So I met my first girlfriend in Chinese 102 in Spring 2011 (she's not Asian). We were teammates for a group presentation. I should have asked her out but didn't, and she saved me by running up to my car and asking me to dinner one night. And that was history - we both had 4.0 GPAs, worked hard at school and studied together tons, had similar (somewhat introverted) personalities, or so I thought, and were just very compatible.

I'm a reformed gamblor/drinker/degen and she had just recovered from an eating disorder. We both didn't have many friends, and we were very good for each other. Everything seemed to come together perfectly.

Fast forward to this past december, when she took up an interest in drinking. My therapist and I are of the belief that I shouldn't drink or gamble anymore. He wasn't insistent that I never have a drink or that I never gamble ever, but he explained that it was bad for my anxiety (which we have been successfully treating for a couple of years now). Before I'd not be able to do completely routine things, whereas now I can generally speak in public and do what I want without discomfort. I remember Barry Greenstein said that you may have to promise yourself that you'll never do something ever again if it hurts you (such as sports betting), and that's what I've personally decided to do with the degen/poker lifestyle. I don't want to risk going back to a future of nothing when I have a job at one of the largest offices of a top financial services firm next summer.

Anyway, she goes to school an hour away at a fancy liberal arts school, and began to go to highschool-style dances that they hold regularly. She got drunk one night and was sexually assaulted, I was told (a guy grinded on her and grabbed her chest and crotch).

Later she told me that she voluntarily grinded with him (she claims to have been wasted and not to have looked at his face or remembered it) and put his hand on her chest. Obviously no assault.

I realized then that what went from me thinking there was an 80% chance I'd marry this girl I was perfectly compatible with was now a situation where I would be very likely to not be with her anymore.

This spring I explained to her, after continuous hinting and reminders and outright discussion of my concerns, that in order for me to be comfortable that we won't grow apart over the long term, and that we can spend the rest of our lives together, I needed to see her treat her severe depression (which lead to her eating disorder and impairs her functioning, and makes her take endless naps) and do her best. I told her there was no pressure and that I just needed to see that she was doing her best. That I knew she'd do better gradually, and that I was in it for the long term.

I guess now would be a good time to mention that my gf is a "vegan". I thought this was neutral or even good at first (for the entire year when our relationship was amazing, in fact), but then I found out that she adopted a radical diet as a means to claim she couldn't morally eat when she was almost killing herself from anorexia. She claims to have bought into it since then, and says she'd have been vegan anyway, but it would have taken longer. Personally, I think she is subconsciously (maybe even consciously) just doing it as a symptom of her eating disorder.

Oh, and she runs 7 miles or so every other day. I was initially impressed with this, until I found out, just recently when she discussed it in more detail, that it wipes her out and makes her nap during the day. She had a sore ankle and compulsively ran on it anyway. She won't consider running less, even though she's at the very minimum of what is considered a healthy weight (or 5-10 lbs less).

Oh, and it's like pulling teeth to get her to even take medicine (it contains some animal protein almost invariably). She believes in all this new-age voodoo psuedoscientifiic ****, which is extremely offputting to me, an agnostic skeptic with a respect for science, evidence, facts, what's true, etc.

Then I guess there's politics. Her parents (figuratively) love me, since I'm clean-cut, nice, and they perceive me as successful. But they're fundamentalist christians who home-schooled her until the 7th grade, at which point she hadn't even learned of evolution.

Although she believes in regulating the meat industry out of existence (I assume), opposes the death penalty vigorously and takes a host of other progressive views, she is against Obama's health care law, the president himself, and abortion. It's not so much her views that bother me as it is the fact that they resemble those of a schizophrenic.

And she has family history that's disgusting from a mental health standpoint. Her grandmother committed suicide, her dad is on pills (as am I - but I'm just saying), and her brother has mild tourettes. Since she exhibited OCD symptoms and they thought she possibly had tourettes as a child, my research shows that she probably has a toxic combo of genes that will result in us having a 50% chance of having a child with tourettes (in addition to all the obvious genetic risks of passing on mental health problems /family history, including alcoholism and compulsion on my side).

But maybe that's all too harsh. If it was all bad, I wouldn't be writing this, after all. She's at home from school for the summer and under 21, so I don't have to worry about her drinking or doing anything now (except counting calories to determine whether she can eat dessert, which after a year of dating I only just learned that she does still).

She's a pretty girl (not even close to perfect though), extremely agreeable, seemingly compatible in the short term.

But when I asked her about her eating disorder and how she was doing in therapy (I told her she should go once a week and actually discuss her real problems), she eventually told me to find a normal girl at one point on the phone, and later told me that I worry way too much, and that as far as her promises to do her best to better herself, she couldn't guarantee anything now and she has no idea about the future.

She's in the process of transferring schools, but she hasn't applied yet because her lack of confidence precludes her from doing the applications, even though she's never gotten less than an A in anything (or close to it).

So yeah, I basically have a seemingly wonderful girl who's very much in love with me, pretty good sexually, great agreeability and conscientiousness (i dont think we've ever raised our voices) and overall many great things in common.

I just can't trust her, and her inability to make progress or guarantee progress, her continuation of her eating disorder (she generally breaks even with her weight now, but is always cutting it close), her addictive personality behaviors, her indicators of an inability to think and compromise over crucial things, the fact that she is unable to help herself (never mind me) and is probably too immature to be in a relationship, lead me to believe I have to dump her.

But just thinking about it gives me physical anxiety like I haven't felt in a while. It feels like it would be the death of what is my closest loved one. I still enjoy doing things with her and to some extent am probably in love with her. I just can't imagine telling her that our lives as we (at least implicitly) planned them are over as we know it, and having her cry and never seeing her again.

I'm doing an internship and taking classes at night until august, so I think it best to wait until then, when I'm off from school for the only time during the year, to break up with her. I don't really know what else to say.

Breaking up with someone sucks (as does getting broken up with obviously), but don't put it off. This is coming from someone who has put off ending multiple LTRs for weeks, if not months, and I definitely regret not just ending them immediately. Once you are thinking about breaking up with someone it's more or less over, just get it over with. Let her start moving on, let yourself start moving on, no reason to drag it out.

If only there was a student life thread about relationships...

I don't understand what the question is as it seems clear that you realise that you need to end it. Re-read your own post and look at all the things you have listed that you don't like about her, why stay with someone so incompatible.

It's also apparent that it's not a healthy relationship when you feel that she needs to be at arm's reach for you to trust her. You are trying to fix her when you haven't fully fixed yourself, break up and focus on the latter.

r u asian?

Well I completely trusted her to be away at college and do whatever before she demonstrated that she will do crazy things like cheating on me when she's drunk. Ond time when I was at her school she got wasted out of her mind and hung on other guys to make me "jealous". Even at that point I kind of wanted to say **** it
and let her enjoy the mess she made.

I guess everyone knows I have to end it; nobody's told me to stay with her, despite the varied advice from those I've talked to.

I just can't bear to do it now - I think I'd be at risk of just stopping doing work for my class and not caring about anything. Although it does feel like an awful thing to schedule out into the future.

End it man. Look at it this way. If you had another girl right now that was good looking, fun, and wanted to date you would that make this decision easier? If so you definitely need to end it.

I know you THINK you love her but you really are just looking for a reason to stay with her and really those reasons just arent there.

Best of luck though. Obviously these situations are just hard and suck!

She actively cheats on you at school and admits its to make you jealous?

What the hell is wrong with you? That's just pathetic

Wow, I think she needs to break up with you. You put her down so much all over your OP that I can't imagine you actually treating her right. Of course, you probably think you do, but the whole tone of the OP really makes me feel otherwise.

Anyone that does this is a piece of ****. I went through so much crap over a year and a half of being with a girl. She was selfish, high-maintenance (not necessarily bad), just a really mean person when we were alone together.

She cheated on me after 9 months, I liked her so much though, that when she came crawling back after the other guy didn't want to be in a relationship I made the ****test move of my life by accepting her because I was in love with her, and she knew it. The next 9 months were awful, you can't trust them and everything becomes pickety, we'd always look at each others fb's and phones etc.

It's really not worth getting mixed up with stuff like that. My advice to everyone as I didn't really read all the OP (sorry dude, it was just such an essay) is that if that happens to you, as much as you love them, you have to break it off because you're worth more than that and there are ten, thousands, maybe even millions of people out there that would respect and commit to you better than she apparently is. Don't pity yourself or her, sorry to say it blunty but you sort of have to just man-up and grow a pair!


You'll be so much more satisfied on the long-run ( and you'll have more money )

Peace.x

i cringed

One of the first things I learnt about relationships was that you should never enter one with someone that's more messed up than you. I know that doesn't make much sense technically as we'd all be single if everyone took that advice but I'm sure you get what I mean.

This seems to be a good way of looking at it. I could argue that my girlfriend often meets those categories and that it's hard to think of being with another girl when I'm in a relationship with her, but if you add long-term compatibility to the list of requirements and assume (reasonably, I think) that I can do much better than this relationship (which is mediocre at best and has extreme downside risk), then I think I'd pretty much have to be crazy to stay with her.

Last night might be a good illustration of my conflicted feelings. We had planned to go see the movie Ted, and she had been sexting me all day after we hadn't seen each other all week. When I got out of work, I didn't know if she had eaten dinner (often she does by 5:30, since she never eats lunch and is usually starving by 4:30 or so).

Of course I was expecting her to be sexual when I got home, but instead she sat down and directed me to change. Apparently we were going out to dinner.

In the car she asks me where I want to go. There are two restaurants in my city that she finds acceptable (due, ostensibly, to the veganism). I suggested Thai, but she told me how she felt hungry there due to the small portions. So we ended up going to the Vietnamese restaurant that's OK, but has slow service and that I am sick of.

By the time we get through dinner, the movie is almost starting (at 7:40, because any showtime after can't even be considered). I'm a little frustrated on the way and ask her how she can reconcile her opposition to universal healthcare (and hence early deaths for the uninsured) with her insistence that cows not be used even for milk. (On a side note, which I didn't mention but is somewhat perplexing to me, horse-riding and domesticating animals and feeding them meat is morally OK). It seems to me that if you care so much for the lives of milk cows, you should also care about health care and poverty. She pleaded complete ignorance to obamacare and declined to discuss the issue.

By the time we got home at 10 or so she was tired (too much sexting all day obviously) and told me that she'd come upstairs if I wanted. I told her I only wanted her to if she wanted, and while we looked in each other's eyes for a good 30 seconds, I sincerely hoped she was going to dump me. Alas, we weren't on close to the same wavelength.

After sex she told me how she was afraid that I would run away from her after we first had sex, but that she now knows I'm not that type of guy.

This depends on your definition of cheating and actively. Both require a very broad interpretation to make your statement not extremely misleading.