Broke it off with fiance' last night because I believe he cheated

[Trust666]

//This is bad advice. These aren't your children. Granted they have bonded to you but staying present in their lives while you maneuver an ending is damaging to you, as well as the kids. It causes confusion in their lives. I've been in your shoes before and the best thing to do is cut clean from him and his kids. Children move on fast and quickly adapt. When he starts dating again and brings someone new into their lives, how do you think you will fit into that picture? If anything it perpetuates more drama. It's not realistic.

 

The NC rule is to help you heal. Now is not the time to maintain a lifeline to anyone that relates to him. //

 

I've been in the same boat myself, kids, cheating ex who was their mother.

 

Zahara gives great advice.

 

I understand you are venting, and confused, it can help also. I wish you the best and know how much you must be hurting....better to hurt now than be married to an idiot like this man. People who behave like this man tend to end up at a point in life where they burn every bridge they have...you hurt is temporary he has to live with himself the rest of his life.

[Hecan]

Tink, I commend you for knowing and understanding that although these children are not yours biologically, you have become an important part of their lives. You are dealing with an extremely painful event in your own life, but you also realize that the ramifications from this directly impacts these children that you have come to care about. I think that when you chose to date someone and become an integrated part of the children's lives you DO have a responsibility. You are a true lady!!

Please take what you need fron this forum and leave the rest. If you need to vent or just put it all out there as you are dealing with things, please do so. This is a recent betrayal and time to process is important. Most emotionally healthy people don't experience the type of betrayal and wake up the next day dumping life as they knew it and move on. Please don't let others make you feel like you should. Take care of yourself and your needs. I respect someone like you so much. Vent all you want !!!

[usa1ah]

Think I hope you get to keep contact with the kids.

 

Also glad your eyes have been opened to who he really is.

[PrincessWarrior1]

Hi Tink8bell,

 

I am very sorry for all this pain you are going through, and can identify with you on so many different levels. The cheating things is so wrong on so many different levels and it is the one thing you shouldn't forgive for. Believe me, I know, I've done and regretted it every time because things never get better. Maybe years and years down the line when it's so far in the past and you've moved on.

 

This guy doesn't respect you is the bottom line and you can' trust him. What does that say, so when you need him to love you the most, he goes on and flirts, cheats, has sex with other women? Just the fact that he is suppose to be in a committed relationship and makes himself available would make my blood boil, but then again I can't even tolerate FB flirting. I find it disrespectful and enraging, but we aren't talking about me.

 

Just wanted you to see all sides of the spectrum because ultimately your the one who is going to have to piece together how you want the rest of your life to go, and sometimes it doesn't happen all at once. Are you going to wait till he gives u an STD? Is it going to be when you are tired of being depressed, having anxiety caused by the anger of betrayal?

 

You know that this isn't the way a healthy relationship is suppose to look. We see genuinely happy normal couples right? Sickening at times, I know, because some people can handle a certain amount of dysfunction and look and feel kind of ok, right?

 

Either you start cheating right back but be safe and or sit him down and say: "hey look, do u want an open relationship, then just say that, what's good for u is good for me." And have the safe sex conversation. Which, if you are anything like me, you don't want that either. But I doubt he will like that.

 

I hope you get tired of him running all over you like that. You're too good for him, he don't deserve you. I'd let him go ruin someone else's life and take mine back.

 

Again, I am very sorry to hear you are hurting like this because he is so selfish. I hope he grows up and realizes that is the opposite of love. Love isn't just a feeling. It's a choice to stay faithful, support your partner, and not disrespect. Even flirting is disrespectful but I can admit to being a little over the top with my ancient morals. I'd rather be single than settle. Life is too short for that kind of chaos and pain.

[Steve51]

Be smart. When you marry you get what you see. So many women make the mistake of thinking they can change a man or put up with his faults for life. Nope. My wife's best friend married a man like yours. Thought that just because he drank beer all day that he was not an alcoholic. I would go fishing with him and all he did was drink because his fianccé was not there. He would also dock the boat an hour earlier so he could drink in the dockside bar.

 

Yet she married him. She dated him for a few years, wanted to get away from her parents and wanted a child. She got the child and one day came home to find her husband and child missing. She had a hunch and went to the local bar and found him drinking with the baby on his lap. She divorced him and lost her house and came to live with us for awhile.

 

I can give you many examples of women who are blinded by love and think love conquers all. They marry for the wrong reasons and the wrong kind of guy. I am married 45 years and I got exactly what I saw in my wife when I first met her. My ex fiancé cheating on me was the best thing that happened to me in my life. If not for that I would never have met my wife. My ex ended up a drug addict, suffers from mental illness still and cheated on her husband with a woman she is now married to. She divorced her husband, who paid for college for her son from some unknown man, two weeks after his last college tuition check cleared.

 

Be smart because a good number of the 50% of people who end up divorced married better men than you. It is difficult enough to stay married these days without marrying someone who will lower you odds a lot more.

[Tink8ell]

Thank you so much everyone for your support and kind words! I woke up thinking I was just going to delete this post, but I am so glad I read your responses first. I know this isn't someone to marry, and I likely will never be married. He is the third person to ask me, and I told the previous two boyfriends no because I can see being with someone for ten years, but not forever. This guy was the first person I have ever dated that I could actually see myself being with into old age. I could see us taking care of each other. The engagement was intended to last years, and we were just in the process of moving in together to start a "trial run," so to speak. The engagement was pushed by him. He asked very early (7 months) into the relationship and I told him we could reconsider in a year, because it was too soon. I really did start to think that we could work through anything due to the way we have handled so many things together, but I made it clear we can't survive infidelity. I drew a line in the sand and he crossed it. I wish we could get over this together, but he is just going to see my willingness to work through our problems as weakness. He is just going to do it again because that's the only coping mechanism he knows, and he's going to think that he can get away with it because he has before.

 

I guess the silver lining to all of this is that now I know exactly what I want. It used to be to travel and retire early, and most of my time was devoted to overworking and over achieving. Now I know I want a family, as being a homebody with my crew brought me more joy than any exotic location ever did. Unfortunately, I cannot have children due to a medical procedure I had done in my early twenties. Me and this man worked so well together as co-parents and we were a good team as far as the home went. It was never me cooking and cleaning, but both of us doing everything together. I know that I can find someone like that again, but I'm hesitant to get involved with a man with kids ever again. The truth is that you never know if someone is going to cheat or if a relationship will last. You just don't know. I don't think I could handle going through something like this ever again. I've thought about adopting by myself, but I don't think I can effectively parent by myself. I have always taken on too many responsibilities until I crash and burn. My ex was always there to help me through it, and take on those responsibilities whenever I needed a break. He would do anything I asked of him, but he couldn't stay faithful.

 

I'm looking around my house now which is in disarray, and thinking about how much harder it will be to keep it clean without his help. I'm also renovating this Victorian house from the late 1800's and have been doing most of the work myself to save on costs and learn a few new trades like plumbing, electricity, etc. It was so nice to have him here helping with everything. Not many people want to spend the entire weekend working, but that's what I enjoy. If he wanted to go out and I wanted to stay in and build a pergola, he always did what I wanted to do. It never seemed like he resented me, he just said he wanted to be where I was. He stopped going to events with friends and was just with me all of the time. If I didn't want to go, he didn't want to go without me. He never expressed a problem with it, but maybe he was feeling trapped all along. I know he really did love me, but I guess we were just too co-dependent and things got too hard. I did take him for granted many times through the course of our relationship. I will never know if that is why he left, or if it is just because he was cheating the whole time. Maybe he can be devoted to someone completely and feel no guilt seeing someone else behind my back. Maybe he did it spontaneously that night out of anger because I had been yelling at him all day.

 

Someone mentioned the possibility of an open relationship. I actually asked if he wanted that in the beginning and he was not open to the idea at all. When I first met him, I had no intention whatsoever of settling down, as I planned to sell the house after I fixed it up, and move to a bigger city. I have had open relationships in the past, but that would never work with someone I was in love with. I have made some mistakes in our relationship, and I also made a mistake allowing him and his children to become my whole world, and then not doing enough to value him in our relationship. But, this can't be fixed at this point. I should have ended things back when I first suspected him of cheating, or forced the couple's counseling issue more. We went to a few sessions but I never knew how to channel my rage and suspicion. That continually ate away at our relationship, but he continued to stay with me. I respect him for trying and for putting up with so much hate from me for so long, even though I hate him for what he did. I just don't believe in "evil" people. I believe people can be evil given their circumstances. It would be benign of me not to mention the hell I have put him through since the first time he cheated. I have to accept some responsibility for my actions so I can change that in future relationships. I have just as much guilt for all of this as I do pain. Mostly, I feel guilty because kids were involved and I didn't do as much as I could to show him I appreciated him. And now it's all gone to hell in a hand basket, and I am part of the reason these kids are in pain.

 

Thank you again everyone, for your feedback. This forum has helped me tremendously.

[PrincessWarrior1]

It was I that mentioned the "open relationship" because I didn't want to flat out try to tell u what to do and it worked because you opened up more and was able to vent it out.

 

I had a nice boyfriend and we ended up having that for 5 years (open honest safe sex relationship) but you are right it doesn't work if one person is in love and wants more. The whole point is honesty, trust, respect, etc..

[marky00]

this is not a support forum and you will find people on here who have been in your place or who can see your situation far clearer than you. no one on here is under any obligation to sugar coat your situation and placate you with nice little words of encouragement.

 

 

lol really?

 

 

Your right but, a lot of people post on here for their own agendas. Your a classic example of that right here.

 

 

It's all good and well to provide tough love. All of us regulars have been on the receiving end of it. But, that approach is flawed when dealing with people who had a recent breakup. It's like being a year 12 student expecting a Year 8 student to figure everything out in week.

 

 

It's fine to give some tough love but you got to give people time to digest things and work through things in their own time.

 

 

Sounds like you got some unresolved issues yourself. Maybe you should create a thread yourself so we can offer support.

[Tink8ell]

I can't figure out how to like someone's post, but Marky000, thank you for that!

 

And Princess Warrior, you are right and I have had successful open relationships before as well! I think they are great in certain circumstances. However, I was younger and had many options so I didn't care if they also sought comfort elsewhere. I'm currently living in a small, rural area where everyone likes to gossip. And after four years of living here I honestly have not met anyone that I found attractive or had anything in common with. I am a liberal living in a small, southern town, and I teach math and economics, so politics is important to me because that's what I teach. But I don't match up politically with anyone I have met here. The main reason it wouldn't work is because there is no one at all here that I would want to be with other than him, so it wouldn't be equal and respectful, just an excuse for him to cheat on me. I do think you had a great suggestion though, and that if more people were open to that option, cheating would be a lot less common than it is now. Some people (at some points in their life) should be more honest about what they really want, instead of giving in to society's pressures concerning monogamy. Honesty is more important than fidelity in my opinion, but in this case the two are closely intertwined.

 

I'm taking steps to improve that though. I (finally) started cleaning my house earlier today, was finally able to eat something after three days, and I put on a red dress and felt fabulous. It's amazing how much little things like that can help. I am getting back into the things I couldn't do with him, like clean eating and exercise. He had a horrible diet and I was constantly trying to sneak vegetables into food I made for him and his kids that were also picky eaters. I'm going to start running again tonight (which I stopped doing because I spent all of my time with him and the kids) with my beautiful dog Possum. I've gained 20 pounds since I moved here four years ago and part of the problem is not being around others who are focused on being healthy. I'm going to join a gym later this week to get some motivation and meet like-minded people, as well as build up those endorphins. OPERATION REBUILD in total effect! Thank you so much everyone for getting me through these past few days!

 

I hope that everyone that has commented here leaves with a wonderful feeling, knowing that they helped someone else out when they most needed it. You are all beautiful people!

[CaliBabe]

You go girl! I am so happy to see healthy progression. A woman with self worth does not put up with a cheating man UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Good for you and keep moving forward, there are good men out there and you can have the healthy relationship you desire. It's up to you.

[PrincessWarrior1]

Tink,

 

I came from a small rural area myself but not southern, boy do I wish. Alot more christians down there. It's hard for me too. You feel society has pressure concerning monogamy? See I feel the opposite and hurts me to conform, so I just accept. I'm trying to swear off men for a full two years. I've been helping the terminally ill girl downstairs and I have to tell you, she is a comfort to me too. Just to not have that pressure of a man who wants one thing.

 

I'm very proud of you concerning: OPERATION REBUILD!

 

It takes a beautiful person to know a beautiful person and we hope you leave w a wonderful feeling too