Well Alan, sounds like you got well and truly taken. 2 year investment for her spending time with you and in exchange getting you to obtain her a house and furnishing it for her. Sounds a bit like a James and Jodhi Packer marriage to me. It constantly amazes me how many naive people there are in the world.

Exactly! Female jumps right on the possessions just like a sad and greedy little girl. How disgusting.

What are possessions to a man, who can just go and get more of them.

-Dick

Bravo Dakota…
Just like a Female to think the possessions were the most important thing. If Female had read my post carefully, she would have noticed that this female I was dating did not have a well paying job. So then, why would I argue about furniture, dishes and primarily the house the she needed to retain to care for her son just to say I didn’t get ripped off. Especially when I have a well paying career and the testicular fortitude to suck it up and work twice as hard to rebuild, while her methodology is move on, or in this case move back to another man. It doesn’t matter who, just as long as she is with someone.
And I didn’t give her my new home phone number, I just didn’t change my cell or work numbers. Why would I go to the trouble? I’m an adult, I can handle a conversation with an ex.
The point here, Female, which I doubt you will be able to grasp, is that the material possessions don’t mean squat. I am upset not because of the money I invested, but because of the emotion and love and connection and nuturing that I invested, of which, she was unwilling to invest an equal share in me. The point is, that poor child, whom I love dearly, of such an emotional train wreck of a woman, needed that house and the things in it that made it a home more than I needed to take them to keep my ego from being bruised.
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…. or the one.”
Even though he was only a TV character, Spock was a fucking genius!

Here’s the thing, Female:

Men are wired up such that we know when it’s time to just cut our losses and get out.

Do we like the material posessions we’ve spent years accumulating? Yes. But we also know that money and posessions aren’t the most important things in the universe. When it comes right down to it, one’s psychological well-being is more important.

In my divorce, the ex got everything. Literally everything. Despite the fact that I’ve been well-paid for all of our relationship, I left with a bed and the personal library I brought into the marriage. Oh, and $250 with which to buy a TV. When I moved out of the house, I had a buddy come over to help haul away the bed and take it to my otherwise-empty apartment.

Certainly I could have gotten more if I’d been willing to pay an attorney $10,000 to fight for it. However, if I’d've done that, I’d've had to trade away visitation with my children.

It made a lot more sense to cut my losses, give her everything, and see my kids as much as humanly possible.

See, by working hard, I can get more posessions. I can’t get psychological peace of mind nor time with my kids just by working hard.

So that’s that. You have to know when to cut your losses. It’s almost always better to let the bitch have whatever the fuck she wants and get away with what remains of your psychological well-being.

You shouldn’t have let her have all the stuff. No way should you have done that. I used to care for this man who I met straight after he left a woman and situation like the one you describe. Except she wasn’t a drunk. I couldn’t believe he left with nothing other than his bed, car and golf clubs. Unbelievable. Said it wasn’t worth it dealing with her anymore to get them back….I still find it hard to believe what he left.
The fact that you, and he, let an ex basically completely rip you off, and, gave her your current phone number seems…not right.

So I left. I took her and her son by another man as my own family, cared and nurtured them, received no thanks, received demands of affection with no assurance or display of reciprocity and finally threats of infidelity. I asked for nothing when I left either. Not a thing out of the house and zero dollars from my investment. She refinanced the house into her name only and I will never see any of the fruits of my labor… emotional or material. Five months later now… I have only my clothes, a TV and a futon to sleep on. I still have to work two jobs now because I worked two jobs all last year and the added income sent my up two tax brackets and I must continue so I can pay the IRS what I owe them. My car is falling apart from driving 100 miles a day and I am so far upside down in value now because of all the miles, I can’t trade it in. I have nothing and no-one.
Am I upset, sure. Do I hate women or her, no. I pray that she will see how her self-important, entitlement-complex has and will continue to hurt her and her son. She had unbelievable love staring her in the face and she mucked it. She called to let me know the other day that is thinking about getting back with her emotionally and verbally abusive ex because her son “needs a father and” she “is sacrificing her own needs for his”. This is why Dick says illogical and irrational. I call it borderline psychotic and a ploy to try and get me to come back.
Don’t worry about me though…
I’m a man. Now I suck it up and get the job(s) done to rebuild my life.

Female,
Since you brought adultery up, I have further evidence that Dick is right.
I was in a relationship with a divorced woman with a son. I was supportive of her through the toughest time immediately after the divorce when she was frightened of what the future might hold and how she was going to provide for and care for her young child, which she tried to come to terms with by drinking herself into a stupor almost every night and entertaining attention from other men. I stood by her even through this disrespect, because I believed that at some point, she would get beyond that. And she did eventually, but it was almost six months of denigration and belittling me before it happened. Things got better when I encouraged her to return to school and find a job in a field that she felt would be fulfilling. She enrolled in the local junior college and took a job as dental tech. She wanted to be in medicine and that was what she could get with her little experience and little school. All the while I paid all the bills. So I was supporting her emotionally and financially. When I first brought up marriage, she insisted that she needed to finish school before that could happen. So that was a four year wait staring me in the face. Based upon her emotional needs, I agreed to move 40 miles away from my job and bought a house with her. It was a sign of commitment and love. Soon after that, something kicked in… I believe it was partly her mother and partly her firends or something, because she couldn’t bear that we were living together and not married. I needed to get the ring and now. So I started working two jobs to get the money for the ring. With me paying all the bills, I didn’t have the money for a monthly payment even if I wanted to finance the ring. All the while, she was not emotionally supportive of me, could not offer small tithings upon the altar of love (like a back rub now and then after my long 14 hour days), complained about providing care for me while I cared for her (basically, she threatened not to pack my lunch or cook, because “thank you”s and the like weren’t enough of a display of gratitude) and was continually hostile when I tried to talk things out with her. Finally, she complained that I wasn’t home enough, she wasn’t getting the attention she “deserved” and that if something didn’t change “it would be too late” and she “would have to get that attention from somewhere else”. Threatening me with adultery (no we were not married, but in my view, in a committed relationship of 2 years, it is one and the same). Continued…

Turn back the clocks? Guess you’ve never heard of adultery.

“And any man will do exactly the same if he’s not afraid of having his balls ripped off by someone who has just finished a grueling 20 hour work week.”

Hah. Reminds me of a great Mitch Hedberg joke - “I don’t have a girlfriend, I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.”