Hello,

I am new here and I hope any of you don't mind if I vent regarding a relationship that has just about run it's course since I have few outlets to gain objective feedback. Before I begin, I recognize that there are two sides to any situation. I am presenting mine but need to make clear that she has an equally valid point of view that is not being presented here.

My girlfriend and I met some 9 years ago on a dating website. She lived in NYC and I lived in DC. After dating for 6 months, she lost her job and proposed to me that she move from NYC to DC to live with me. I thought that I was the luckiest guy in the world. She was beautiful, sexy, and seemed to have her act together with an online business she was developing. We discussed marriage early on but decided to wait. As time passed, I began to see patterns in her behavior that made me hesitant regarding marriage at all.

She invested a great deal of her time, money, and effort in her online business and then, later, her brick and mortar business and I assisted her financially in her efforts. It never turned a profit. She operated at a loss from it's inception but hid this fact from me. Soon her business failed and she ended up $25k in debt. Instead of getting a conventional job to pay down that debt, she took up sewing knick knacks and selling them at government buildings and assorted craft fairs. Again, this never turned a profit but she persisted when a conventional job would have helped her pay off the debt despite my assistance. In the mean time, I paid for 100% of everything - mortgage, utilities, food, insurance, etc.

She came to me one evening three years ago in tears saying that she needed $2k to prevent a credit card company from taking her to court. I reluctantly gave it to her. I thought this might have been the wake up call she needed. I was wrong. She continued vending instead of finding a proper job and three months ago, the credit card company actually took her to court. She even asked me to lie for her when an officer of the court came to my door to present the summons. I didn't.

Last week I called it quits. The relationship that started off so promisingly ended up in shambles. The idea of kids that we discussed early on died as we are now in our 40's; I was still paying for everything without so much as a single dollar of help from her; She never learned to drive (being from NYC) despite the golden opportunity I gave her (got her a used car which I later sold when I saw that she wasn't making an effort). And now I am going to have to help her, again, financially, in moving all of her crap out of the house.

I'm trying to take this in stride but it is difficult. If there is one saving grace, I never married her and there is no common law marriage statute in my state. Thank you for reading. At the very least, I can get this off of my chest.