I’m not sure where to begin, but I’m spiraling right now after discovering my ole lady has been seeing another dude for the 2nd time. I’m not typically one to ask strangers for advice on Facebook… but here I am.
I’ll try and keep it as short as possible.
I have been in a relationship with a woman for almost 10 years now. We share 3 children together, 8, 4, and 2. We got engaged 5 years ago, but never got married because we wanted a large wedding and never could seem to scrape up the money. To put things into perspective I am 28, and she is about to be 26. We got together at 18 and 16 and had our first child 11 months later. We were kids. Although we are not married, it sure felt like it.
She matured much faster as a person than I did, and quickly turned exactly into the woman I always dreamed of. Me on the other hand, was frequently selfish, rude, and verbally abusive.
Through our entire relationship I had NEVER had any inclination or even feeling that she was unfaithful. She was the kind of person who did not have family structure growing up, and modeled herself after my parent’s relationship (extremely traditional).
Circling back to me, I was very emotionally abusive. In ways that never even crossed my mind until then I realized I made her feel worthless, subpar, and was downright nasty. We bickered a lot, typically about small stuff involving chores, the kids, whatever. The problem was how fast I would escalate the bickering to name calling. It’s embarrassing to say how awful I was, but I’ve called her every name from a bitch, cunt, psycho, you name it. I am now aware of how repeated exposure to someone saying these things to you would wear you down.
Additionally, she has battled depression for as long as I have known her and struggles heavily with anxiety.
About 4.5 months ago we had a blow up fight which turned into a separation. I insisted I would leave the house to stay with my folks until we figured something else out, but that only lasted a week before we both decided it was easier with the kids if we lived under the same roof. I didn’t know it at the time, but I have exact time stamps from when she began speaking to another guy, exactly one week after this separation. She swore to me this separation was intended to be space for me to go to therapy (which I later found out I have a bunch of leaves in the gutter) before we completely lost what we had.
She then moved into an apartment. We still spoke frequently, said I love you, and were intimate. We hade mutually promised on numerous occasions we would not be seeing other people. After a month of her being at this apartment, I found her with another dude who she admitted to having sex with. She claimed it felt nice getting positive attention from someone and that it didn’t mean anything. I found out they were speaking for about 2 months.
We had a conversation the next night about her regretting it. She wished she could take it back and said she justified it in her head because we "weren’t together". This was difficult for me to get over and still kind of haven’t. But I understood from a psychological perspective what she was saying.
We decided we would remain separated but would continue to see each other unofficially until she decided if she could over come the trauma I caused her during our relationship. Again the promises were made we would not see other people. After being in counseling over time I learned how to substantially control my anger, was placed on anti-depressants which helped drastically, and am in a much better place mentally. She would continuously state she observed a lot of good change and would say she was proud of me. She recently suggested we try couples therapy to see if we can work through our struggles.
Approximately 2 months after initially finding out about this guy, my curiosity finally got the best of me and I opened her phone. At this point she had been staying at our house for about 2 weeks and only using her place to do laundry.
I observed sexual talk with the same dude dating back 2 weeks and conversations with a different dude that involved light flirting. She claims the new dude was someone her friend insisted she talk to in an attempt to "set him up" through some other weird love dynamic the friend has.
She claims the same dude from before was done as entertainment. She says when I lean into the relationship to heavily, she wants to retract and that’s when she talks to him. She claims she hasn’t had sex with him, but I don’t know what to believe as I was reading sexting messages between them from that day.
I’m embarrassed that I still want to make this work with her as I love her with every ounce of my being. It appears she’s taking full responsibility for her actions and even referred to herself as saying I’m a piece of shit. Getting over her being with another man once was difficult enough, but I didn’t expect her and the same man to speak again due to her insisting there was no emotional connection there. She still insists there’s no emotional connection but also states she unblocked him to message him first a couple weeks back.
I want this to work but don’t know where to start with learning how to cope with the anxiety and sadness from it all. I’m not sure if forcing her to make a decision about our relationship is the best thing to do or if I should let the dust settle… or if I should just cut bait. Due to her intense emotional issues some days it seems like she’s into me 120% and others I’m getting about 40% effort.
I know it probably could’ve been explained in a shorter way, but if you’ve made it this far I appreciate it and am extremely open to feedback.
