Where does your claim that "she still finds [you] attractive" come from? More than likely it's something she told you to stroke your bruised ego. Because if you look at the situation objectively, using the traditional notion of 'finding someone attractive', she doesn't.

Unfortunately, your girlfriend seems to have caught the latest cultural bug where women are told that fucking as many guys as possible equals 'life experience' and 'self-discovery' and 'empowerment', and that being in a monogamous relationship is some sort of insidious patriarchal oppression. Yet if this were the case of a man asking his girlfriend if he could sleep around a little more before they got married, I can only imagine how most of the letter writers here would respond.

There's little you can do about it at this point. But not even from the sex-positive feminists have I heard that a guy should stay put while his s/o goes on a 'self-discovery' bender. In James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, when the narrator tells Giovanni that his fiance Hella has gone to Spain to 'find herself', Giovanni retorts: "What is she doing, testing all the Spaniards and comparing them with you?"

Take it from someone who has been there - there are some things in life that are even more important than the best interpersonal relationship, and that is your relationship with yourself - your dignity. And if you want to save your last shred of it, do make sure to throw Cary's advice right out the window.

Don't think that it will be okay if you see other people as well. The best-case scenario is that you will each find someone else and forget about each other. But since the reality is that she wants this and you don't, it will most likely be one-sided. Even if you do go out with other people, your heart will not be in it. You will still be waiting for her, and you will find every reason to be dissatisfied with the other people you meet.

And even were she to see other people and come back to you eventually, the damage would be done. Your relationship would never be the same. And deep down you will never be able to live down the fact that while you were ready to commit your entire being to her, she took a look at you and your lives together, and decided she needed to pursue other options. It will not "make a good story when you are old and gray". Love is not a matter of choosing the best stock options or shopping around for the best bargain. It's a commitment that you make somewhat blindly, and the way that you know it's love is that you neither fear nor regret doing so.

Like I said, there is little you can do about it at this point. Even if you were to convince her to stay together, she would feel like she were missing out (thanks to the cultural pressure I mentioned before) and her resentment of you would build up. So it might be inevitable that you go your separate ways. But do not, under any circumstances offer to wait for her. It will only reinforce the image of you as a safe, non-threatening, non-exciting emotional friend that I fear she already has. I have no doubt that she wants to have her cake and eat it too, seeing other guys while keeping you as a shoulder to cry on. Women like doormats, but not to have sex with. I learned that the hard way.

So all I can say is give her a choice. Don't cajole, don't wheedle, don't whine - just tell her in simple terms that you are willing to spend the rest of your life with her, and that she can either take the offer or leave it, but that you will not hang around as a backup plan while she sees if there's anything better out there. Who knows, perhaps this simple act of self-assertion will actually open her eyes to the fact that she can't just take your presence in her life for granted and make her see you in a new light. But I fear it may be too late for that.

Good luck, whatever happens.

That is perceptive advice coming from one so young. Your time in Braavos must have made you wise indeed :-)

Hey, no one would be more thrilled than me about closing the wage gap between the hard sciences/tech fields and humanities. But I'm afraid the reason for it is simply that people buy more computers, software, and medical services than books on Lacan, though I wish it weren't so.