Dear GirlShrink,
I have been married for a little more than 2 years. It was an arranged marriage (India). Things were not terrible initially. But, it was never great either. Then, it started deteriorating and it was really ugly between his parents and mine and we got caught up in the whole thing. The sex life was not great either. He is very caring in terms of taking care of me physically like helping around the houese and always brings me gifts. But I feel completeley emotionally dead in the relationship and I think I will lose myself if I continue to be with him. However, I have talked about leaving him and he gets so emotional and says that he just cannot live without me.

Please advice me on what I need to here – I am unable to leave because I am not sure of what would happen to him and I feel guilty and harbor a sense of betrayal. But I don’t know if staying in this relationship is healthy for me.
Thanks,
shwn

Dear Shwn,
While I do not profess to be an expert on arranged marriages, I can say that it really probably is no different than other people who marry for other reasons than love. I think you need to ask yourself what those original reasons were and why they no longer are enough to support this marriage. Did you marry out of duty, tradition, loneliness, etc.? Were you ready for marriage? Did you want marriage, or was it just time to do it based on what others in your family or friends recommended.

If you are “unable” to leave, but feel that you are completely emotionally dead in this relationship, I wonder what type of advice you are actually asking for. How to make yourself feel something that you don’t feel? How to possibly feel less guilty about doing what is best for you and not for everyone? Well – at the end of this world, I believe that most human beings ask themselves if they lived the type of life

Dear GirlShrink,

My boyfriend won’t spend the night.  What’s going on? Sometimes he’ll come over late, and we’ll hook up. He may even fall asleep, but he always wakes up and leaves at three or four in the morning.

We have been seeing each other for a month now, and he has spent the night a few times. I need to know how to go about approaching him with the subject without pushing him away. Any advice would be much appreciated!

- Molly, Annapolis, MD

Dear Molly,
Well there are a few theories here. 1. Either he has someone else to get back home to or for and he can never stay until the morning. 2. He is afraid of serious commitment, so he leaves. 3. You are a for lack of a better term, a “booty call” and that’s what happens with booty calls. No one ever spends the night.

If he truly is your boyfriend and you are in a committed relationship, you should be able to ask him a question like this and expect an answer and not attitude. If you start your relationship holding back asking questions out of fear — then you will be putting yourself in a really bad position for the rest of your relationship.

Dear GirlShrink,
Hello. I have recently started talking to this man I met.  We were talking and I thought things were going great.  However, he is 39 and I am 21.  Also, another catch.  He just recently told me he is getting divorced.  He met me before he was served with divorce papers.  What is a girl to do? I find him very attractive and love talking to him, but I feel like a home-wrecker and feel I shouldn’t be in the middle of his divorce and family.  I strongly believe that women give themselves bad representations in regards to cheating on significant others, however I feel like I have cheated his family since I didn’t know he was married.  Is it my place to just walk away?

Dear Friend,
Walk away. He lied from the beginning and his relationship with his soon to be ex is far from over. Divorce is messy. It is absolutely up to you if you want to take a chance and waste a year of your life waiting on his divorce to be finalized, meeting his family, getting him to commit. At 21, you should be dating different people and figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life — not getting involved in this mess.

I met this girl I really like whose name is Lauren  and it started out as her telling me she liked me so we tried to go out. It didn’t work because she said it felt like it was a brother sister relationship. We broke up but stayed friends. We still flirted a little but nothing further. So I started talking to another girl and Lauren came back and told me she liked me so I stopped talking to the other girl and me and Lauren started taliking again. I really like Lauren. So we were texting one day and she said she was frustrated and I asked why and she said she was trying to choose between two guys and which one to date. So I said I know one is me but who is the other guy.

She then said that I was niether of them. I was heart broken and she denies it to this day that she did nothing wrong. She plays with my emotions too like she will invite me to spend the night at her house and she will be real flirty but the second I touch her she tells me to back off. Some days she ignores me and someday she doesn’t. And I would be long gone but I can’t leave her for some reason. What should I do I am at a dead end?

Dear Mr. Dead End,

Get away from this girl fast. She is keeping you around because you give her attention when she needs or wants it. When she is getting it elsewhere, that is when you don’t hear from her. She is using you. I’m not sure if the is conscious of it or not, but that is so not the point. The point is  – is that you sound like a really nice guy and you deserve someone who can appreciate that and not take advantage of it. You haven’t left her alone yet, because you see what you want to see. You want to believe everything she says, but her actions speak volumes. Leave her alone and move on.

Dear GirlShrink,
Okay. i recently had my first child. i broke up with my baby’s father when i was pregnant because i “thought” he cheated(still a mystery).after having my son, we still keep in contact, at least once a day.our chemistry is crazy. i asked him where do he see us in the future and he said really good friends. but we have slept together(while he was with his girlfriend)they broke up because of us being so close. i want to be with him but i don’t know if he wants to be with me. i keep playing it off as im cool wit us being friends,but deep down i want us to be more. and since the break up with his girlfriend he hasn’t initiated us getting together, even though im the first person he told. i don’t know what to do, its tearing me up, should i keep playing his friend or take a chance and initiate love. (if he loves me) ah!

Dear New Mom,
This is a classic case of a woman not paying attention to what a man is telling her and showing her. He may have cheated on you (chances are if you felt that instinctually – that he did), he said he wants to be really good friends, and he hasn’t initiated anything with you since the break up. What more does he have to say or do at this point? I understand that you probably have strong feelings for this man, even may love him, especially since you now share a child — but that those feelings and your baby are not enough to make a relationship happen AND make it successful. There has to be a strong desire from BOTH of you to want to make it work, to want to be together, etc. My advice is to move on, but work well together co-parenting.

Hey GirlShrink,
After 6 months of moving on with my life, my ex (who dumped me) still continues to bad mouth about me. She made a lot of negative comments to me through the public such as friends and also in blogs where alot of people started telling me all these items. As well, she started dating another person during that period of trash talking me.

My question is why is it that she keeps on talking about me? I haven’t bothered her for over a long period of time. Please help it is getting really irritating!

Hi Irritated,

You haven’t really given me a lot of information to go on, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that you p!##@* her off which is what led her to dumping you OR she feels so guilty for dumping you that she feels the need to talk “trash” about you so that others can support her in her decision to let you go.

In either case, there is not much you can or need to do but let her play out her immature ramblings while you go on with your life. If it gets to a point (online) where she is lying and damaging your reputation then you can try and contact the site owners and asked for the comments to be removed. But that is a long and hard road sometimes. Even folks with money and lawyers have a hard time getting that done.

So my vote is to ignore her. Keep ignoring her. And remember that the more she talks about you – the more you can bank that she is NOT really over you. She’s just fooling herself.

I have been dating someone for the past almost 3 months. We have both been in serious relationships in the past and wanted to ease into this to see where it goes before we made it a committment – my idea actually. During the past three months we have spent a tremendous amount of time together and its
been great. I didnt bring up the idea of a “relationship” because I was enjoying it.  We never said that we wouldnt see other people but for my part I began to take it as implied as we spent almost every weekend together and I didnt want to see anyone else.  Everything was going great. Until last weekend.

To make a long story short he told me that he slept with someone else.  His story was that he was getting scared because he was starting to have strong feelings for me and didnt want to committ to someone he couldnt see himself marrying. He then proceeds to tell me that it wasnt until he slept with this other person that he realized that he wanted to be with me and wanted to make it serious and could in fact see himself marrying me.

It is at this point he asks if I would take the next step with him…. I am obviously horrified and angry and hurt, etc. But on the otherhand completely in love with him.  He is sick with guilt and promises me that once I am his girlfriend he would never cheat.  What do I do? Before he told me about the other (I have horrible names for her) I would have loved to be with him, but now I feel sick about it.  Am I an idiot to stay with him?

Dear Sick About It,
I understand how you feel. Kind of would have been better not to have known about that woman right? Well, I must admit that I applaud your guy’s honesty or relief of guilt. It’s either one or the other. But that’s really neither here or there. This is the deal…

You are NOT an idiot about any of this. You are right to have reservations but you also have the right to consider what he has said to be the truth. If it were me, I would go ahead and try and move forward. There have been many good relationships built on much more rockier circumstances. Plus I love the fact that regardless of the reason, he was able to tell you the truth, and let the chips fall where they may.

I know that it may be hard at first to “forget” about this woman — but it’s really up to you to not allow her to enter your relationship any further (in your head). Just make it clear that you want to be crystal clear about the relationship from this point on. The commitment level. If marriage is in the future (if that’s what you want). Etc. The worse that can happen is that it doesn’t work out. The best – is that this man is the love of your life.

Dear GirlShrink,
I wanna tell my boyfriend I love him but I’m terrably afrade of rejection, in other words, I’m afraid that if I tell him I love him it might make him even worse at just hanging out than he already is and he already acts so nervous when we hang out after I tell him that he might R.U.N.N.O.F.T. If you know what i mean so please help…

Dear Nervous,
It doesn’t sound like your relationship is on totally solid ground. The fact that you are a little skittish about his commitment level begs the question “Why do you need to tell him that you love him, right now?” I’m not sure if people have run off from you before — you sound like someone may have abandoned you in your life. But you need to work through those fears before you tell him something so monumental. I would wait until you figure out WHY you are so fearful of rejection from him or in general before I make such a relationship-shaping declaration.

I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend of 10 years. For the most part, it has been a great relationship. I am 33 and he is 36. Whenever I bring up marriage it causes us to argue because we don’t have the same views. He has the old motto if something is broke then don’t try to fix it.

I admit, he does treat me better than some of my girlfriends’ husbands treat them. He helps me around the house and we are doing well financially. Up until 4 mos. ago, I gave birth to our first child. Of course, this has made me want to get married even more. I just feel he doesn’t respect my decision on the union of marriage. I do know things should not change and if they do; minimal changes.

My question to you is, do I stick around and hope that maybe one day he would come to his senses and realize marriage isn’t such a bad thing OR do I get out now and stop setting myself up for disappointment? Marriage is that important to me!! Please advise!

Dear Friend,
I wish you had written this letter before you became pregnant, because there is something to be said about why buy the cow when you get the milk for free. He gets you AND a wonderful new baby. But I digress, let’s get to reality.

The reality here is that you are in a committed relationship, you do have a brand new baby, you are happy, you just want to get married. It may be your moral code. It may be what you think makes sense at this point in your relationship and at your age — but your man has different ideas and refuses to budge.

I myself believe in the institution of marriage and I think that any person who has a rigid view about it has some sort of issue around it. In fact, they give it way more power then they probably even realize. The fact that he thinks making a commitment in front of a state official, or minister, or friends and family can drastically change the dynamics of your relationship lets me know that he believes marriage is a very powerful thing. Or perhaps destructive thing. If it wasn’t a big deal as most men like to say — then why not do it to make their partners happy?

No many men are very afraid because of what they believe marriage means. And that’s the key. Having an honest discussion about what marriage means to you. What marriage looks like to you. What your expectations are from your husband. And of course he needs to say the same things. I bet you’ll find that your ideas of marriage are very different, which is why he is so afraid of making the commitment.

But the bottom line here is, you have to make the decision for yourself. You decided to have a child with this man a few months ago. I wonder if marriage was so important to you, why you would make such a huge decision to link yourself permanently to this man with a child. I don’t think you are even remotely ready to leave, but if marriage is a deal breaker, it may be something you need to start looking into.

Dear GirlShrink,
Hi. I have been in this relationship for 4 months now and what I found out has really devastated me. The guy will be getting married in one month and all this time he kept lying to me.

I cant seem to get over him no matter how hard i try. He keeps calling and i have told him i need my space but he simply does not want to listen. when I’m alone i cant stop thinking about him and all i do is cry. Please give me tips on how to get over him because it is taking toll on my health.

Dear Friend,
You’ve been duped, and he still has the nerve to try and still talk to you? My advice to you is to first – get mad. That will keep you from talking to him. Then second – be grateful. Be grateful that you missed that bullet.

If you had ended up in a long-term relationship with him, imagine all the lives he would have told you? You are lucky that he showed his true colors although it was very late. Trust me when I say that the real person in trouble is his soon to be wife.

As far as the pain that this has caused in your life. You have lost someone special to you. You must mourn the loss of him like you would any other loss. You will be in pain. You will be in denial. You will be angry. You will have regrets. And then you will move on. It is human nature.

If this break up is truly affecting your health, then I worry that you may have been a emotionally fragile way before this man showed his true colors. Seek the counsel of close friends, family members, or a professional counselor. Stay connected with friends and family, and go out and do things with these people. Even if its just hanging out at their homes.

Do NOT isolate yourself. Do NOT sit in your home and dwell on this man who has hurt so badly. Do NOT call this man or accept his calls. He was the wrong person for you, and you need to be “open” and ready for when the right person comes along. So extricating this man from your life literally and emotionally should be priority #1.