Thanks everyone, for taking time to offer me your advice, and thanks for only taking the piss out of the fact that I own a slightly damaged clothes maiden. I live in a flat! Where the hell am I supposed to dry my clothes?!?
To add to my problems, I'm now morbidly hung over. :o(
I think I know good advice when I hear it, and I'm sorry Munque Chick, I feel your hardline approach is a little too harsh. I can't just switch off, walk away, change my number, change the locks. She made a huge error of judgment in the heat of the moment and the consequences are killing her.
Trying to step back and play devil's advocate to my own situation, I can pretty much see how events panned out. When I tried to drag her out of the flat, she's ended up with a bruised arm. It's just where I held onto her arm, but I did hurt her none the less. I'm really not proud of that, even though it was pretty unavoidable.
She's gone home, and her sister (big Jeremy Kyle fan!!!) has lapped it up and no doubt fanned the flames. She rang me the following morning saying she was going to make sure her sister pressed charges! Now the dust has settled, my girlfriend has tried to tell her that what happened was her fault, and not as bad as she painted it, but the sis isn't prepared to listen and has told the rest of her family.
That's why I'm so gutted - a silly, repairable situation has mushroomed into this huge drama, and now it's going to be practically impossible to move forward because the sister isn't going to want me in their house and her family won't approve of her seeing me.
I prefer Muddyfoxcourier's slightly more pragmatic approach to this. I love her because she's so passionate, lively, vivacious, absolutely stunningly beautiful... Maybe I'm gonna have to accept that you have to take a bit of rough with the smooth - 'passionate' has a flip side. I wasted a lot of my life with a completely unpassionate, soulless person, I wouldn't want to go back to that for a gold clock!
I agree that I need to be mindful of the fact that this sort of behaviour can repeat itself and has the potential to escalate, so I'm not going to just welcome her back with open arms and tell her to forget about it!
So here's my plan at the moment. I'm going to stay away from her for a few days/weeks, long enough for her to try to put her family straight and long enough for her to really understand how much damage she's done. If she can convince her family that I'm not some sort of Chris Brown, I'm thinking we could try starting from scratch, but only after my divorce is finalised at the end of next month.
I think we need to rebuild from the ground up, without the pressure of my divorce, and see if we can get past her insecurities. I'm hoping that if she knows I'm prepared to do this, to overcome the family obstacle, maybe she'll see how important she is to me and it might help reassure her. Obviously, if it fails, I'll know it's a no-hoper, but I think we deserve another shot at it. If there is the slightest hint that the pattern is repeating itself, I'll know to jump ship straight away and follow Munque-Chick's advice.
The prize is an amazing girl that I love to bits, the risk is a bit more heartache a few months from now. I think that's a gamble worth taking.
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