Help needed to save family from breakup
Hello everyone!
I desperately need help with a serious problem. Me and my gf have lived together for 14 years now. We have two beautiful children, 3 and 4 yrs old, but now our family is breaking apart.
My GF is mad about dogs and although I like them too, I believe dogs don’t belong inside the house and if they do live there, they surely don’t belong in your bed or even in the bedroom. And the priority should always be the children, then the partner and only then animals.
So 10 years ago, against all my protests, my gf got a dog and put it straight into our bed. This logically resulted in zero intimacy and fighting about the smell and the filth. Shortly after she also got a job at an animal sanctuary, which made things even worse. It is a filthy place and our dog was roaming free picking up all the filth and bringing it to our home. My gf's clothes and hair also stank unbearably. Now we have two dogs and they no longer sleep in our bed, but neither do I. Without going into too much detail this is the situation:
The sanctuary is ran by a typical cat lady. Lonely, bitter and full of regret. She doesn't believe in relationships and despises men. There are a few more people whose lives also turned out differently than they would've liked and the place just stank of negativism before my gf lit it up with her bubbly personality.
Unfortunately, something had to give and it wasn't going to be the negativism and hate in that place. My GF slowly turned into them. They would, of course, be always supportive of her decisions to have dogs and to care for stray or abandoned cats and dogs even on the expense of her family life, while also pseudo-encouraging her to go home early to her man and children. Those people literally feed on her positive energy. She inspires them and helps them not to drown in their own misery, so now it is in their interest she stays. They don't give a shhh about her family and now she doesn't either. They are the centre of her Universe now. She doesn't care what our breakup means for the lives of our children or where is she going to get the money to support them and herself. The sanctuary people are very supportive in that respect too, telling her not to worry, that they would help her. As if a bunch of lost people and filthy animals could replace a father or help our children to have a normal life while their lives are in tatters.
I need help in making my GF see that she’s been imitating their behaviour for years now and it is now threatening to destroy the lives of our two children. I don’t know how to make her see that no amount of cats and dogs is worth it. She’s blaming me for our arguments but she ignores the reasons. I recently snapped and just spat out at her all the things about the crazy sanctuary people she calls friends, about her ignorance and all the other things, and that she’s literally exchanged the father of her children - her family - for a bunch of filthy animals, a hateful cat lady and some lost deceitful women. Unsurprisingly, to no avail.
I don't believe her change is irreversible. I think she can snap out of it, I just don't know how to help it. She's basically acting like an extreme 3rd wave feminist these days. All my attempts at intimacy or friendliness are being dismissed in the most paranoid ways and I can't take it much longer. Everything I say or do she translates into an attack on her and her friends. Even when I say I miss her or that she's looking good.
We need help. Can anyone here help or recommend a really good psychologist in Cork? I don't need life advice, I'm looking for a professional, like a clinical psychologist, not just some counselor.
