Yes I worked 6 weeks on 6 weeks off.
I think my ex was faithfull for 7 months. Then I was devalued and I now realise she was cheating on me while I was away. Her daughter even told me once that mummy has a new boyfriend. I didnt press it as I was so far in denial plus I was at the point of leaving. Didnt leave for another few months though.
she now has a new bf wh live away and only see's him at weekends. Rumour has it she is cheating on him.
I don't even understand why a person who has a personality disorder that causes intense abandonment issues would even try to start a relationship with a person who needs to be away for so much time for work. Maybe they are just that un-self-aware?
The thing is, I think my ex was pretty self-aware, she just couldn't help herself. For instance, I found some old text messages she had sent me from when we first started dating. I was shocked by some of the things she said and took a screenshot on my phone, haha. To paraphrase, she told me that she had just broken up with her ex the same weekend we started talking (on an online dating site, so she was obviously looking to date again), and after talking for a while and planning to meet she said that we should probably start out as friends. She said that in the past she always jumped from relationship to relationship, usually with only days or weeks in between so that she wouldn't have to deal with the pain of rejection. She said that she started to figure out that that's not ok and made her interdependent, and she knew that if she wanted to be in a healthy relationship she needed to find herself again first and be on her own for a little while. Yet, flash forward 4 days later when we first meet and at the end of the date she's basically asking me to kiss her... .and
I had to tell
her that it felt like it was too soon after her breakup and just kissed her on the cheek instead. It just goes to show that she knows the things she's doing wrong but just can't help herself.
The same sort of thing happened one time where she broke up with me for a little over a week, told me she "needed time to be on her own and find herself" and then a week later we're back together and she's acting in love and like nothing happened. I just realized that she actually rebounded from me... .with me.
In the text messages I found it was weird how eloquently she was able to put it too, she knows EXACTLY what her problem is and how she mishandles the ending of relationships. Of course once our relationship ended she told me how she was going to take some time to be single. Then we met to talk about the breakup two weeks later since it had been initially done over text message, and she told me how she was back to online dating and had already met a few guys, one of which she ended up in a relationship with. I told her "I thought you wanted to be single for a while?" and she said that she's lonely because she lives alone and is now single, so she just wanted to meet some people and get out of the house and have things to do. It's this crazy cycle of realizing the problem and then lying to herself to avoid being lonely or feeling abandoned. Kind of makes it even more sad really.
So I think she has to also be aware of her abandonment issues. It kind of makes sense I guess, because she would stress in advance over knowing that we wouldn't be able to see each other for a period of time. I just don't know how she managed to deal with it with her new guy leaving for 3 months, it's really baffling. I'm going to assume she won't last many of those 6 months cycles though.