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My girlfriend and I have hit a rough patch. Nearly two years ago she moved away for a teacher’s-aid-exchange-sort-of-program. She was only supposed to stay for the summer, but more than a year later she still hadn’t come back. At first it hurt on a very simple level that she wasn’t returning – I missed her. But as the months passed and the timeline for her coming back was continuously pushed back until eventually it became simply “I don’t know,” it started to hurt a lot more. I know she very much enjoys it in the smaller town she’s living in, but it nonetheless started to hurt on a personal level –…

My 2 1/2-year relationship with “Dan” ended about a month ago, we’ve had no contact since then, and I have no desire to get back together with Dan. My situation is a little odd, but I’ll try to keep it short: The entire time we were together, I was completely honest and vulnerable, fell in love gradually, and was very committed to a future together while Dan seemed to be very open and invested in the first one-and-a-half years we were together. I considered him my closest friend and soulmate. Then, he suddenly started ignoring me and treating me borderline cruelly for the last year or so. He also started isolating himself…

My wife and I have been married since 2009. I believe our relationship was amazing then. We are older and she wanted kids with me, so tubes were reversed and she was pregnant three times. She had one miscarriage and we have two amazing and healthy children. Life became busy. I did online chatting a little. I know I was wrong. Ever since then — the kids and the chatting — we have not been the same. We have separated and gotten back together three times. We are recently together again. Every time we were apart I was with other women, which I consider a form of cheating. This last time she,…

Recently, I found out that my best friend, “Kate,” (she’s more like my sister) has been sneaking around behind my back with my ex-boyfriend and lying to me about who she’s with. I’ve been like family with her for about three years now. To backtrack a little, I met this guy, “Rob,” at college about six months ago and instantly had a connection and attraction to him. It’s not hard for me to attract a guy, but it’s hard for me to find a guy I’m really into. We had been on and off, though my feelings for him never wavered. Kate knew how much I felt for him. She even told…

My boyfriend and I are in a terrible relationship (he’s emotionally abusive and unsupportive), but due to my own lack of finances, I am unable to leave him. We each pay 50% of the bills, but when we set up this arrangement, we were both graduate students each making 31K a year. For health reasons, I had to take a leave of absence from school, which means I lost my funding and am no longer generating income. Currently, I’m unemployed and my bank account is being depleted quickly while I’m seeking treatment so I can hopefully return to school in the fall. All that said, I feel like I’m trapped in this…

I have been with my boyfriend for over two years. I know the entire time we have dated he’s been cruising Craigslist and gives his first name and phone number to women seeking a causal encounter (red flag). I choose to ignore this behavior because it seems like the women never follow through with his requests. I monitor his phone and his Internet, email, and Facebook accounts daily. Recently, he accidentally included me on a selfie text he sent to another number. I found out it was a woman who works at the same company he works at but on a different shift. I further found out that she is married with…

My wife and I have a brand new grandson a few days old, and my son and daughter-in-law are going to have a bris ceremony and party in a couple of days. The issue is that our daughter-in-law’s mother and father (divorced and both remarried), who are extremely pushy and obnoxious, called my wife to tell us that they would like us to split the expenses for the party. We were dumbfounded! In our 47 years of marriage and many events, we never heard of such a thing, and we always put on family events ourselves for our children. Now the parents, ex-parents, new spouses, and whoever have moved forward and sent…

New readers, welcome to Dear Wendy, a relationship advice blog. Read some of the most popular Dear Wendy posts here. If you don’t find the info you need in this column, please visit the Dear Wendy archives or the forums (you can even start your own thread), do a search in the search bar, or submit a question for advice at wendy(AT)dearwendy.com. My boyfriend recently let me borrow his iPad, I snooped, and found forty-seven pictures he took a year ago (before we started dating) of his best friend’s wife. In the pictures she was passed out naked and drunk next to his best friend.They don’t know he took the pictures. I…

Last week I reminded my husband that his mom’s birthday was on Sunday. Then he mentioned that his sister had called and said the adult children were planning on taking her out to dinner. I said that would be great, but he didn’t know any details about time or place. After a few days I asked my husband if he had heard back from his sister yet, and he said no. So I texted her and let her know that we were looking forward to celebrating Mom’s birthday and to let us know the time and place. After no text back, I called and left the same message. By the end of…