Well, here it goes.

So they say you should start a blog and go through the situation that your trying to convey.

Well, here goes.

I'm 29 years old, I live in Glasgow and as of about 6 days ago, I have been in the process of separating with my girlfriend of the last 9 years, and being the one who just does not want this to happen.

There's a whole back story to this, which goes back a good few years. I haven't been perfect and I know the mistakes that I have made, but I never once meant for her to get upset enough with me that she could no longer see a future for us.

So, here is the Story. I met my partner(who we will call S for the sake of not putting too many personal details here) through the Penpal section of Rocksound Magazine. I was around 16 at the time we started writing to each other. In the time we were we both had relationships, I went out with, and had my heart broken by a girl that I met. But during that time we continued to write to each other. After a couple of years we finally decided to meet in person for the first time. We went to a gig(Taproot at the Glasgow Garage, I am sure of that) and had a great time, she was in a relationship at the time, but as soon as I met her, I knew she was the woman that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She was funny, confident, beautiful and always good for having a conversation with.

We started hanging out more and more as the months went on, I would find gigs that we could both go to, and we genuinely enjoyed each others company. During this time, the girl who broke my heart was still in the background of my life. Making sure that I knew she was having so much fun without me. My feelings about her never truley went away for a couple of years, but I was having fun with who I felt was my best friend.

Anyway, to skip the boring part, S and I stopped being just penpals, and become close friends, we would spend weekends in the Pub, talk to each other on the phone and generally text each other nonsense to cheer each other up.

February 2004 when everything changed for us. The 27th to be precise. We went to see the Ataris in the Barrowlands, we had the most amazing time at the gig, lost our old T-shirts when we bought new ones, went to the Cathouse. I ended up missing my bus, and dropping a Pizza. It was already 3 in the morning, and she decided that she would stay with me at the bus station until my first bus came 4 hours later. This is the night we first kissed, she pushed me against a wall and kissed me with such passion, that it still makes me smile today to think about it. After that, we spent the rest of the night just kissing and talking.

It wouldn't be until 4 weeks later, after she had split up with her Boyfriend, that we would finally be able to properly be together. The next 4 years were amazing, I proposed to her, she said yes and we just had this amazing life that felt like it revolved around each other. As I think about this, it feels that this was really unhealthy, because we both began to lose contact with our friends. But it was fun.

In 2006 we finally moved in together, I left everything that I had behind and left my mums for the 2nd time so I could always be with her, this is where I feel that out problems started. When I moved through, I had a job lined up, but due to issues with me not having a passport, I wasn't able to pass the Full disclosure that was required, I was also struggling with debt I had built up in the past, so, for the first 9 months of us living together, I was really a drain on her, both financially but also emotionally, because I was struggling to find a job, and if I am honest, being really difficult about what I wanted to do, as I refused to try certain places for work. This lead to a few arguments, But I did finally manage to find a well paid, and altogther, great job that I really enjoy.  Once that was sorted, we started splitting the finances in the house, I made sure that I was paying more, partly because I made significantly more than her, but also because I felt bad about the previous 9 months. This was all fine, and it felt that we were bringing the relationship back on track.

Then Her Nana died, we lost the flat that we loved and we had to move in with her mum. This all happened within a few weeks, she also failed a drama exam that she really wanted to do well in. I started noticing that she was being really distant and cold with me, and that she wasn't the talky, happy self that she had been through this, and I tried to get her to open up, but she just wouldn't. After we moved in with her Mum, I was talking to my ex on facebook, and I told her about how I was feeling. She saw this, but did not tell me at all for about 7 months, after we had found and moved into a new flat. One night she just exploded at me, after we had an amazing night out, and finally told me everything. It made me feel like such an arsehole for what I did to her. We talked, we decided to keep things going, and I cut off all ties with my ex to make her happy.

Not long after, she started playing a game with me, World of Warcraft. I decided that I would help her level, but as I was the Raid leader for our guild, once she hit 80, i asked her to try and get along without me for a while so I could go back to leading and progressing our guild. She didn't like this, so found one of our guildmates to help her, we will call him C. She started talking more and more to C, and it soon spilled out into real life, she would always text him, or email him. She would constantly talk to him about everything. She even started doing things, because that's what he wanted. I started getting paranoid about this, because she was always more interested in him then she was in me, but she would reassure me that nothing was going on, and go back to what she was doing. At one point she sat for 5 hours, over teamspeak, talking and laughing to him.

Anyway, her phone broke and she needed to use another phone as a spare for a while, and everything continued as was going on previously. When she got her old phone back, I ended up having to use the same phone she had. And that's when I found the text messages. They were explicit, they were sexting basically, and it had been going on for a long time. I went mental, and I decided that I needed to know what was going on. I hacked into her emails, and started keeping an eye on the communications going between them, and it was still as bad. It took me 2 months to confront her about what was going on, and that was only because she found out what was going on. She almost left me, We fought, we decided to give it another try and see if we could make things work, but taken our relationship back a step and no longer be engaged. I promised her I would ask her to marry me again when the time felt right. That was 2 and a half years ago.

The following year was all about mending what had been broken, and I will be honest, it felt great. Our relationship was in the best place for years, and I know this is stupid, but I was blisfully happy that she still wanted to be with me, that I didn't want to risk getting engaged again. So we went through like this.

This was all fine, until earlier this year. I started to feel her distancing herself from me again around Febuary, and it scared me, so I started making more effort around her, and I thought it was working. But it wasn't. In June this year I noticed the same behaviours i had noticed a couple of years before with C, this time though it felt far more serious as it was someone she worked with, G. She was spending a lot of time either talking about him, or messaging him. Whenever I questioned it, she would tell me that he was married and loved his wife, this started causing a lot of problems, and I, again, got really paranoid about what was going on. This came to a head when one day she all of a sudden announced she was going to friends. She had never done this before, she would always arrange things days in advance. I didn't believe her and finally managed to get it out of her that she was going for a Drive with a "friend", which, upon further poking, I found out what G. I was angry, I told her not to go, and she didn't and we talked, she started telling me things about how she was feeling that I was controlling her through my jealously and paranoia, and that nothing was going on between them and I needed to let it go. The next day, I woke up and found that she had already left the house at 6 am for a "Walk". she didn't get back until 11am, and said she needed some time to think. I didn't believe her, it wasn't just out of character, it was insane, but I played along. We went out, we had a really bad day, with her buried in her phone when ever she wasn't talking to someone else, and the whole atmosphere was frosty.

After she left for work the next day, I decided to log into her Facebook. I am not proud of this at all, but what I found confirmed everything I feared. That she WAS with him the day before. The messages that they sent between each other were also highly suggestive and of the same type that she had been sending to C 2 years before. I broke down at work, got sent home, and confronted her with what I found, she denied there was anything other than playfull ness in the messages, and that nothing was going on, but I didn't(and still) don't belive her. It looked exactly like they were going to do something, or already had. Again, I went on a bit of a rampage, and found out exactly what I needed to know. She had already kissed him, and she had been feeling the way she was about him for some time. When I finally got her to start telling me the truth about what was going on, she still hasn't been totally upfront with me. But she told me that she couldn't see a future for us anymore, that she knew about my debts, and that when ever she was looking forward it felt like she had already missed out on the things that she wanted, and didn't want them any more. It upset me to think she had been feeling like this for so long, but I couldn't fix it anymore.

Anyway, over the last month it's been back and forth between "lets work on this" to "We need to split up", and I am constantly trying to get answers from her about what she wants or needs from me, and getting nothing in return. Last week, she went to his house behind my back, telling me that she would be at her friends again, and I am convinced that she slept with him that night. The next day, the decision was made that we would "Seperate" so we could figure out what we want.

I know that there is nothing more that I would want right now, then to save this and get everything back on track. But the more I think about what's happening now, what happened, and whats going to happen. it makes me more and more angry and upset. She has made no effort to try and save this, or to feel differently about us, and I am the one that is being punished and it feel massively unfair.  I just know that despite her promises otherwise, she is telling him everything that is going on, and that when I move out in 2 weeks time I know that she will persue whatever it is she has with him right now, whilst trying to keep up the impression that she wants to save this. She keeps trying to tell me to go out and sleep with other women, but I know that won't happen, I'm not Brad Pitt.

So, this leads me up to now, and where I have found myself. I am moving out of the flat at the begining of September, so she can have "Space and Time" to figure out what she wants. The first week I need to leave her alone, and we can start working things out after that apparently. But I think I know in my heart that she has made the decision to leave me and is trying to spare my feelings at this point.

So, what's the purpose of this Blog. More than anything it's just to write down how I am feeling about everything, and get it through my own head that this is over and there is nothing I can do to save this. Maybe in a years time I will come back to this and realise that I am a massive idiot for feeling this way, maybe I will come back to it and tell you we got back together, but I doubt that.  It's really, though, just a place to vent and put down my feelings, so that I am not constantly on her back about this. I am going to back off her for a little while until she tells me what she wants.