I have been in a relationship for about 8 years and I am having a hard time deciding what to do right now. I am a 33 year old professional male and with a 37 year old female of which has a 14 year old son to one man in 1990,of whom she divorced later because according to her he was an abuser, and later after that she had a 12 year old son in 1992 which she gave away for adoption as soon as she had him and kept this a secret in her life and lied when she had him and never told the father and told the adoption agency and hospital that she did not know how to get ahold of the man and kept this a secret to where no one really knew of this but her immediate family, and immediately right after she had another child to another man in 1993 whom was her comforter during this time and she realized that they were not together for the right reasons so they never married and she had a girl whom now is 11 and I got with the 37 year old mother in 1997 and we dated and eventually in January of 2000 I put my life savings up and bought a house for all of us being her two kids(14 yr old son and 11 yr old daughter current ages) and her and I . I started to rethink things after about 6 months into living together and tried to be a mature adult and discuss not going to much further so we dont make a mistake and she ended up informing oh i forgot to tell you i stopped taking my birth control and now i’m pregnant and now even though it was an accident in which it takes two , we have a wonderful 3 1/2 year old daughter . we never married and i have moved out now in October of 2004 and got us a relationship therapist to try and salvage us but my head tells me one thing and my heart tells me another . I am confused right now as to what to do and i am not depressed but do not want to make the wrong choice because it is not only my heart that says i still love her but it is also my daughters sake as well because i do not want to go through an ugly war, but i also know that sometimes it is better to be in loving seperate households than in chaotic together household, but my friends and family all say your head is telling you the right thing and you should run because she has told me things like when my daughter was still about a year old that she thought i was having sex with her since she was red rash in her genital area due to the baby sitter not changing her as frequent and when out of town she will say maybe i should call a cop and say you hit me since you dont know anyone in this area, since i am in lawenforcement. she is what they refer to as the adult child and she hates it when i try to talk with her about this because she says that i am not qualified to psychoanalize her but her mother is an alcoholic and her deceased father from what i’ve learned whom i never met because he died in 1992 was a coke and alcohol user and the rest of her family has mental health and substance or alcohol issues. the girl i’m with though doesnt drink or use and she is good hearted but is very manipulative and verbally attacking and no matter what i do it is never right and i continue to try to please her, she is also not very considerate of others feelings and does things for her alot of times, but there are alot of positive things about her also and she just donated a kidney to her cousin . some of my insecurity has been over her calling a guy that works at a store next to hers and she claims that it is work related and i have caught her in some lies and she has called him alot and even at 1 and 2 am when i am home and she thinks i am asleep. i have had things in the relationship that i realize now that i did wrong like put up an invisible block wall to shelter my feelings as a defense when she went and sleeps on the 3rd floor now for the past 1 1/2 yr when i should have been trying because she was but i took her tone as verbally attacking and tuned her out instead so she resorted to going to the 3rd floor to sleep. the guy she has called i confronted her about and she claims she never calls much and it is over work and i heard a voicemail once that he stated whats wrong call me back i love you in june of 2004 and she tried to take the phone from me and did so i could not hear the rest and i dont know why i still want to salvage the relation and also that i am doing things that dont make sense like if i really want this to work then why am i destructive towards it by not being able to deal with her needing time to decide what she wants to do so she doesnt make a mistake either since her kids now think i am some kind of monster because she treats them like adults and has always undermined any say of me to them by if she is working and i have all the kids and I say homework, showers, and bed and by the 4th time turn the tv off and ascertively say it then they call her crying and she interogates me infront of them later and they see this and she says i know how you are and they are not your kids. she is acknowledging now through therapy some mistakes but usually redirects that everything is my fault and the therapist informed why do you try to control him you cant and she is also a tic for tac type of person whom is usually right but some times it just encites hostility and is not about being right and i sometimes just want to be relating instead, but we end up sniping at one another until it becomes out of control. the main reason i have moved out was not only for her to have time which i have not really given her much of due to my anxiousness in wanting to know what does she want to do but also because her kids have called the cops on me 2 times and they realized that there was nothing going on and left the incidents alone and it embarassed me and also made me scared in my own house now because her kids now realize that they have the power of 911 and maybe sooner or later it could destroy my career and relation. she has racked up over $20,000 debt now and it is just in her name and doesnt tell me what it is about which is her business but i am concerned for the house that sooner or later a lien will occur and that she is not open with me. so i guess one of my questions is why am i having a hard time with what to do and also why am i really wanting this to work and at the same time doing counter productive things to destroy it so if it fails then i can feel ok with me by saying i’m ok with the outcome because i had alot to do with causing this and her to feel this way to not want it. I wonder at times if i am trying so hard to make this work because deep down inside she is a good person and also maybe because unconsciencely my parents divorced when i was about 24-25 years old and they were together forever and i always felt that my dad did not try to work at it with my mom because he has nothing to say bad about her other than she was just not his best friend and soul mate but he hung in there since they were together in highschool and until i was about 24-25 years old. my dad is remarried now and i get along with his new wife well and it took some time for me to get back in contact with my father at first when they split and i have realized that my girlfriend is alot like my father in which not her history but that they are very outspoken and say what is on their minds and that it is their way or the highway and difficult people in general but overall their intentions are usually for the right reasons. my girlfriend is very confrontational and most people will just agree with her to avoid conflict and i have always thought maybe it is just me until i heard others mention things and then i said things to her and she would go and confront them and they would of course say oh i didnt say that or mean that until finally our baby sitter one day called me and said i am going to stop watching your daughter because i can never get anything right even when i do what she said it is not right and i dont feel good about myself anymore and dont know what to do. i said wow that is how she makes me feel also and we tried to confront her as adults and she bailed and this is when i realized wow i dont know why i did not see this before that when she is verbally attacking it takes away from her and when you stand up to her back then she doesnt know what to do then and chokes up , but because of how dominant she is most people back down including other men . the only person that i have noticed that she backs down to and doesnt challenge or attack is my father. others have noticed this also.

Edited by Customer (name blocked for privacy) on November 26 2004 at 8:46 PM