Dating, Sex, & Relationships

Hi,

I have been going out with a Chinese girl for over a year now and I am really having a hard time with her. I'll start at the beginning.

We know each over for over two years now and, around a year ago, I finally decided to try to get involved with her.

In the beginning everything was sweet. We would see each other from time to time and we were very happy. She would tell me how comfortable she was with me and after a few month of flirting we got serious.

Everything was great despite my job: I am a chef with long and crazy hours, but she was happy because she had her own free time.

If I had to work over night and finish at 7 a.m. the next day, she would be waiting for me in my home to meet and surprise me when I returned. It was fantastic.

However, she gets upset very easily about nothing and everything. The worst part is not that she gets upset but that she feels she has the right to shout and yell at me without any response from me.

When I try to answer her, she tells me not to speak. She explains that when she is upset she just wants me to be quiet and listen. Also, I am not allowed to touch her when she's angry, which I find weird. I agreed to all of this hoping that it would make things better but then she complains that I don't do anything to make her feel better. Go figure.

So then she will spend about three to four months away from me at a time to take of her family, which I do think is nice. I don't mind the separations because I am then able to focus on my work and don't have to worry about what I'll find when I get home.

Sometimes when she stays with me she will tell me how she needs to stay in her home because it is not good for us to be together everyday.

She has a lot of secrets and doesn't want me to ask her about them. In a way I try to respect this because I want to be able to trust her.

First of all, she doesn't work but does very well for herself. Second, she will spend time traveling overseas with various friends. I have no idea who they are. She supposedly has this older "sister"/manager with whom she pretends she is working with on some kind of business but, the more she explains it, the more confused I become. It has something to do with businesses closing, people going to jail, or being expatriated from China, then coming coming back to start a new office, but they don't start a new office, she has meetings with the boss who is different from the manager manager, she has to go here, she has to go there, etc. It is impossible to try to understand what is going on.

Then she had a business in her hometown that she left to a Chinese man to take care of, someone she was in love with. He was married, taking drugs, and cheating left and right on his wife. She tells me it is over but I have no idea.

She receives phone calls in Chinese and goes into a separate room to talk, even though I don't speak or understand any Chinese at all.

Now here is the thing. I have always celebrated Christmas whether alone or not. I wanted her to understand what is Christmas. So as a western guy, after my work, I organised a good meal at my home: foie gras, oyster, lobster, caviar, champagne, etc.

She loved it. I gave her the present, she was kind of okay with it but didn't want to take it. I tried to explain to her that this is our tradition where you give presents to your loved ones and family for Christmas. She was okay but still hasn't used the perfume and a couple of nice T-shirts that she told me she wanted.

After Christmas she went back her home town for Chinese New Year. We talked on the phone everyday but sometimes she will make me understand that we don't need to talk everyday.

Also, during her time with the family there, we had a little dog that we bought together and my little dog passed away. It was a Pomeranian that she wanted and it was something to keep me company when she was not there.
She used to hate this dog, it was not good enough, it was not as good as her dog that she had before and she kept telling me to get rid of it but then she would tell me how cute and cool the dog was.

However, during her time with her family, her birthday went by and I waited for her to come back to give her a present. As a chef, I did a catering for a bicycle manufacturer in China and managed to get a good deal on two custom-made mountain bikes: one for me and one for her.

Now, when she came back here is the interesting part. She arrives at my house, I open the door, little kiss and she goes to sit on the sofa. I wanted to give her a good hug and a kiss but she explained that she just had a Chinese massage, which if you don't know is torture and leaves you with red, blue, and black bruising for the next three weeks or so.

So I could not touch her, for the kiss she didn't want because she was not used to kissing anymore. Then arrives the present, ta-da, here is a beautiful bicycle for you. Her reaction: nothing, absolutely nothing, a little thank you but "we have no time to use."

We talk about nothing and everything. She asks me how the dog passed away and, of course, it was my fault. I left the dog at the Vet hospital near my house for three days after a business trip and my dog died four days after I got it back from the vet. It is not because the vet left my dog with another very ill dog for four days, it is because i didn't make plans to leave it with her niece.

Then she tells me how despite the fact she hated the dog, the house is not the same and she feels the emptiness in the house.

Time to go to bed, when we arrive in the bedroom she tells me that she gets upset very easily and maybe she needs to stay at her home. Okay, do what you want.

She stays with me, then she doesn't want to make love, but if I want I can do it, it's okay. I explain that to make love I want her to want to, not just let me getting in and out, thank you. After awhile she warms up to me and makes me understand she does want to.

Now, after a year of regular sexual activity together, unprotected as we have both been tested, she tells me this time that I have to wear a condom because she doesn't want get pregnant. Funny how she never brought this up for one whole year but now it's a problem.

Next day, 6 a.m., I wake up, get the breakfast ready and go to work. She tells me we can't have diner together because she has other arrangements with her manager for diner, which is all cool with me.

She tells me that I will see her at 10 p.m. I finish work at 8 p.m., go home, relax, and wait. Ten p.m., nothing, 10:30, nothing, 11, nothing, 11:15, ah, the phone rings and it's her.

She has just finished and she is on her way back, cool. However, she wants to stay at her home because she thinks it's not good staying too much in my house. She was away for three months, comes back one day, and it is not good to be together a lot?????? I said okay, whatever she wants.

She calls back 15 minutes later to ask me if I want her to come over. Of course I do but I explain to her that if she wants to come over then she should, but not because she is just doing something because I want her to. So she stays home.

Basically, I am a cool guy with a very hard job involving long hours. I don't break her balls, she has the freedom to do whatever she wants except cheat on me.

I enjoy taking her out for dinner and cooking for her when I'm not working. I enjoy it but, for some reason, I can't figure her out. She's always unhappy. I am a grown man and can take care of myself and my house. I take good care of her, not financially but I am well mannered.

She hangs out with her so-called best girlfriend, a girl 10 years younger than her who likes clubbing and always going out with and meeting beautiful foreign boys. This is the same girlfriend who just invites her to go out so my girlfriend can drive her and pay for the drinks.

Her friend always wants her to join her for dinner with some foreign guy she has just meet and another boy with him who needs a Chinese girl. Basically she gets treated like a little puppy dog that her friend calls whenever she is needed. If I dare to start discussing this with her, it is the end of the world.

So what to do? Here is the thing: I know that I could choose the easy way out. However, she is a good Chinese woman, cool and classy at the same time, very family-oriented, takes care of herself, enjoys western food and we used to have lots of fun together.

Like any relationship, there are ups and downs, but I am wondering if she doesn't have a little mental problem. She is 39-years old, has no idea about what she wants, and always argues about the simplest of things.

What to do?

Thank you.

As I read through this post, I was reminded of a rather unusual question a student of mine recently asked. He wanted to know if B.F. Skinner's paradigm of operant conditioning, particularly variable schedules of reinforcement, had any direct application to the understanding of intimate relationships. I had never really considered this particular question before and told him that variable schedules of reinforcement were often used to explain addictive behavior.

For those unfamiliar with operant conditioning, Skinner demonstrated that while a continuous schedule of reinforcement (CR-1: receiving one food pellet for every bar press), was necessary to shape a new behavior, a variable ratio (VR) schedule of reinforcement (for example, VR-10: receiving food pellets in response to a varying number of bar presses that averaged out to 1:10), would greatly increase the likelihood of the behavior's persistence over time. Skinner's variable ratio schedule of reinforcement has been used to explain why gambling, playing the slot machine in particular, is so highly addictive.

You don't seem to know very much about this woman other than the fact that she leaves you for three to four months at a time, is available at a moment's notice as a chauffeur and escort whenever her girlfriend needs her, doesn't want to spend "too much time together," never seems to know what she wants, and is never quite satisfied with anything you do for her.

It seems to me that you are either "addicted" to this girl, in the same way a gambler is addicted to the slot machines, or you are chasing a dream you had caught glimpses of quite some time ago: a dream of what could be that I suspect will never fully materialize with this woman.

Without speculating about what she is up to and what she is all about, my question to you is: What do you want? What kind of relationship do you want to be in? What are you looking for in a woman?

Whether she is mentally ill or not, it is highly unlikely that you are ever going to have more with this woman than you have had over the past year.

You refer to ending the relationship as the "easy way out." Let me suggest that it may be the only way if you desire more. You are obviously very unsatisfied with, even disheartened over, what you are receiving from her and—whether she is incapable or unwilling—this is probably as good as it is ever going to get.