Well I haven't been around much in recent years, turning from a member to more of a lurker anyway in that time I have been dating a young woman and thus the reason for needing help.

We have been dating for about three and a half years and living together for a little over one. We had started out with a long distance relationship until I was able to find a job in her hometown and relocated. Long story short I bought a house, my name is the only one on the paperwork, and she decided how everything went into the house.

Anyway the problems have been cropping up over this last year. The biggest one just this last week. The center around me not doing something right. To have most of this make any sense I need to give some more background.

She suffers from a very serious and life threatening form of Crohn's disease (it has almost killed her twice). Due to this she needs a multitude of very expensive drugs. So she obviously needs health insurance which she gets through a part-time job that she works. She also works a full-time job so in total she works about 60 to 70 hours a week. The full-time job is an 8 to 4 and the part time is only Mon & Wed nights and the weekends.

Now I have always know this and so when we got the house I made sure to take care of as much of the house work as I can. She is a clean freak by personal definition so I have to do things a lot. I vacuum the house every night, even the nights she is home. I do the majority of the laundry (start, dry, fold, put away). I do all of the yard work. I feed the two dogs (hers) and the cat (ours). I clean up after all three inside and outside always. I share the kitchen clean up with her. I don't make dinner because she is so hit or miss on if she will eat anything at night that I just let her decide the dinner. When she does make dinner she will not let me help.

I do not claim to be the cleanest person in the world (a dish or two on the end table, bread crumbs on the counter) but I'm not a slob either. Even though I a fairly clean person I had to make a lot of changes to how I do things to make her happy. I no longer leave the dishes out I put them right into the dishwasher, I wipe down the counter when I get done making something. And this is were we get to the problems.

Every three months or so she gets withdrawn and starts kind of sulking (she does suffer from depression). After a day or two she starts asking me if there is a problem (I've been working under the business as usual). She then goes on to say that she doesn't like how I'm doing something, or not doing something. Usually on the order of you don't clean up your dishes or clean off the counter. When I tell her that I have been doing those things she states that she has been finding crumbs or dishes. I usually talk with her about it and then say I will try to make sure I'm not doing that. And I do try to make sure I'm not doing. That is how the issues have been going up until recently.

The first new one was when she tried to state she was tired, yes tired, of cleaning up my pop cans (I don't leave them around ever). A friend of ours who is living with us at my girlfriends request stated that if she is picking up pop cans that they are probably his because as he told her I don't leave them around. She stood there for a minute and then said that she was tired of having to pick up my shoes from by the couch every night. I did leave my shoes there from time to time. So from that point on my shoes have not been left by the couch.

In October she came back from a weekend getaway with a female friend of hers (they went to an amusement park). She got into one of her little funks and then tells me that I don't show that I desire her anymore and that there were lots of guys up there that were check her and her friend out and that she could have gone with one of them and that it was nice to feel desired.

I'm not a sexaholic by any means but I do enjoy it. At the start of our relationship she told me that sex was not a big driving force for her. I told her that wasn't a problem. Now since it was a long distance relationship we only got to see each other on the weekends and so the sex was two or three times every weekend and a lot of fun, lots of laugh, playing, and sweating. I figured that those numbers would drop off when we moved in together but I didn't figure it to be any type of problem (dry spells of over two years so I can go without). We have lived in the house since October of last year, we have had sex four times two of which came back to back at the end of September this year, it had been at least six months since the last time. I can not ask for sex because it upsets her makes her feel like she is not being an attentive girlfriend. I know kind of an obvious statement but that is exactly what she told me when I did ask once. Now I know that sex is not the only (and sometimes not the best way) to show affection. I bring her flowers from time to time and cards. I kiss her in passing and run my hand down her arm. She told me that she does not like the grabbing at her, makes her feel objectified, or when I whistle when she comes out of the shower so I stopped. I really don't know any other ways to show I desire her when she rejects most of them.

Lastly, this past week she tells me that I'm playing to many video games and watching to much TV and that there are lots of projects to do around the house and I need to start doing them. I watch a fair amount of TV but I only play a couple of hours of games a week (this is because when I do play I can tell that she doesn't like it so I don't do it when she is around). Now when she brought this up to me I got a little frustrated ( I had just started to play a game) so I shut it off and started do a few odds and ends around the house but my attitude certainly showed I was not happy. She immediately tells me that she wished she hadn't said anything and that I should go back to playing. I told her no I was already off and wasn't going to get back on. I cooled off in the basement with my friend and then went back upstairs to talk to her. I told her I was frustrated by the comment that I played to much and that I didn't know what else to do around the house to justify my ability to be able to sit down and play a game or two. She looked at me and said you don't spend enough time with me and the dogs. I about came unglued on her at this point. I'm the only one that spends any time with the dogs. I feed them, I bath them , I clean up the yard after them, I take them outside to potty and play. I can't remember the last time she played with them or took them out. As for spending time with here when she gets home from work she either crashes out, because she has to go back to work that night or she goes into the bedroom and watches TV in there. On the weekends she sleeps until 10 or 11 and then works the afternoon to night shift. When she gets home it is time for bed. On the nights she is home from work just before bed I watch TV with her in the bedroom (she refuses to watch TV in the living room even with its big flat screen). I watch shows that drive me nuts just to spend time with her. I hate Grey's anatomy, I can tell you most of what is happening this season. LA Ink is just as obnoxious but again I can tell you what is happening. I try not to let her watch Hoarders but cause she is a partial hoarder herself. When she watches she feels bad and then tries to start cleaning regardless of the time. I try to get her to go to movies that she herself mentioned wanting to see. I get dvds from netflix of movies she wants to see. I own every Rockband and Guitar Hero game because she likes them, I would never have bought them myself.

I asked her several times during this last issue how she would like me to spend more time with her, what could I do. She just shrugged her shoulders and told me she didn't know. How the hell am I supposed to know, I didn't see a problem with what I was doing. I thought that I was being a good boyfriend/ future husband keeping the house clean so that she didn't have to worry about anything. I try to be attentive but she usually blows me off (she only remembered me giving her flowers once since we moved in, I have given her five bouquets of roses from the store and two from our roses in the backyard.

She is currently acting like everything is business as usual. I am completely at wits end. I have no idea what to do anymore. I have made all of these changes in the way I live and it still isn't good enough. I know that this is all one sided but she has not made any changes for me. She continues to by stuffed animals (She has twenty rubbermaid containers full of them and the spare bedroom is covered in them) even though I have asked her to stop because we have no room left. She has a massive spending habit, buying things she doens't need, but she won't stop no matter how often I ask her to.

I'm no longer sharing a life with someone, I seem to be serving them.

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"...I won't be your winter...and I won't be anyones excuse to cry."

"Even heroes have the right to bleed."

"I'm wakin up at the start of the end of the world

hmmmm first of all i understand what you are going through one of my last girlfriends was kind of the same way. It is never easy to be with someone how treats you like a butler/maid/cook/atm. I stayed because the only person she treated worse than me was her daughter who kinda need a buffer. it took me about a year and one to many huge fights to walk away.If your gonna try and stick it out all i can say try and think of the good times. Otherwise some time you have to be the bad guy and walk away. Whatever you choose i am sure noone here will judge you. Sometimes ya just have to fold you hand.

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See I love people who have been through some shit. When the shit is about to hit the fan they step to the side. Quick Step to the side.







And shepards we shall be For thee my lord for Thee power hath desended forth from thy hand that our feet shall carry out thy commands and flow a river forth to thee and teeming with sould shall it ever be in nomina patris. et` fili et spiritus sancti

after reading your post i had 2 immediate thoughts
what does she do for you ?
and high maintenance

First thing you need to do is get legal advice.

Has she lived with you long enough to claim half the house?

She probably earns too much to claim any support.

You don't have to be married for her to have a claim on your stuff.

You may have to sell the house and squirrel the money away to avoid STD (sexually transmitted debt).

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

Welcome home NiceGuy. You've been missed.


Now! They say there are always three sides to a situation. Your view, her perspective and the facts/truth. Keeping this in mind and with the details you gave being even relatively true, it still seems your relationship is pretty lopsided. Intimate life aside, just the daily experience of survival and security appears to be a ever expanding no-win exercise. Everything is finite including what you both can give and expect in your joint venture, now and in the future. It gets down to what really is important to each of you,..................can you each give what the other needs, .............and will that be fulfilling for the other.
NOBODY can have it all!

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Hi PF.

If it's reached the stage where she is threatening to start spending time with more "interesting" men, it may be time to start packing her stuff, even if it's just the fluffy toys.

nice guy, you need to be more assertive cos if you maintain your floormat impression, her apparent lack of respect is just going to get worse.

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Calm, quiet, smooth, devastating

I wont ask you anymore of what she does for you. But as long a you love a person you don't get tired of doing things for her no matter how much your tired. How much more if she's suffering from an illness, she needs more care from you and take care of her more. And taking care of the house is also one of it because this makes her feel more comfortable if everything is clean so that she can rest well.

You say it in your quotes, even heros have the right to bleed. You've been her hero for a year. You relocated your life, you take care of everything as well as working I assume since you changed jobs to be there with her. I've watched my parents for 27 years live with an unhappy marriage. Mom abuses dads idea of what a marriage should be. She buys with no thought of the fact that shes unemployed she is on his insurance and racks up ridiculous bills. She came home to dad and informed him that his arthritis DR told her she shouldn't unload the dishwasher because of her shoulder.... She can still schlep 20 filled dog food bowls to her kennel to feed her dogs, and sling the schisse scoop. She can still do what she wants to do but when it comes to something that needs to be done, she collapses in her recliner and plays the oh poor me bs.

The day I graduated high school I asked them whens the divorce. Dad doesn't believe in divorce. I think dad and I would have been better off if he had divorced her. She would have moved on oblivious as usual.

I stayed in a relationship 7 years with a woman who collected dogs, worked 30 minutes a day for $20 and spent the rest of her time on world of warcraft. I worked a full time job and yet it came to me to clean the kitchen, do laundry, cook two meals a day or more on my off days, and god forbid I sit down to watch tv or play the game. I let out and fed the ~20 house dogs, I fed the ~20 house cats and did litter boxes. She bought me a "gift" of three cats then her argument was "your cats shit in the boxes too, quit bitching" she bought me two dogs at $2,300 and $2,500 apiece with MY money and used the same line about scooping the yard.

I lost the house I bought for her, the two expensive dogs (but she sent a 15 year old dog she had taken in and a pup she had picked to keep....), she also sent me with the three cats, I had to fight to get my computer. I decided to cut my losses and lose the dead weight.

Nothing was in my name just bought with my money so I could more easily cut myself free.

Look at your situation.

Marlborodasreds Cleans for me because he feels like it, he cooks almost every night, some nights when he knows I'm going to be tired he will feed my kennels. I rarely ask him to do it and I appreciate everything he does for me. We've been together less than a year I'm waiting for the newness to wear off and the other shoe to drop. (he just kneed me in the butt.... I guess he thinks it will be like this forever.... wait was that his knee?)

You need to decide if you're happy the way things are or if some other guy from an amusement park should have his chance to be her hero.

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-Seems we got here just in the nick of time. Whats that make us?
--Big damn heros Sir.
-Ain't we just.

Thanks for the replies everyone. This has been really hard on me and I just wanted to get as many opinions as possible. I still plan on trying to make this relationship work but this is going to be the final attempt, I have no more ground to give. I love her dearly but I can't be her doormat.

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"...I won't be your winter...and I won't be anyones excuse to cry."

"Even heroes have the right to bleed."

"I'm wakin up at the start of the end of the world

Good seeing you again Nice Guy.

I think you take your name to seriously and are too nice maybe?

Dunno, but good luck and stick around awhile.

There are days where I think you may be correct.

__________________
"...I won't be your winter...and I won't be anyones excuse to cry."

"Even heroes have the right to bleed."

"I'm wakin up at the start of the end of the world