Skyblossom
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
From what she says he was kissing her and she didn’t stop it. She doesn’t say she was kissing back. She then felt guilty for not stopping it. She has never been kissed before and now is trying to figure out why she didn’t stop it and feeling guilty for not stopping it. She doesn’t say she briefly enjoyed it. She says that while it was happening she couldn’t wait for it to be over.
She isn’t just inexperienced. She is very inexperienced. She has never kissed and never danced. She had no way of knowing what she was getting into and no way to be prepared because this was well beyond the realm of her experience. The probability is high that her mixed gender social experience was highly chaperoned church events for teens and sitting in classes at school with boys. If she didn’t date in high school she would be completely inexperienced. Her concern going into the club was that she stay sober. She knew there would be drinking. The rest she didn’t know.
She experienced it as an assault even if the guy assumed it was okay. His intent and her experience are two different things.
She didn’t know that things like this could happen. It isn’t her fault that her parents raised her to be naive. She walked in thinking she would hang out with her friends, not drink and maybe dance. It didn’t occur to her that the evening could include being grabbed and kissed without consent. It may be naive but it wasn’t in her realm of reality and she froze not knowing what to do. It may be common in the context of a club but it is still assault if it is done without consent. She is left with the emotional baggage of having this done to her while her friends watched and did nothing to help.
@RedRover I agree with the thought that this was sexual assault and everyone was so focused on the racism that they chose not to see that she was emotionally harmed by this happening to her.
Some people freeze when bad things are happening. They have trouble thinking and reacting in the moment. That’s why we practice things like fire drills and tornado drills.
LW Now that you know that things like this happen you need to think through how you will handle things like this in the future. Think through what you will do. It is the same as a fire drill. You will be able to do what you need to do because you will have trained yourself. Going to a club or not going to a club is your choice. Just because your friends choose to do something doesn’t mean you need to or should. Make the choice you feel is right for you at the time. The same for drinking. You don’t need to do what everyone else is doing. You can make a different choice if you feel that it is best for you.
Your parents raised you to live in a different world than the one you found yourself in. You need to decide what is right for you.
My thought is that the two of you are incapable of working through your issues. You both probably want the other to keep initiating. You both are playing games which means you are both too immature for a relationship. Neither of you is good at talking through a situation to improve it.
No relationship should be this hard. Being this hard shows you it isn’t meant to be. That doesn’t mean it is easy to break up and move on. We know that it isn’t easy. You need to move on. This relationship has failed. It is over. You need to suck it up and get the hard part over with by cutting all contact and keeping yourself occupied so you don’t keep dwelling on your ex. You need to reach the point where she isn’t your first thought of the day and the last thought of the day. You need to reach the point where you can get through the day without thinking about her.
Lots of things in your letter that could use some attention but they all follow a pattern. You are passive and let other people make decisions for you.
When it comes to drinks, even when you are of legal age, don’t feel like you to need to do what the rest of the group does. If you don’t want a drink don’t have a drink. Even if your friend changes her mind you can still not have a drink. You need to be the decision maker in your own life. Right now you are passive and let other people make the decisions.
We see the other person making decisions when the guy grabs you and you don’t keep moving away. If you don’t want to have anything to do with the guy you need to pull away and keep going. When you stopped when he grabbed you he took that as permission to continue. He shouldn’t take that as permission but he did. You need to protect yourself and make your own decisions. Don’t wait to see what he has decided to do. In this situation that means pulling away from him and keep moving. You don’t need to give an excuse for why you are moving on, no need to say your roommate needs you. Just pull away and keep going.
Now we get to the racism. You want to do what your dad told you to do. I get it. You want to make your parents happy and if they aren’t happy they may punish you by not paying for college or by making you come home to “save” your from ruining yourself. This is where it gets tricky. If your parents are paying for school and you are breaking their rules and values then they can choose to quit paying for school. You have to consider what would happen if you don’t follow their rules. In general the person with the money makes the rules and you follow them until you can make your own money. I wouldn’t blatantly break the rules if it would affect your ability to pay for college. I don’t know how much of it your parents are paying but if you need the financial support be careful. At the same time try to not be judgmental about people of other races. If you will sit back and watch you will see that people are people. One of the best things I got out of college was the opportunity to work with people from all over the world. I found that people are very much the same the world over. Everyone was in college because they wanted a better life. They wanted a better opportunity.
Your parents can’t make your decisions for you forever. I’m guessing your parents have raised you to be a passive, good girl who does what she is told. As you see that doesn’t work for an adult in an adult world. It is time to start thinking for yourself. It is time to start making your own decisions. You will have a miserable life if you continue to passively allow the people around you to make decisions for you that directly affect you.
This is a case where she decided what was best for them and now can’t figure out how to force him to do what she decided he should do.
LW There is no magical formula to make him do what you want. He gets to decide for himself whether he goes to live with you in Australia and there is nothing you can do to make him move. It’s the same as you get to decide where you want to live and no one can make you move. So you are at an impasse. When you hit a point where neither of you is willing to go live with the other and you are a 21 hour plane flight apart so you have no relationship.
All of your reasons can’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do. No matter how logical or reasonable you think it is for him to move, no matter how much more money you make, or home you own or anything else, you can’t force him to do what he doesn’t want to do. The bottom line is that he is an independent adult who makes his own decisions. If every person on this site agreed with you it still would do nothing to make him move because he doesn’t want to move.
If he won’t move to be with you then your choices are to either move to him or finish the relationship or continue as a holiday relationship. Him moving to you isn’t an option because he has taken it off the table. You’ve taken you moving to him off the table. Now your choices are continue as a holiday relationship or break up.
The LWs need to be insulting when she didn’t get full agreement for her position says she is emotionally immature no matter what her income. If any of that is coming through when she meets up with the guy it’s no wonder he refuses to move to Australia.
LW – Guess what, if you wanted to learn French you could be studying it right now. If you wanted to be able to speak to him in his language you could do so. You make not speaking French an excuse but it is a weak excuse.
I went back and reread your initial post. I’m with Kate on this one. I don’t think the sexual aspect of your relationship will change. In spite of the broken shoulder and pain he managed to work and drive but he hasn’t managed to have sex. If an erection is essential to him for sex and he can’t have an erection, even with Viagra, then he can’t have sex that satisfies him.
One thing you need to understand is that she no longer idolizes you. You are no longer on a pedestal and the two of you won’t be able to put you back on one. In her mind you have gone from being the perfect, most desirable guy in the world to being the mean, hurtful guy who didn’t treat her right. Instead of idolizing you she will be watching you constantly for any signs that you aren’t treating her right. She will jump on you constantly for little hurts. You will be in a totally different relationship than the one you had. She will be the good one and you will be the bad one and now you will be lucky to be with her and you will constantly need to prove that you deserve her. Watch for that dynamic as you try to get back together and see if you can move the two of you to being equal partners who both have needs and who both can be hurt and who both can be hurtful. That’s why you need to talk about the underlying issues and address them. Unless you like being the bad guy who is constantly being bad mouthed to everyone.
It felt great to be idolized until it didn’t. Then it became constricting and you were losing your own interests. The same thing will happen again unless the two of you make some changes. If your talk didn’t include the fact that you need to be able to follow your passions and have hobbies then you haven’t yet addressed the underlying issue that led to all the rest. After three years the two of you should be able to talk about things like that. Being able to communicate about your needs is one of those things required for a strong foundation to a relationship. The underlying issue isn’t the way you treated her, it is why you ended up treating her the way you did. If you can’t tell her that you need some room to be yourself you will just keep repeating the same miserable cycle.
I understand that you love her and I understand that you want to try again. That’s pretty natural. I would at least wait to get back together until she quits complaining about you to other people. In some ways the complaints are a way to both manipulate you and to lash out at you and hurt you. She is doing her best to make everyone she knows think that you are bad. How is a relationship supposed to work when she is telling everyone about how bad you are? It can’t. She is knocking you down. Part of that is to make you into the person she wants you to be and part of it is probably to say that she is always right and had no part in the failure of the relationship. Unless she is willing to talk about your needs and you are willing to talk about her needs the two of you won’t do any better in the future. The only way this has any chance of working is if the two of you can talk. If you don’t think you can do that then you are doomed. What do you have to lose? Start by saying you need to talk to her about what you’ve learned about yourself. Tell her you realize that you began to resent not being able to follow your passions. You resented not being able to have your hobbies. You realized that you need time to do the things you love to do and if you can’t have that time it makes you angry and resentful. Then see what she says. If she can’t understand that you have needs beyond her it won’t work. If she isn’t willing to let you be yourself with your own interests outside her then she is more interested in possessing you than loving you. She is more interested in controlling you than in being your equal partner. So talk and see what she says.
If the two of you talk and the only result is that she ups the attacks on social media you will have your answer.
I think you are beginning to get to the heart of what happened to your relationship. It was smothering you. The two of you didn’t share a passion. It sounds like you got bored and had no outlet for the things that you did want to do. I think she loved you more than you loved her and she also had a way of dominating your life. There wasn’t room for you to do things that you loved. There should be time for you to spend on passions and hobbies and to be out with friends and to spend time with her. In all the important ways you should be able to have it all.
The first year that I was seeing my husband I think we saw each other every day but he also went out with his own friends at least weekly without me and I ate my meals with my friends without him except maybe for dinner on weekends when we ate together. We had together time and friend time. We also met through and belonged to a campus group related to our majors and had that in common. It was a highly social, fun group with people who had similar career choices.
It is very hard and can be exhausting to be on a pedestal. It is a huge ego boost to be wanted and admired that much but it is also smothering and you can feel trapped. You can end up feeling that you must always be available because they want you and need you so much. In a healthy relationship the two of you will be equal. It sounded like you ended up not respecting her very much and ultimately you were lashing out emotionally in anger by being condescending. You needed room for you to be you.
