It all finally caught up to me

[Reallyremorseful]

First I'd like to say that yes, I know I have done a very bad thing. I don't have really any one to talk to about it save a therapist who doesn't give advice, mostly just listens...

 

I've hit a point where everything has just come to a head and I'm so confused. I know I've broken a part of myself with this lifestyle but I'd like to think there is some hope for being happy in my life.

 

Here's my story.

 

7 years ago I met Anne, we were the shy ones in our group of friends. I was nowhere near as charismatic or outgoing as my friends but they sure were and as such attracted a lot of people into our outings and parties. We started texting after I was to create a flier for an event that was being thrown by her and her group. She was 18 at the time, I was 24. I had no real experience with girls, had awkward sex once after getting drunk with a close friend but never a girlfriend. I dunno if I had a type but I certainly always had a preference in porn (asian girls) and she was just a pretty homegrown kind of girl, if a bit chubby.

 

After accidentally getting involved in some weird love triangle of jealousy from two other people in the group she told me one night she kind of likes me. I had never heard that before in my life from a girl, I went to college early and had spent most of my adolescence focusing on work instead of socializing. So when I heard this I naturally didn't know what to do and made some definite fumbles, but over time we got passed that and we finally found ourselves falling in love and ended up moving in together. Cue a lot of years to follow filled with all sorts of grand memories and moments but one thing that started to get weird was our sex life. There wasn't much of one, she was very self conscious about her body as she had continued gaining weight throughout the years. I never had a problem with it, always thought she was beautiful, but it really affected us over time, her lack of confidence led her to be rather timid and not outgoing. I am no super catch myself but have always been fit and fairly confident with my body and in my inexperience I definitely made things worse on us, repeatedly talking about how the passion felt gone and how it's all awkward now. Harsh conversations that in hindsight led to all this. It was all my fault, I guess because I am so outgoing sexually it was wrong of me to expect a mate to be that way. I do know that if I wanted to have sex she would be willing, but her lack of drive and involvement made it feel routine and ultimately unfulfilling. This started in the second year and just got worse with time.

 

By the third year I had gotten a huge job opportunity and was making good money while we both were back in school and we decided for our anniversary in December to go on a big vacation, San Francisco became the choice, a big adventure for both of us in a beautiful hotel. The first night broke something inside of me when we finally got back and I got some champagne and she was just too tired for sex. I left the hotel and paced around outside, not wanting her to see how upset it made me, how much it hurt to think at the time that our perfect story was now in danger, that even a magical getaway wasn't enough to make a spark. It bothered me so much because I need sex...I need the bond that comes with it, the sense of both physical and emotional gratification, the rush from being dirty, the uniqueness of it between two people, the ultimate expression of love. Some people love in different ways, I'm a man of meager wants, but one thing I have always wanted my whole life is great sex, even to the point of not pursuing women in my youth because I didn't want casual sex, I wanted to make love. I began fearing what this meant for us, because I loved that girl with all my heart, in ways I didn't even know I could love. Just selflessness and commitment and support and care and happiness.

 

When we got back I ended up stuck on nights the next year. This led to a lot of tiptoeing around the house and being awake at odd hours while she slept. I started to feel even more isolated in the relationship and depressed. I saw an episode of Tosh.0 and they were showing Omegle. I had never heard of that so I fired it up...I realized many people here were just looking for anonymous interactive masturbation, and since I had already reverted to masturbating like crazy in the relationship(I had stopped watching porn after meeting Anne, it felt wrong, like I was cheating), it felt exciting. I guess there are girls who are as unabashed as I wanted to be...

 

I was never much of a looker I thought, low self esteem I guess, so I'd put up a sign on Omegle of my intentions to help find a masturbation partner late at night. I started lifting around this time and was getting into shape and feeling good about myself things weren't improving with Anne, she was gaining a lot of weight and wouldn't work out with me...didn't know how, wasn't receptive when we tried to do it together, just another thing we didn't have in common. I grew used to not doing anything I wanted to do when she was around, she wasn't into the same stuff as me at all. Video games, internet humor, scary movies, fitness, politics, hanging out with my friends playing cards and drinking, target shooting, hiking(she didn't like bugs or getting dirty/sweaty), I could feel at this time we were coming to an end for a multitude of reasons.

 

Then one night I see a girl who was just the most adorable person I'd ever seen, Marie. I flirted and instead of just hitting next she started typing to me. Nothing sexual even though that was my obvious MO. She kept typing on her phone and I teased her about who she was texting, turns out it was a young girl with terminal cancer she had befriended...boy did I feel like a creep. So I apologized and started just talking in general and asking about herself and being friendly to try and redeem myself from being such a perv, of course she probably got that from every single dude on there and here she's this really kind person.

 

She was 18, had just finished high school early, and liked a lot of the stuff I did. We talked for hours over omegle...not one disconnect or dropped packet or accidental next or anything, until she asked for my number because she had to go before her step dad got up, she was afraid he'd beat her if he caught her using his laptop.

 

I didn't hear from her for a week, had forgotten about it mostly, until she texted me randomly. Cue the beginning of a long distance relationship affair with someone 9 years younger than me. She was everything I always wanted in not just a girlfriend but a friend. Liked literally all the same stuff as me or at least was willing to try anything. She was incredibly independent from having grown up in an abusive home and having to raise herself. She was assaulted at a young age and that turned her to self harm, she stopped doing it for me, started to blossom with someone actually giving a damn about her...because I did, I was so angry that the world dealt such a bad hand to such a caring, intelligent, and wonderful person. She was a petite half asian girl who was drop dead gorgeous but rebuked male attention for what she had been through. She didn't even know what I looked like for weeks until she asked for a picture, just was glad to have some positivity and support in her life.

 

I had told her when she asked if I had a girlfriend that I felt like I was at the end of having one. She never brought it up again but confessed to me some weeks into our texting and talking after work that she was falling in love with me. I felt so bad, because I was now hurting two girls...she was way too young for me, and she lived 1000 miles away!

 

The more I thought about it and got to know her though...the more I thought maybe this could work...and I guess the largest proponent of that sentiment was that I was becoming her sexual awakening, and in all reality...her mine. She was so unhinged but only with me, because I wasn't trying to take, I was letting her give, of love. It was only over the phone, or text but soon became skype. She talked dirty, she enjoying being naked, would make me pictures and videos like crazy, was into anything we could come up with. I couldn't believe it...it was heaven.

 

This gave me confidence that me and Anne weren't meant to be and maybe me and Marie could make it work in three years when she finished college. I didn't know how to break up with Anne, I don't know how I found to courage to tell her that I didn't see forever with her but I did. She moved out, but I guess the problem was I let it appear as a break instead of a break up. She moved about an hour away for credits at a college not offered nearby. I would visit sometimes and things sort of just lingered between us. Meanwhile I was fully in love with Marie, even went to see her at the end of the year. We only had 3 days but they were at that time the most amazing days of my life.

 

I feel it's important to mention that we had discussed not having sex when I came, that if we were going to make it and we both wanted to...that we should wait until we could be together and culminate everything when our lives actually came together. That didn't stop some other fun from being had. She was mind blowing, so giving and animated and confident, everything I dreamed sex should be...she even begged me to break my word and have actual penetrative sex with her, because she wanted it so bad. I still thought we shouldn't, if not for our commitment to not, to show her that she was worth waiting for, that someone loved her so much that he would wait years to have something people had tried to take for her. She has cited this as a moment that just made her know she wanted to be with me forever.

 

I was still visiting with Anne on occasion due to having mutual friends in her area and feeling bad over uprooting her life, we hadn't had sex all year but I did still love her and she was having financial trouble and other hardships so I tried to help her as best as I could. I guess this is why you're supposed to have no contact over a break...so that you don't fall into old routines? Well, with my limited relationship experience I didn't know what to do, and mostly...I just didn't want to hurt her.

 

The next summer she has to leave where she was, she had nowhere to go and didn't have the money to support herself, I tried so hard to find another avenue for her than moving back in with me...but I realized I put her in all of this hardship, so I should be the one to help her out of it until she could find somewhere else. She moved back with all of her stuff and I tried to keep it from seeming like we were in a relationship, I didn't feel like we were, she slept in her own bedroom, we didn't make out, cuddle, kiss, have sex; but this here is all my fault, for not being firm, for not making it clear, and I guess some part of me thought me and Marie wouldn't work out of years of long distance, so maybe this is a sign...maybe I'm supposed to make it right with Anne. Marie was pretty understanding that my (ex?)-gf was moving in with me, she knew it would help me a lot financially and she trusted me, I had decided that I would let Anne stay with me until she finished her last four semesters of college, it's the least I could do and then she could find her way in life while making a lot more money.

 

Marie and I had not met again since, vacation time and finances were a problem for me then, and her school schedule didn't permit much either, we spent all the time on skype though playing video games, watching scary movies together, got her into my favorite book series, having crazy skype sex all the time. All that changed though with Anne moving in, I did not want her knowing about her, somehow we got to saying "I love you" again, would sort of act like a couple, without the sex, or sleeping in the same bed. I guess I did love her...so I started to feel like I was betraying Marie, so I distanced myself from Marie(I didn't even realize this at the time) but was ultimately very unhappy with everything in my life..I knew I was betraying both of them. This continued for a while...into the next year...now I'm juggling two relationships, one online...an affair now and one in person that was unfulfilling? or was it? Besides sex...didn't Anne make me really happy? We had pretty much been through everything, from the bottom to a rising top. We had the same social circles, a pet together, lots of good memories, a comfortable sort of basic existence...

 

I have no idea how I lived with this guilt for so long, I never even thought about it. In my mind Anne was going her own way in another year or so after she finished college and that would be that. It all hit me really hard last year when I was up late by myself(like always) when I was looking at the Christmas Tree we had decorated together...just how much of a life I could have with her...I could be happy, she was so sweet and caring. A great cook, someone who encouraged my interests even if she didn't share them, a girl who stood by me through all my ****, who helped me become the man I was...and I had done this to her...to us?

 

I know why now I strayed, it was because I was angry, that that night in San Francisco was my last hope for a positive future sexually, and when it blew up, it made me so angry...and I set out to get what I needed...and I found it...and then I complicated everything...

 

Something bad happened to Marie earlier this year, something that showed me how distant I had become, even though she was still head over heels for me I felt like my internal hell was deliberately pushing me away from her. That distance caused her grief, she asked me if things would ever be the same between us...I guess I was starting to lean towards fixing me and Anne and had told her that I didn't know what was going to happen in the future, we weren't sure where our futures lie, her moving here or me moving there...so she put herself in a very dangerous environment and it went bad.

 

She broke up with me, and that snapped me to so fast...I came back full speed, giving her everything she needed again, now skyping her with Anne in the next room because I realized I might lose the best match ever...we had always talked about closing the gap at the end of this year. It always seemed so far away and now it's here...and I do want her...bad...I want to be with her she's probably the best friend I've ever had, it's not just the newness(that stood the test of time) that I love about her or the thrill of being bad, I do genuinely love the girl, but I fear so much that her having been with nobody else will come back to haunt us, as the same sentiments echoed within me and led me astray in my first relationship...my only relationship. So that puts a fear in me and says to fix it with Anne if that's even possible, if she would want to after telling her about the last few years, and let Marie be free to be young and have her life...especially because of how muddy everything has become. Fatefully...my future career aspirations within my company take me to Marie's home state, that's just another of the "signs" that bolstered me to fall for her.

 

These days though....I have become hollow with fear and anxiety and dread and guilt and remorse. I don't know how to put Anne out, I don't know how to walk away from almost 7 years with her. I'll be washing dishes and glance at something seemingly trite and remember the time we bought that together and break down in tears. I come home from work and am greeted by our pets, who wouldn't be here when shes gone. I lie in bed every day looking at her bedroom door knowing if we stay together this is my fate. No sex, but comfortable companionship with someone that means so much to me. That the grass might be greener on the other side but it can be just as green where it's watered. Maybe couples therapy would fix everything, or at least give us a chance to communicate like we never did. We never communicated much, chalk that up to inexperience perhaps? I think we avoid any talks about the future out of fear. Yet still I know that if we had any chance to stay together I have to tell her about Marie because I don't want her future with me built on such a huge lie even if there is 0 chance for the two to ever meet, it wouldn't be right for her to not know who she's staying with, for her to not have the option of leaving me. Some avenues of thought on infidelity scream that if you have learned what led to it then bury it and use that insight to be the best you can to the other person. I just don't know how I could do that, it wouldn't be fair to her.

 

I swing between inconsolable and destitute all day, every day now. Not knowing what to do, not knowing how to proceed, knowing I've hurt not only Anne, but Marie, my pets, and myself so much now. I've stopped lifting, picked up smoking after quitting 5 years ago, have to drink to get to sleep. It kills me to think If this had stayed ended when it did years ago, I might have been able to keep Anne in my life as a friend after we both moved on. Now, I forfeit that if I move forward with a life with Marie. Now years of my life are for naught.

 

In the end, I got what I wanted, but now I get what I deserve because the guilt is consuming me, I now hate myself. I can't believe I could be a cheater. My mom left my father over an affair in my teens and it still messes me up to this day. My therapist tells me it seems like I've recreated the situation that brought me so much trauma in my youth in an attempt to "do it right this time" by staying with Anne in the way that I hoped my Mom would come back to my Dad. Alas, cheaters never win, even if it seems like it, even if they think they can get away with it...the conscience can tear down even the strongest man. The universe has a way of correcting the errant and arrogant. I earned my punishment. Yet, I'm still not sure if I would change it, to know that there is someone out there "perfect" for me was something I'd never have found out...but now I don't deserve her. I don't deserve Anne either...but if somehow she forgave me and I could end the deception...I would live happily making her life better and rebuilding our trust. Part of me would rather just send her off to be happy without the burden of what I've done, but part of me feels she deserves to know...and the same goes for Marie...she deserves to know the whole truth. I just can't wrap my head around why I would have started all of this, only to reach the end and suddenly waffle back and forth.

 

I would appreciate any input or advice anyone is willing to offer. I understand more than harsh words could ever display how messed up I am, so feel free to unleash, but please do give constructive criticism as well.

 

Thank you for your time.

[beach]

I suggest being honest with both women.

 

 

And then be by yourself so you can be more open to a more ideal match for your future.

 

 

Anne is a friend. Have her move immediately! She will hang around and mooch off you as long as "you allow it"! Stop allowing it.

 

 

It appears you need to work on healthy boundaries... As you have none. This is what has allowed all this chaos into your life.

 

 

The R with Anne isn't going anywhere - she offers you nothing that shows a long term union. It looks too mismatched to settle for her.

 

Marie? Doesn't look ideal either... But when you have enough time to clear your head it may look different than it does now.

 

 

Date other women. Date women close by! No long distance anymore - it's too hard to tell what's real and what's made up.

 

 

Join groups that help you meet (face to face) lots of people.

[minimariah]

to be honest... and please don't take this as an insult... you're closer to someone in high school (when it comes to your thinking & emotional maturity) than you are to someone of your own age - which is why you keep dating these children who are not even old enough to buy their own alcohol (both Anna and Marie were HS seniors when you started with them) so they literally model themselves to be the BEST for you, exactly something you want. so many red flags in Marie's behavior were present that you missed = her stopping with the self harm because of you was one of them = because you got off on being her hero and her being so ready and eager to do ANYTHING and be ANYONE for you.

 

Marie and Anne aren't the only girls in this world.

 

maybe it's time for you to start dating WOMEN who will challenge you, instead of young girls who have yet to discover who they really are.

 

be honest with both of them and be single for a while. see what it is that you REALLY want. i can assure you... Marie will change as a person, so will Anne. and when they grow up, you might just realize that they weren't your best matches after all. let go of this "poor me, i'm so horrible, this is punishment" bull - be an active participant, not a spectator in your own life.

Edited July 1, 2015 by minimariah

[No Limit]

not only Anne, but Marie, my pets

 

Pets? Yuck...

 

 

I think you have very, very serious issues and hope that you will continue going to therapy. It sounds like you've become possessive of both of them, although 'Anne' luckily got away. And yes, Marie deserves the truth, just please leave Anne be, she's had enough of you and wasted enough of her time.

 

Plus, it reads to me like you've been looking for a caretaker/mother all along. Make yourself happy, that isn't a partner's place.

[World's.Edge]

Off course an 18 year old girl from an unstable background is going to develop feelings for a much older guy who appears caring.

 

You wan't advice, how about you stop preying on young girls like a predator. At least most predators know that they're predators and don't try to rationalize it.

 

Have some respect for Anne and Marie and be honest with them. If you're not happy in your relationship with Anne and you two aren't suited for one another then just break up with her. People break up all the time. It happens. You're not a pair of lungs, she won't die without you. She'll survive, you'll survive. Most people learn and grow from their break-ups. Let her know the truth so that she can find someone in the future who is more suited and compatible with her and you can do the same. You're not doing her any favours by staying with her.

 

Date, meet new people and find someone you connect with, preferably someone who's not in high school. You don't come off as sympathetic as you think you do. Sort your $%&@ out dude and be a better person.

[Lois_Griffin]

Is there a tl;dr option? I have things to do and don't have an hour to read this. Sorry.

[GoBlue]

Every person involved in a relationship deserves to be treated with honesty and respect. These women do not exist in the world to meet your needs. It's time to put on the big boy pants and do what is right for both of them. Then it's time to actually find therapy that works! I mean, honestly, most people do not need years of therapy unless they simply refuse to practice what the counselor actually recommends. I am sorry for the misery that you are experiencing - I have been there in my life. There is a passage in the bible that says, "the truth shall set you free." Time to expose yourself to truth and act upon it. You can have a meaningful life and you can be free from all this guilt and misery, but you need to decide what foundation you are going to build your life on. Change only came to my heart when I surrendered to God and decided to stop playing religious games. My thoughts and prayers are with you.