Women: The New Fixer Upper

Dear Dr. Darcy:

I have been dating my girlfriend for a year and a half… She is still married and has young children. We have been living together for a year… and I have not met her kids yet. I feel she does not want to include me in her life. Every Saturday she leaves me to go see her kids then I see her late that night. This goes for during the week also.  I spend no quality time with her.  When I get upset because I want to be apart of her life she keeps saying Yes. I will soon [include you in my life].  And soon never happens… She said she filed for divorce over six months ago. When I asked about it she says, I don’t know what the lawyer is doing.   So I took it upon myself to find out.  Well I found out she never filed for divorce.  To me I feel she is living two separate lives.   When she goes to see the kids, she goes to her wife’s house… [her wife] knows about me.  But I can’t talk to her while she is there.  She will text me instead.   She makes so many excuses about everything. And she is always disappointing me.  And breaking plans.  Please Dr Darcy what does all this mean?  I feel She is playing me.   HELP!

ANSWER

People are not projects.  They are not cute little brownstones that need renovating in order to shine.  They have an internal process that drives them to make the choices that collectively creates their life.  A person may temporarily change her ways, but unless she changes her internal process (which I can tell you is really fucking hard to do), she will eventually go back to who she was when she met you.

You get what you sign up for.  You signed up to date a woman who was married with children.  Big mistake, I’m sorry to say.  Perhaps you can’t choose who you meet and what their marital status is, but you have a choice about whether to begin a relationship while that person is still legally and emotionally bound to another person.  NEWSFLASH:  Most people never leave their spouses, despite promises to the contrary.  If, instead of starting the relationship hoping she would follow through with what she said she was going to do, you had said, “You’re an amazing person and I’d love to date you.  Let me know when the divorce is final,” your girlfriend would have had a compelling reason to follow through with getting divorced.  Instead, you gave her what she wanted at the outset and hoped that she’d decide that she didn’t want to have her cake and eat it too.  Human Behavior 101:  Most people will double dip unless someone is watching.

You’ve already caught her lying to you.  What more do you need?  Even if she were to file for divorce tomorrow, she still lied to you.  How do you move forward from there without some serious couple’s counseling?  Do the girlfriend (and yourself) a solid and break up with her.  Let her know that if things change (and she can document those changes with a copy of the Petition For Divorce), you’re willing to enter couple’s counseling in an attempt to rectify.  Short of that, I suggest you go on Match.com and find yourself a nice, available lesbian.  Or alternately, go into counseling yourself to figure out why you seem to be attracted to people who are unavailable to you.

Writer’s Stats: Female, Lesbian.