New member but not new to infidelity.

[BurnedAndLost]

My partner cheated a little over a year ago. This is a long story, so I am going to just copy and paste from a post I made when this first happened

 

A little over a month ago I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me. He is 29 and has been sleeping with an 18 y/o girl. The first time I found out he cried and told me he was sorry. He kept sleeping with her after that. He even did it while I was in the hospital for four days. After I found out about a week ago that he was continuing the affair we had a huge fight and he left. He came back a few days later saying he promised me he would never do it again. Of course, being dumb I took him back. Well last night he told me he was working overtime on a night shift. I found out he was lying and actually spending the night with her. Once I told him I knew the truth he shut down ( like he always does) and refuses to talk about it. At one point He told me he won't stop and get over it. He keeps trying to show affection since I confronted him for the third time this morning... i have been so sick for the past month over this and I have slipped in to a very deep depression. It has been r really hard to focus on anything else. I don't understand him. He says he doesn't want to lose me and that he loves me, yet he stares me straight in the eyes and lies. I kicked him out, and he left without a word. Why did he come back?

I really don't know what to do. I know I should leave but I can't stand the thought of leaving him and letting her take him. A small part of me is willing to let him cheat if that means I get to have a small part of him. We also have a two year old together

 

 

So that was a little over a year ago. Our DD was Around the 3rd of November, 2012. He never really showed true remorse and even cried a little when he decided to break up with her.

 

my problem is We have been doing OK, but as the DD anniversary drew near, I sank back in to depression and paranoia. he has not done anything to prove he is being untrustworthy. but all my anger is back. Our relationship is strained right now. A lot of this is due to me accusing him of things and bringing up the past affair... Some of it is due to his lack of understanding why I feel like this.

I just feel very alone right now. I feel the same exact loneliness and despair I felt while he was cheating... Even though he is innocent at this point in time. I don't know where this heavy sadness came from... I started prozac a month ago ( for an entirely different issue ) and my depression came back shortly after. I am wondering if this is the cause. I think also the fact that he never showed a ton of remorse after I caught him, and continued to cheat for 3 months after Icaught him is playing a part. But He did stop seeing her and talking to her. But I never got a real ''I'm sorry'' because he just isn't the type to show that kind if emotion.

The FOW also just had a baby.

[BHsigh]

Ok, I'm at a loss on what you should tackle here, your depression, or that you're staying with him so that OW can't have him.

 

That one statement though, that you would let him cheat just so that you cab have a little part of him, tells me that you should leave. Seriously? You're giving up your happiness for revenge on OW.

 

You can be much happier than this.

[BurnedAndLost]

Ok, I'm at a loss on what you should tackle here, your depression, or that you're staying with him so that OW can't have him.

 

That one statement though, that you would let him cheat just so that you cab have a little part of him, tells me that you should leave. Seriously? You're giving up your happiness for revenge on OW.

 

You can be much happier than this.

 

That text that is aligned to the middle is a post I wrote last year, a few weeks after the DD.

[Raena]

You are feeling this way because you never truly processed the affair... and he wouldn't let you.

 

One thing I've learned from reading on these forums is that reconciliation is not for the feint-hearted. It takes a LOT of work and it will bother you for a long time. You said he continued the affair for 3 months after... that means that you've had less than a year since he ended it with her. Some say reconciliation takes 2-5 years or longer... and that's with really working at it.

 

If you really want to make this work with him, you have to try counseling and get some help with it. The only way that will work though is if he is willing to do what you need to make this work. It doesn't sound like he is willing to do that at all.

 

If I were you, I'd tell him to do the counseling or end the relationship. Something has to change. You being depressed sounds like a direct correlation to what has happened to you. You said you are on prozac for another reason... could that other reason have anything to do with what's happened in your life in the last year or so?

 

Another thought... your last comment about how the fOW just had a baby. Is the baby his? It does fit in the time line of when he was carrying on with her.

 

Honestly, my first impression is to tell you to end it with him, that he isn't worth it, but you know if he is (worth it) better than I do. I'm only going based on what you said here.

[BurnedAndLost]

You are feeling this way because you never truly processed the affair... and he wouldn't let you.

 

One thing I've learned from reading on these forums is that reconciliation is not for the feint-hearted. It takes a LOT of work and it will bother you for a long time. You said he continued the affair for 3 months after... that means that you've had less than a year since he ended it with her. Some say reconciliation takes 2-5 years or longer... and that's with really working at it.

 

If you really want to make this work with him, you have to try counseling and get some help with it. The only way that will work though is if he is willing to do what you need to make this work. It doesn't sound like he is willing to do that at all.

 

If I were you, I'd tell him to do the counseling or end the relationship. Something has to change. You being depressed sounds like a direct correlation to what has happened to you. You said you are on prozac for another reason... could that other reason have anything to do with what's happened in your life in the last year or so?

 

Another thought... your last comment about how the fOW just had a baby. Is the baby his? It does fit in the time line of when he was carrying on with her.

 

Honestly, my first impression is to tell you to end it with him, that he isn't worth it, but you know if he is (worth it) better than I do. I'm only going based on what you said here.

 

He is not one to talk about his feelings. He can be very closed of a lot of the time. He won't do the counseling for that reason. We have been trying to work on it alone. He thinks that since it's been months now, I should be recovering better than this.

 

I am on prozac for hypochondria.

 

I love him. I want this to work. I don't know if I mentioned this in the original post, but I have been with him since i was barely 17 ( i'm 23 now. 24 in march). He was my first everything. The thought of losing him literally makes me nauseous.

[Fluttershy]

The main problem here is you are co-dependant on him. You do not have a health relationship. Your fear of losing him means he can do whatever he wants and he knows it.

I'm not going to tell you to leave him, that is for uou to decide What you should do is work on building your self-esteem and independance. Focus on being the best you that you can be proud of and that can stand alone. That way, you might see is poor attitude and unwillingness to change and say "enough! I want more"

[oldshirt]

The main problem here is you are co-dependant on him. You do not have a health relationship. Your fear of losing him means he can do whatever he wants and he knows it.

I'm not going to tell you to leave him, that is for uou to decide What you should do is work on building your self-esteem and independance. Focus on being the best you that you can be proud of and that can stand alone. That way, you might see is poor attitude and unwillingness to change and say "enough! I want more"

 

Agree ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

 

This is about you and your issues and hangups. Some where way deep down inside you a little voice is telling you that this is your one and only chance at love and this is the only man you'll ever be able to get and that you have to cling on to him no matter how bad he treats you or how much of a bum he is.

 

He showed no real remorse in this. He was upset he got caught. He continued to see her despite getting busted. He learned that as long as he tells you he will change and do better you will keep him around even when he doesn't actually do it.

 

Did they split up because he realized it was wrong and that he wanted to be with you and sincerely wanted to work on things with you to rebuild his your trust and rebuild your relationship? Or was this just a fling that lasted a few weeks and then just kinda fizzled out because she was 18 and was running around with her buddys and their relationship just never got off the ground?

 

You are living on bread crumbs and table scraps here. You are accepting substandard treatment and low-end mediocrity here because you don't know any better and don't realize you deserve better and can get better.

 

Do as Fluttershy has suggested and make yourself your number one fixer-upper project.

 

Get a life. Start doing what is good and right for you. Stop eating crap and fuel your body with real food (lean meats, fruits and vegatables. If it's made in a factory and comes in a box, don't eat it. Cut out processed sugars, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sodas, energy drinks etc etc. Get to a gym and start exercising even if it's just walking on a treadmill watching Ellen Degeneris on tv for half an hour. Get some of your most trusted girlfriends together and have them take you on a make-over outing and update the hair, make-up and wardrobe.

 

Start kicking butt and taking names at work. Make a point to start being the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave in the evening and do as much and accomplish as much as you can in between. Smile. Start taking extra classes or inservices/continueing ed etc to advance in your career.

 

Get some hobbies and get out and start doing fun, healthy things with fun healthy people.

 

Start looking at people in the eye, smile and say hi to them. All of them. After eyeballing, smiling and saying hi feels natural to you and comes effortlessly, then start making conversation with them.

 

#1 thing to do with all of this is - SQUASH THAT LITTLE VOICE THAT TELLS YOU WHY YOU CAN'T DO ALL OF THE ABOVE. Do it all anyway even though that little voice will be screaming at first. Once you keep doing it the little voice will start to quiet down and in time will wither and die all together.

 

If you do this exactly like I have layed out. it will be a matter of months before you come home one day and look at your boyfriend and wonder how on Earth you thought he was a catch and a prize. You will wonder how on Earth you settled for him for so long and put up with so much crap.

[harrybrown]

He is rug sweeping his affair.

 

He is doing nothing to help you heal and he is not showing you remorse.

 

Will he read how to help your spouse heal from your affair or not just friends?

 

He has no consequences for his actions. What would stop him from doing this again?

[Raena]

He is not one to talk about his feelings. He can be very closed of a lot of the time. He won't do the counseling for that reason. We have been trying to work on it alone. He thinks that since it's been months now, I should be recovering better than this.

 

I am on prozac for hypochondria.

 

I love him. I want this to work. I don't know if I mentioned this in the original post, but I have been with him since i was barely 17 ( i'm 23 now. 24 in march). He was my first everything. The thought of losing him literally makes me nauseous.

 

He doesn't get to hurt you in this manner and then shut you off and not talk about his feelings. If he can't open up to you and deal with this, then it will never get better. I know... been there... my ex cheated and we didn't deal with it properly. He did the same thing.. shut me down and wouldn't let me process it... he too doesn't like to talk about his feelings. But nearly 5 years later he did the same thing all over again. Why? Because we never truly healed from the pain he caused in our relationship and it affected everything about our relationship after that.

 

You have to stand up for yourself and tell him that if he isn't willing to do what it takes... with outside help then you will walk away. And then do exactly that if he chooses not to work on this with you. You tell him that "months" is not nearly long enough to get over the hurt he caused you. You need YEARS and counseling.

[Raena]

Oh and just because you are young and have been together since your teens doesn't mean he is necessarily the right guy for you.

 

There are so many changes you will go through in your 20's and 30's. By the time you reach your 40's you'll look back and realize that you aren't the same person you were when you met him and neither is he. The choices you make now will affect your future. Do you really want to stick it out with some dude who cheated, wouldn't process it with you and wouldn't talk about his feelings with you? Don't you deserve better than that?

[BurnedAndLost]

Thank you all for your input. The baby is not his. She lives out of state. They started an emotional affair over facebook and when she came out here to visit her parents ( her parents are our son's God parents ) it became physical. She became pregnant when she got back together with her own partner.

[BurnedAndLost]

Agree ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

 

This is about you and your issues and hangups. Some where way deep down inside you a little voice is telling you that this is your one and only chance at love and this is the only man you'll ever be able to get and that you have to cling on to him no matter how bad he treats you or how much of a bum he is.

 

He showed no real remorse in this. He was upset he got caught. He continued to see her despite getting busted. He learned that as long as he tells you he will change and do better you will keep him around even when he doesn't actually do it.

 

Did they split up because he realized it was wrong and that he wanted to be with you and sincerely wanted to work on things with you to rebuild his your trust and rebuild your relationship? Or was this just a fling that lasted a few weeks and then just kinda fizzled out because she was 18 and was running around with her buddys and their relationship just never got off the ground?

 

You are living on bread crumbs and table scraps here. You are accepting substandard treatment and low-end mediocrity here because you don't know any better and don't realize you deserve better and can get better.

 

Do as Fluttershy has suggested and make yourself your number one fixer-upper project.

 

Get a life. Start doing what is good and right for you. Stop eating crap and fuel your body with real food (lean meats, fruits and vegatables. If it's made in a factory and comes in a box, don't eat it. Cut out processed sugars, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sodas, energy drinks etc etc. Get to a gym and start exercising even if it's just walking on a treadmill watching Ellen Degeneris on tv for half an hour. Get some of your most trusted girlfriends together and have them take you on a make-over outing and update the hair, make-up and wardrobe.

 

Start kicking butt and taking names at work. Make a point to start being the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave in the evening and do as much and accomplish as much as you can in between. Smile. Start taking extra classes or inservices/continueing ed etc to advance in your career.

 

Get some hobbies and get out and start doing fun, healthy things with fun healthy people.

 

Start looking at people in the eye, smile and say hi to them. All of them. After eyeballing, smiling and saying hi feels natural to you and comes effortlessly, then start making conversation with them.

 

#1 thing to do with all of this is - SQUASH THAT LITTLE VOICE THAT TELLS YOU WHY YOU CAN'T DO ALL OF THE ABOVE. Do it all anyway even though that little voice will be screaming at first. Once you keep doing it the little voice will start to quiet down and in time will wither and die all together.

 

If you do this exactly like I have layed out. it will be a matter of months before you come home one day and look at your boyfriend and wonder how on Earth you thought he was a catch and a prize. You will wonder how on Earth you settled for him for so long and put up with so much crap.

Well I don't know. She kept asking him to leave me and he wouldn't... THe affair started physically in october of 2012. When she came here to visit her parents they started sleeping together. When I found out, I sent a message to her partner and told him everything I know. He kicked her out, and she came back here and they slept together until january 2013. At this point she kept asking my partner to leave me for her. She had been waiting for him to do this since the beginning. At this point, he told her to go back to her partner, because it will never work out. So she left to go be with her partner, whom she was cheating on with my partner.

 

She does not have the life of your typical young woman. She is a stepmother to 4 kids and she just had her own with her partner. This is pretty typical of their culture . She and my partner are both from puerto rico. People tend to get married and start their families young. It is not uncommon to see a 20 year old girl as a house wife with several kids. My own partner got married to another woman when he was around 19 and they broke up when he found out she was cheating ( isn't that ironic ) and his son might not be his. He is turning 30 in january. So he has been in committed relationships through most of his adult life.

 

I think they both got tired of their boring family lives. He works a lot. I stay at home with our son so the bills and everything are all on him. I have been looking for work but have had no luck. I have been trying to get my GED ( I dropped out of school in the middle of my senior year. my parents were alcoholics and I was looking for any way to escape. This, i think, played a huge part in why I moved so quickly with him. I moved in with him after dating him for a couple months ). I have dyscalculia. I have failed the math portion 3 times. I am worried I might not ever get over this. My only option now is to go get an official diagnoses ( I had the diagnoses in HS but I gave those up when I dropped out ). But that is thousands of dollars and this is a whole different story.

 

 

He did tell me he loved her at one point... But then took it back. He said he doesn't know what he was thinking, and his brain was like scrambled eggs during this. He said he was a completely different person during this. And he was. He was horrible. He is treating me better. But like I said I am having trouble letting the affair go. Sometimes he cries when I accuse him of things. And Ifeel bad, because it always turns out he was telling the truth.

[BurnedAndLost]

So about an hour ago he received a call. The call wasn't attached to a name. It just said 'north Carolina'. I asked him who it was and he told me it was probably a wrong number. He put it on speaker and it rang. Eventually it went to a recording saying that the person had not opened a voice mail. I believed him that it was a wrong number because he gets phone calls from people asking someone he does not know.

 

So a little while later another number calls. This time it was from a number from Massachusetts. The OW is from there. He took the phone and rejected the call. I asked him who it was and he said it was the same number from a few minutes ago. He did not know I saw the number before he grabbed the phone. I told him I know he is lying and asked him who it was again and asked it it was her. He said he does not know if it was her or not as he does not know her number by heart. I asked him to call the number back on speaker like he did when the other number called a few minutes ago and he refused. He said if it is her, he does not want to talk to her.

 

After about an hour passed he could tell something was wrong and asked me what's the matter. I told him that I don't care if she called you or not. It's the fact that he lied about it when I asked him. He then tells me that he lied because he did not want a fight about it again and that he is tired of all of the distrust....

 

I don't know what to think.

[whiterabbit46]

This whole thing stinks to high heaven! It's still ongoing, and it probably won't stop unless you threaten to just leave. He sounds like he's in pretty deep and doesn't have the desire to stop with this ow. I feel badly for you.

[BurnedAndLost]

I just looked through his phone and he deleted the call log...

[Fluttershy]

I just looked through his phone and he deleted the call log...

 

A remorseful spouse may get defensive, a remorseful spouse may lose their temper, a remorseful spouse will still screw up. After all we know how human they are. BUT, a remorseful spouse will not continue to lie and hide things. He is acting like he is still cheating and even if, BIG IF, he isn't he is not being respectful of your feelings and the lack of trust HE introduced into your marriage. He is not helping you heal.

[BurnedAndLost]

So yesterday I started questioning the phone call. I eventually demanded to see his phone and he refused. I then remembered that I had access to his phone account. He does not know I have access to it. I logged in and saw a number from 413 area code in the text messages from yesterday. I grabbed his phone from him and looked through the phone and didn't see any texts from the number and I accused him of deleting them which angrily denied.

 

I look at the account again and realize that I was looking at the records from several days ago and that the number was from one of his friends from Puerto Rico.... I looked through his phone account and for the past few months all of his calls are to and from his family in Puerto Rico, his brother in P.A, me, and his job... No calls/texts from or to that number. chat includes text messages...

 

Now I feel bad and I also made myself look dumb.

[crederer]

Why would he stop when you simply take him back everytime? Let her have him, she's 18 and will likely mess around on him with some college kid anyways.