Fellow OpenSaloners,

 I need some advice: 

I have been in a relationship with a woman for almost two years now.  We've been living together for about a year.  We are from different parts of the country.  She lived on the East Coast, and I on the West.  She moved in with me a year ago, leaving her house in "mothballs".  She has her own business which has been in bad shape on account of the economy.  In fact, she has had no work for 2 years.  I've been supporting her for the past year, in hopes that her business would pick up, but it hasn't.

 I have a steady job, a job I've had for over 20 years.  I'm in no danger of losing it.  But I don't make enough money to cover both of our expenses.  A year ago, I had $50,000 in savings.  It's all gone now.  Not all on her, I admit.  I've spend some of it on myself, or on activities for us.  But I'm paying her mortgage, the maintenance on her  house, her credit card bills, her utilities.  She had $90,000 in credit card debt, now she had $70,000.  I paid off the difference.  Our combined expenses exceed my income by $4000 a month.  That's 'bare-bones' expenses, before entertainment, vacations, or anything else. That's just housing, food, credit card payments, taxes, child support, house maintenance, utilities - that sort of thing.

 The fact is: if I didn't have her, I could live the life-style to which i'm accustomed on the salary that I make.  The fact is also that if I abandoned her at this point, she is, as she puts it, under the bridge.  She would lose her house, her belongings, everyting.  But the fact is also that I just had to take a $25000 loan from my retirement to cover my own credit card debt.  Now, I'm running that debt up again keeping up with both of our expenses.  I could realistically cover both of us for another year by raiding my retirement.  But I'm 53 years old.  My retirement is all I have saved.  If I deplete that, I've got nothing.  She's had a year to find work or to make her business work.  Maybe things will pick up and she'll have business again, but maybe not.  The fact is, in a year, I could have nothing, and we could still be in this same predicament.

Now she has decided that she does not want to live with me in California anymore.  She wants to move back to the East Coast, to her house, and have me commute from the east coast to my job in California.  I would get a cheap place to live here, and would come to stay with her on weekends.  This idea was all predicated on her getting a job with an airline, so I could fly for free.  But that didn't happen, though she did apply.  As I write this down, it becomes abundandly clear to me that this is crazy.  We can't afford one place to live, let alone two.  We can't afford the airfares on top of all our other expenses.  If I pay for my own place to live here in order to keep my job, and continue to pay for her to keep her house in the East, I myself am going to go bankrupt in a year.  In addition my retirement will be gone.