Essie

Oh, lord, no. The “I don’t remember saying that” is a great big flashing neon red flag. That is gaslighting. I dated a guy who pulled that all the time. Notice the past tense.

So, you talked about him paying for things, or at least pulling his weight, and his answer was to not go out as much? Oh, no. No, no, no. He’s either lying to you about his financial situation, or he’s pathologically cheap.

You keep saying you’re not ready to break up with him. You will be. It might take a few more months, but you will be. In the meantime, be really careful with the contraception, and don’t accept any proposals.

I grew up with a couple of hunting rifles in the house, but I don’t think dad ever loaded them in my lifetime. Oh, I think one old WW-2 era handgun, too. More keepsakes/family heirlooms than anything. I wouldn’t mind at all if my husband had something like that.

It’s the concealed carry that would bother me, and the fact that there would be a *loaded* gun in my husband’s possession wherever he went. I don’t think I’d ever be alright with that.

It would also worry me, a lot, that my husband had suddenly become so frightened of everyday life that he felt he had to be armed at all times. Yes, with the advent of 24/7 cable news and the internet, we hear about a lot of incidents that we wouldn’t have heard of before, and yeah, it’s terrible to think of something like that happening to. you. But we don’t live in Afghanistan or Somalia. There are not daily gunfights erupting in the streets. And if you did happen to live in an area that dangerous, he’d be doing more to protect his family if he moved you out of there than by carrying a gun.

Have you noticed any other personality changes lately?

But you don’t always have to pay. You say you go 50/50, if you’re not picking up the tab, and it doesn’t sound like he’s reluctant to pick up his half of the check. Is it the gesture? You want him to stop you when you go to pick up the check? I mean, you’re offering to pay.

I think you need to get clear in your own head what you want and why, then talk to him about it. Do you want him to pick up the tab because you think men should pay for dates? Or because you see it as a romantic gesture?

There’s no one right way to do this – it’s one of those things couples sort out between them. Only you’re not doing that. You’re expecting him to know what you want, and getting resentful when he doesn’t guess the right answer.

Even within a relationship, couples vary on how they handle it. There have been times when I’ve picked up a lot of dinner bills, because my boyfriend was stretched thin with child support payments. There have been long periods where he paid for dinners because I was going through a rough patch with my freelancing work and I was scraping by. Most of the time, we just split the bill. But we talk about it, and adjust as needed.

The biggest mistake most people make with relationships is that they spend years trying to force a bad relationship to work. Which is exactly what you’re doing. As Skyblossom said, it’s not supposed to be this hard. It’s a sign that something’s seriously wrong when it is this hard. A good, healthy relationship with the right person ISN’T this hard.

Dating isn’t about finding someone when you’re in your teens and then struggling to make it work, year after year. It’s about going out with a whole bunch of different people until you understand what you really want (and don’t want) in a partner, and then finding someone who’s a good match for you.

Don’t fall for that nonsense about “fighting for your love,” or thinking that constant fighting and breaking up and getting back together means you’re “passionate.” That’s teen movie stuff. In real adult life, those are bad relationships, and they do nothing but bring you pain.

Just end this thing. It’s not working. It’s not going to work, no matter how long you keep playing silly social media games with each other.

I love how she says “Here’s a topic for your next publication,” and then calls you an “internet bully” for publishing it.

LW, haven’t you noticed that it’s only good between you while you’re on vacation together, and immediately after, and then he starts drifting away? My guess is that you’re the other woman. He’s married, or in a relationship. That’s why you’ve never met friends or family, or been invited to his home. He can get away for a week now and then and meet you in some other country, though. He probably tells his wife or partner that it’s a business trip. There was a married guy I used to work with who’d go visit his girlfriend for several days a month that way.

Tell him you want your next ‘getaway’ to be to his hometown, so you can meet his family and friends. See how that goes over.

Regardless, the bottom line is: he’s not moving to be near you because he doesn’t want to. People make an effort to do things they really want to do. People move for love all the time. He likes your vacations together. He doesn’t really want anything more. Not enough to sacrifice anything for it.

Mel –

Why do you need a way to break up? You just walk up to him and say “I don’t want to be in a relationship any more.” Voila, you’re broken up.

Ah, you say, but you DO want to be in a relationship with him. You want things back the way they were before you found out he was a lying, cheating dirtbag. You want to forget what he did, and pretend it never happened.

I’m sorry, but that’s the one thing you can never, ever have. It happened. You found out something very important about him. That he’ll betray you and lie to you if he wants something or someone. That he’ll betray his own BROTHER for some presumably meaningless sex. That you can never trust him again.

You can’t go back to the way it was. That’s gone. You thought he was a good man, and now you know that’s not true.