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I
recently left Steve, my
fiancé of 10 years (we dated for 8, were engaged
for 2) for another man, Pete, because he refused to work
full time, has a very negative attitude,
wants a better life but doesn't want to work for it,
and accused me of pushing him into the
engagement. There
are many more reasons, but those are some of the core
issues. The man I left him for is the exact opposite.
He is kind, motivated, I melt when I look at him and he
is the same for me. After hours of phone calls, I felt
guilty and I missed my old fiancé, so I left the man I
was with to come back and try and work things out. I am
not attracted to him anymore, I don't want to
have sex
with him or anything related to that, we fight
constantly, and yet, even though the other relationship
was a happy,
healthy relationship, I have this nagging feeling I
need to see this through and stick it out. In short, I
guess what I'm trying to say is that I
love them
both. I want to get out of my old relationship, but
I don't know if I should or I am just misbehaving,
incredibly, even though the new man should have stuck up
for himself and told me to get lost. So far he still
speaks to me and encourages me, whereas I feel torn
apart with accusations (again, a reasonable way to feel
on his part) by the old relationship. I want to leave
and be with the other man, but something is holding me
back, I'm unhappy, but there's a shred of hope that,
maybe, I can fix the old relationship, even though
things are really hard right now. I almost feel like
being with the man who will treat me kindly and care for
me is like running away to a party instead of doing my
homework. I'm so confused and I'm stuck in limbo trying
to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Please help me.
There are a lot of
things I do truly admire about Steve, like his
mechanical skills, so long as he's not being paid to do
it, he can fix a car with his eyes shut. His sister was
murdered when he moved to Raleigh from New Jersey, he
had gotten into a fight with her and she went for a walk
and they never saw her again, so at first I understood
why he was so
controlling, he would want to know when I
was leaving a place, what route I was taking, I would
have to call him when I left and when I arrived at my
destination. I allowed this and almost liked it, because
it was safer, but when you give an inch, they take a
mile. It got to the point where he was keeping me from
my friends and family, not by saying "you can't see
them" but by acting hurt and getting upset if I went
anyways, crying foul because it took away from our time.
I know he loves me,
when things are good; he'll bend over backwards to help
me, in the small ways. I had a hard time because my
mother is an
alcoholic and I have spent most of my life trying to
help her and
pay her bills. I became so heavily
burdened in debt that I had to
file for bankruptcy. This was last year. I had seen
a million different credit counselors and what not, and
he always refused to go, stating that it was none of his
business and it made him uncomfortable. I told him if he
wanted to marry me like he said he did, it WAS his
business, that's when he came out with the whole "you
pressured me into the engagement" thing.
My family is heavily
military, my father was a
Marine and he will never let us forget it so, when
my brother stood firm on not wanting to enlist in any
branch of the military, to keep the family line going I
wanted to enlist in the Navy. Steve didn't like that
because he said while I was away in boot camp it would
destroy our relationship, so he
proposed to me instead. I accepted. For two years I
waited for him to WANT to get moving, he would talk
about
buying a house, though he was working a total of 45
minutes to an hour a day, griped about not getting a
raise, but never showed up for more than the stated
time. My family had a great deal to say about this, and
I fought them every step of the way, trying to defend
him, but secretly, I knew they were right.
After a while I
began to look at our relationship, saw it wasn't going
to go anywhere and I just felt doomed. I loved him
blindly for so long, and then when that day came, I was
no longer his cheering fan. I resented him. We had an
online friend who
played a game with us, and we had known each other
for a little over a year. I had never seen a picture of
him, but he was just a great person and I really liked
him, he made me feel like everything was going to be
okay. It grew from there and he sent me a picture of
himself (I had sent him a picture of Steve and I on a
vacation so he already knew what I looked like).
Pete was the most
beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. This tall,
dark and handsome
Japanese guy. I sent him another picture because I
figured he didn't realize he was talking to someone who
was most definitely not
Asian, and I was scared he wouldn't want anything to
do with me and we started talking about
race and nationality. My mother is
Native American, from the Choctaw tribe, and being a
half-breed is not fun or easy. I don't look
Indian
enough to fit in at all the functions and all of that,
but I look just off enough that the other people see it
or meet my mother and start spewing off stereotypes
about
Indians. I can't win.
Pete is the same
way. He's
half Japanese and half white (well, he
looks
Japanese though), so he knew exactly what I meant
when people would break out with "you know, your people"
either trying to show what they knew or fit in, and all
the aggravation in between. It felt so wonderful to have
someone know exactly what I meant, and where I usually
meet those
issues with anger because of my own
insecurities; he meets with patience and kindness. I
was so scared I might offend him and sound like the
other people that when we would wrestle and he'd try and
get me to learn something from it (he has a lot of
martial arts experience) I would just shut up and
stay as far away from it as possible, anything that had
anything to do with 'Asian
things' at all, I wouldn't talk about. I didn't know
anything, so the only thing that would be coming out of
my mouth would be ignorance. He could tell something was
wrong so he asked me about it and I told him how I felt;
he was so nice about it!
He's always
forgiving and kind and gentle, a part of me feels I
don't deserve that, that he shouldn't be saddled with
me, really. Anyhow, when I came out to him, I was
insanely happy, but then all this homesickness came
back. Steve kept calling my
cell
phone crying, one day he gave me the ultimatum that
if I didn't come back by his
birthday it was over and I
got scared and I left to go back to Steve.
My reasoning was
that I don't know if he would ever
find
another girl, he's
overweight, anti social, and
shy.
Pete, on the other hand, would be just fine without me;
he didn't NEED me for anything. I know that's wrong but
it did influence my decision. Since I have been back,
things have been awful; I can't sneeze without him
analyzing it. I still can't believe Pete still talks to
me, but he does. I have told him that this is not
healthy for him and he needs to
move
on with his life and stick up for himself, but he
still calls, which I am very grateful for. I think so
highly of him, you just don't know, and I am so very
sorry I even got this started. I never ever wanted to
cause him pain, I want him to be as happy as he made me
every day of his life, but because this is going on,
he's miserable, and he begs me to come back to him, but
I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I don't
want Steve to hurt either. At the same time, I don't
want to
let go of either of them and I don't know what to
do. |
