend we went to a friend's wedding. The ceremony was crushing because it was exactly what ours would've been like. We saw my mother and her parents over that weekend too, and on the journey back home we decided to break up, and to remain friends. That was yesterday. Thanks for reading. I hope someone can learn from my mistakes. Or maybe it's a good thing. I don't know. I've been listening to the podcasts, watching the YouTube videos, and donating with Bitcoin for about six months now. They've helped me significantly and I just wanted to say thanks for that, but there's probably another post for that.