Dear @anita and @Helcat, if I knew both of you are going to be so helpful with your responses; I would have given a complete context about everything. Maybe it’s not too late. I love reading your responses and no please don’t worry about being harsh with me. I do need a perspective and I am aware that I am a deeply flawed person.

Let me respond to @Helcat first. Feel free to skim thru the first paragraph as it’s too long and I’m just over sharing.

1. You are correct that my depression and anxiety fuel a lot of insecurity and overthinking and coupled wit her undiagnosed and untreated ADHD where she is irritable almost all the time from sunrise to sunset, I do have episodes of blowing up. I was honest about her from the beginning that I hav these two ailments and every negative life event (including the death of my first born, the separation with  my first wife and best friend, the divorce with my second wife and my only friend on this planet and now my ex-wife moving with my 10 year old boy far away to another state), has only made it harder. I was sexually abused as a child and I couldn’t talk to anybody as I get up in a uncomfortable environment where my father was a chronic alcoholic and beat up his wife and kids. All of this made it hard for me to date or make friends or even be fully present in a relationship. Hence I’ve not been lucky in love. the two times I found love, I married them and they understood and accepted me for who I am. They were my rock, one at a time and I never felt any lack of support, judgement or criticism. They anchored me so well that I became a high performing executive who managed to propel his career and be very successful and make a lot of money, travel the world, live with my family in different countries. However, since I went through heartbreak the second time; I’ve lost interest in chasing success, money, material things completely. For a long time, I was alone and just focussed on spending time with my son but I longed for a partner. I longed for the emotional connection so I started dating and after many dates, decided to take a break a I found it to be draining and people were not looking for something deep. Then I met her and she said she’s looking for honesty, depth and someone who makes at least $200K a year because that demonstrates responsibility and commitment. That was my first sign and irritated me so much that I ended up talking to her on phone. Somehow, I saw outstanding communication, emotional depth and clarity her in her. We soon met and clicked in person even though she kept giving me these little electric shocks by making weird comments every now and then. The second was during our first in person date where she asked me, “is sex important to you”? I was shocked but I said yes. As part of an emotional/physical/spiritual experience with my partner, it is important for me to have all those elements. She went on to say “Ok then we will use it as an expression of our love, never to get off”. I was fine with that. We were inseparable from the first time we met and started spending all our time together and living mostly at her house. In 6 weeks, we drove to spend halloween with her grandma. In 2.5 months, we drove to spend Christmas with her parents. In 5 months, we moved in together. She is absolutely against having kids or dating anybody with kids but she warmed up to it and now I have a guest bedroom for my boy who comes over every weekend. Then she started talking about her past again and this is where it gets confusing. She sat me down and said I should not judge her as her entire life has been a lie and she never wanted to marry or settle down with one person for the fear of ending up like her mom who divorced when she was 12 and went on chasing 10s of boyfriends looking for someone to love her and support her. So, she decided to be independent and make her own money and use men for sex as disposable goods. She is not capable of casual sex so she had these multiple relationships that would be good for 1-3 years at most and then she’s start feeling she can do better so she’d break up and find someone else. This is her entire life pattern till she met me. She also told me since menopause, her drive isn’t the same. I’ve offered to take her to review options for treatment for menopause as I feel this with her ADHD makes her very irritable and while it is ruining what we have, I also worry about how hard it is for her as a person to deal with all of this. So I do care about her, I am able to empathize with her. When we met we both wanted a co-dependant relationship as we dont have any friends and we don’t connect with family. It was great till we moved in together and suddenly living in a very expensive rented house put her in a different headspace. Money is the most important thing to her in the world and she’s very vocal about it. She is deeply emotional but has broken up with several boyfriends as they were not ambitious and she wants a 8 million dollar house and 5 cars and luxury goods. She is willing to work for most of it but also not be in a relationship with a “Loser”, as she calls them. I don’t make as much money as her as she easily makes toward of $500K a year as porn pays well but I make enough to not be a loser. When I first met her, she had given up shooting porn (as a director) and was not working at all. She was focussed on fitness, hiking, cosmetic treatments and implants and just had no direction. I sometimes feel maybe that was my role. My love was able to help her get out of a rut, move into a fancy house, resume work and now she’s very driven to making 5-10 times of what she now makes, with or without me. This leaves a serious disconnect as I am no longer ambitious. Maybe I would be, if she’d accept me for an over emotional/over thinking person who does his best when he feels supported. On top of all that, she is constantly critical of me, snaps at me, has a very foul mouth and calls me a loser, lame, coward etc over minor conflicts.

2. She has recently said she is not afraid to be alone. She doesn’t long to be with anybody else. But due to all the problems we’re having, she doesn’t want to marry me. But this isn’t consistent. Two weeks ago, she wanted me to take her to Tiffany’s and buy her a $40K ring. I’m sure if I am nice to her, the pattern will repeat itself in a few weeks. All this inconsistency where she is madly in love with me and doesn’t want to spend. minute apart from each other and wants to get married immediately to where she says out loud that she doesn’t want to marry me and she isn’t afraid to be alone and she is unhappy and frustrated due to lack of ambition in me etc; is terrible for me as it increases my anxiety and panic attacks many fold. So I withdraw or I blow up or both.

3. I see merit in couples counseling if we both want to salvage the relationship. I know I want to. But as usual, she wants to use an objective third party to clarify the absolutely truth so we both take responsibility and separate. I asked does she want to salvage it and she says she doesn’t know unless we talk to an objective third party, if there is anything to save. And she’s more torn about me leaving as she’ll have to pay the entire rent which she easily can but she’d rather me stay for practical reasons.

4. I see incompatibility between us that bothers me now. She is really. alone but once she is in love, she’s usually very attached. I hate being alone but I attach too much and am very needy when in love. So when we fight and she builds a stonewall, I hav trouble breathing and sorta panicking. She on the other hand, goes back to her other personality of being very comfortable as a loner/strong independendant woman with work and work. She locks herself in her office and just works and keeps buying furniture, durable goods, luxury things and just consumes so much food and alcohol to fill the void. I don’t drink. I don’t overeat. I dont use work to fill in the emotional void. I eep waiting for her to melt and come to me. At times, I can’t take it and I go to her to hug her and I am instead met with sarcasm and cruel statements like “You’re so insincere and dishonest”.

5. This is what I want. It’s like my prayer to god today. I’d like us to go to therapy and be honest. Work on us as individuals and as a couple and accept each other completely including our flaws. Promise to be kind to each other, stop talking about our past to attack each other or hurt each other, understand we have different values as two independent people and different needs in a relationship, that we do love each other deeply and we are very lucky to have such a strong connection, that we promise to be kind and make an effort to make changes that are important to each other. And if after doing therapy and all this, we choose to stay together; we should not take each other for granted. If we choose to separate, at least we tried to save what we both felt was the best thing that ever happened to either of us.

meant to write @helcat

[quote quote=432743]Dear Alex: You might not have noticed (double posting), but I submitted a reply for you a few minutes before you submitted your 2nd post. If you didn’t notice it, you are welcome to read it. Having read your 2nd post, indeed no wonder she talks about her sex life with previous partners- that has been her personal and work life in the pornographic industry for 20 years! Not that she should. It is harmful to you. “I would never introduce any information into her headspace that would trouble her or make her anxious“- and neither should she. “Was there a need for me to know all these details about how many guys and how much sex and the quality of sex she’s had when I was very clear about boundaries and that this makes me uncomfortable?… I worry that she won’t stop talking about her past because maybe she is using it to have control over the relationship or has some sadism or narcissistic tendencies“- – living with a woman you suspect to have “some sadism or narcissistic tendencies“, while wanting to stay with her forever, or for a long time (“We want to stay together forever or a long time and maybe even get married“), how does it feel? “This is an outlier as a person at least for someone like me who has been married twice so I’ve had very few partners in life”– maybe the outlier-in-her attracts the .. hidden outlier-in-you? (We all have a hidden outlier within us, don’t we?) anita[/quote]

Thank you, Anita. That’s very helpful and a thoughtful response. I want to agree with you that opposites attract and maybe that’s what’s going on here. I want to simplify it down to male ego. Would any self respecting man be ok with his monogamous romantic partner talking about her best sex in the past and how glorious it was? I mean not if all his body parts work and he longs for a deep emotional and intimate relationship. Maybe my ego is bigger than normal. Maybe I’m the one that needs help. Maybe I am throwing away the love of my life over my ego. I guess we’ll never know. All I know is that I feel resentment due to this and that’s hard to live with.

Sorry I meant to say, Thank you “Hellcat”.