about

I'm Ashley, I'm currently studying nursing in college and hoping to deliver babies one day :) I'm terribly obsessed with my best friend and sister. I've been dating my boyfriend for a few years now and I am busy being 21 and juggling 3 jobs :)

advice

I've been in a relationship with a girl from overseas for almost two years. I'm a 26 y/o guy, and she's 24. She came with me here about a year and a half ago. I treat her well, romance her, buy her roses, bake her cakes, take her out when I have time, tell her that she's beautiful, help her look for work, and a lot with English.
Last year she started acting funny and talking about a guy, and I found out she cheated on me by looking at her phone, and reading her emails (Not saying this was right, just that I did it). I confronted her, but I never really felt she thought what she did was wrong. I promised not to look at her stuff again.

For the half year since then she's been using her phone a ton, and hiding it from me. Lately she has been getting calls and messages from the guy she cheated with on me again, so often that even though she doesn't want me to know, it's inevitable that I would see at some point. She gets pissed off over trivial things, she's stuck to her phone 24/7, we hardly ever have sex anymore, and sometimes I don't feel like she even wants to be here.
So I gave her time, and everything just felt kind of wrong. I broke my promise and checked up on her. She's still cheating on me, and things never really stopped. She tells me she's faithful, nothing has happened, and she loves me, but I know she's lying.

Recently she got offered her dream job in my country, and the contract process is happening fairly quickly. She's staying here on a Partner visa with me, and we live together. If I break up with her, she either has to leave within a month, or become illegal. Apart from that, it will obviously make my life more hellish for that month than it already is living with a person who you know is lying to you with a straight face, while making out with another guy. I know that she is planning to stay with me for the two years it will take for her to gain permanent residence, and then leave me for the guy she is cheating on me with.

In my country, you can only ever sponsor two people to be partners, and if your first partner is granted PR, the length your second one has to wait grows to 5 years, rather than just 2.

I don't know how to handle breaking up with her, and what to say to who, when. I don't want to be taken advantage of, or have my name smeared by this. Breaking up with her before she gets PR will pretty much destroy her whole life as she knows it. She quit her job to come here with me, which is kind of a black spot on her employment history in her home country. I feel angry and upset about what she has done to our relationship, but I'm still battling feelings of love for her, and I don't want to see her broken. I wish everything I know about what's happened could be a lie, but I know it's not, so I have to deal with it.

To complicate things, accepting the job involves costly medical and security checks for her, and may mean we consider moving. I'm at university, and I only just found this out, right before the exam period. I really don't want to think about this before exams, and I definitely don't want to break up with her just before my first exam, so I am putting it off, but I feel so guilty for "supporting" her through the process of getting checks and references for this job that I know will be difficult if not impossible for her to keep.

What would you do?

What should I tell her? The truth? Or that I've fallen out of love, but don't know why? Or that one of her friends told me the truth?

How do I deal with the stress of living together with this oblivious lying girl who tells me she loves me?

What should I do to handle the resistance that I'm likely to have to breaking up with her? She won't want to break up with me, because she wants PR.

Can you tell me some steps and the order in which I might do them?

Any other general advice about the situation that I haven't asked a specific question about is more than welcome.

Thanks in advance.

-Troubled

Now I know very little about the citizenship rules, but can't she get the visa with this other guy?

You need to confront her and see what she says. It's very sweet you don't want to hurt her but clearly she doesn't care about you in the same way you do... All I have to say is, as crappy as it is, you can't sacrifice your happiness for hers... Ultimately end things and she's on her own. You seem to have done things right and taken care of her so it's time to take care of yourself.

[view]

(Rating: 5) Thank you for your advice. Short and simple.
The immigration laws are a little complex in Australia, and you have to prove a relationship and be living in the same house and things like that, so in short, no, it's really difficult for her to get a visa with him, but who knows, maybe she can find a lawyer who will push it through.
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