I've been seeing a woman for just over a month. At first things were going fine. Our conversations were great, our chemistry was amazing, and she confided some of her "naughty" secrets to me. I was really into her and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Around one month of dating she got really distant, not only from me, but also from her family. She blamed it on a lot of things, but after a week of this she told me that she was engaged to an abusive, controlling douche (whom she still keeps in touch with on occasion for some reason) about eight years ago. She was also physically and emotionally abused by her father as a teenager. She said she sees me as the protective type of person and is having trouble sorting out if I'm going to be protective or controlling. Personally I don't think I'm the controlling type, but that's exactly what a controlling person would say, so who knows. She wanted to take a break, but still remain exclusive, and that is where the relationship is at now. I asked her if she had any counselling for the abuse and she said, "Yes." She tends to reject help from others and distance herself when things get rough, because her ex-fiancee would attempt to give her a perfect life despite her objections. This situation we're in puts us in a tricky spot, even though it seems we're both really into each other. She's withdrawn, and there seems to be nothing I can do or say to help her get through this. How can I encourage my girlfriend to better deal with these issues of past abuse without coming off as controlling? How can I show her I'm not controlling despite still wanting to protect her?

Missing Her

My response after the jump...

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I'm going to sidestep your questions, MH, because frankly I don't know what you can do. But I'm sure that whatever you do—if you do anything at all—will turn out to be the wrong thing. Because...

Well, first let me say this: You do realize that this woman's a mess, right? And as you only have a month invested in this mess, MH, I believe your best course of action is to make the break you're currently taking, at her request, permanent, at yours. Because whatever lies at the root of her issues—abusive family members, a controlling ex-fiance that she hasn't taken a break from—her issues are the issue here. And her issues, assuming they're not insurmountable, are issues that she has to mount on her own.

And I'm going to catch hell when for this... but... you know... her issues could be fictional. Color me cynical, MH, but people lie all the time, sometimes about really dark shit, and that detail about the ex-fiance has me doubting the rest of your girlfriend-of-four-week's story.

What's more, MH, I'm always suspicious when a person dumps someone "takes a break" from someone not because the dumper wants out of the relationship, but because forces and/or traumas beyond the dumper's control—indeed, forces that victimized the dumper—have compelled the dumper to end an otherwise promising relationship. My suspicions double when simple human decency requires the dumpee to feel sympathy for and comfort dumper; they triple when the dumper's reasons for ending the relationship transform one or more of the dumpee's good qualities—she sees you as "the protective type"—into liabilities.

But this is all speculative, MH. And it doesn't change the fact that this girl—not your girlfriend, MH, just a girl you've been dating for four weeks—has already dumped you. That's what I was going to say up there in the first paragraph. It's over, she ended it, and there's nothing you can change about yourself to fix this or fix her. If the reasons she gave when she dumped you are true—she was abused by her family and her dad, she was previously engaged to an abusive douchebag, she sought help but the major damage was already done—then she's a mess. A mess who deserves our sympathy, for sure, but a mess still. And if the things she told you weren't true, well, then she's an even bigger mess—and one who doesn't deserve our sympathy.

UPDATE: Slog commenters caught something that I missed. Avast2006 said it best...

Wait, what? She wants to not date you, but she wants you to not date anybody else while she's not dating you? And she has the balls to call YOU controlling?

That's pretty fucked up, MH. DTMFA.