bloodymediocrity
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Also, I just want to point out: You’re ready to leave your family, your friends, your job, and your entire life to be with him so he can go work in Nigeria. But he’s not willing to pass up a job to be with you? This doesn’t seem like a balanced relationship.
Yeah, there’s a lot of red flags happening here. It’s quite possible your family has a very valid reason for disliking this man, though it’s possible they might have an unfair bias. It’s hard to figure out with the information presented here.
What I don’t see is what the hurry is. You say
“I want to go but can’t face my parents. If I go I have to get engaged to him. They don’t want to hear about engagement and my dad doesn’t know anything about him yet.”Why do you have to be engaged?
The bottom line is this: If what you say is true and you two are truly meant to be together, then the timeline doesn’t actually matter. Whether your engaged now or two years from now, whether you marry a month from now or 10 years from now, if this relationship is truly built to last it will work out.
So slow down. Listen to what your family has to say. Come back and share what their objections are and we can discuss where to go from there.
I did genuinely like Mark, but his negativity has really increased in the last few months here (and he was already pretty negative to begin with). You made the right choice, Wendy.
This threat has convinced me to cancel attending the larger family Christmas gatherings. Thanks, I hate it.
It’s the right decision but damn. This sucks. Stupid variants.
The root of your question seems to be “is infidelity always wrong?”. I don’t think it’s terribly helpful to view it as such a binary right-or-wrong issue.
In rare situations, an affair might be necessary to stay sane in an otherwise happy relationship. This might be your mother’s situation. In my book, both of your parents lived happy wives. Your mother got what she needed for sexual fulfillment, your father got the illusion of fidelity and every other relationship need filled.
In other situations, an affair might provide the necessary push needed to end an otherwise unhappy relationship and move on to find their own true happiness. In that case, is an affair really wrong?
Now, in both of these situations, it would probably be better for everyone if they could just discuss their issues openly. In the first example, your mother could probably have been much happier if she could have just had other sexual relations with your father’s blessing. In the second example, it would have been better to just end the relationship rather the push it off a cliff with an affair.
But life is messy, and luckily, it’s generally not a crime to have an affair (though weirdly, here in Minnesota it is) and sometimes an affair ends up the best=worst-case option. It’s not always an issue of right-or-wrong or good-and-evil. It sometimes just is.
I think reading some Esther Perel might do you good. She’s a clinic sex researcher who has done a lot of studies on infidelity and takes an interesting approach and viewpoint. “The State of Affairs” might be a good start.
On the chance that Kate’s suspicions are correct and this story is just a kind of bizarre way of bringing up more discussion…
Look – if you’re fine with your now ex-girlfriend have sex outside of your relationship, that’s totally fine. There are a lot of resources on how to navigate opening a relationship, including one-sided open relationships.
If you want to start fresh with your ex, you need to lay down clear rules and expectations. And these can be whatever you want to be. You can ask for a don’t-ask-don’t-tell open relationship, and you can just pretend she’s not sleeping with anyone else. You can ask for total transparency and honesty. You can ask for openness yourself.
But no matter what you do here, if you get back with your ex, things are going to be different, and you can expect her to continue having outside sexual relations with or without your consent.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume this is a really, really weird coincidence. That said, I share some of Kate’s skepticism. Few parents like to talk about their sex lives with their children.
This is between your parents, and it was wrong of your mother to bring you and your sister into the loop on this. You did not need to be burdened with this information.
Was your mom wrong to do this? Maybe. If she knew your father could never tolerate an open relationship, and the only way the two of them could stay otherwise happily married was to have outside relations and she was able to do so 100% discretely and safely, then in my book it’s not the most terrible thing.
But to be clear, this is not what happened with you and your ex-girlfriend. You were not married to your girlfriend for decades. Your girlfriend didn’t cheat on you discretely. You did not die never knowing what she did. Your girlfriend cheated and then blamed you.
So what your mother did here is totally irrelevant.
I wonder if this might be a cultural thing. Here in the midwest kids get dropped off at parties all the time and nobody cares what the parents do, but the parents certainly don’t expect to be entertained. But my Texas friend tells me children’s birthday parties are big affairs and it’s expected the whole family is invited.
I agree. Just let her stay, but you’re not under any obligation to entertain her. Just let her be. Be polite but focus on the things you need to worry about. And if she insists on hanging out with you put her to work.
I’m usually the one around here who is like “yeah, an open relationship could work” but fuck that idea in this situation.
She’s basically told you that it’s your fault she cheated because you aren’t good enough at sex. That’s some psychological jiu-jitsu there turning what she did around on you.
An open relationship can work but it has to be started from a place of honesty. The time to have the “hey, I love you and want to stay in this relationship but need additional sex” conversation is before cheating happen. It requires consenting partners and you didn’t consent from the start.
You deserve better than this. Unless there are serious entanglements like children and property, it doesn’t seem like this is a relationship worth saving.
Wow – that escalated quickly.
