I’m not entirely sure where to start here.. But, I’m going to try to get this out in a relatively cohesive manner. There’s a LOT of information to go through, and I tend to be long-winded, so I apologize in advance since this is going to get to TL;DR lengths.
My (kinda) boyfriend and I are young--I’m in my early 20’s, he’s just starting his late 20’s. We’re in a long-distance relationship. We’ve “been together” about a year. We’ve met in person once, for ten days.
Our situation is relatively complicated (as everyone’s is), but I think ours is a special breed of complexity. This makes it relatively difficult for me to find other people who really understand where I’m coming from. I think this group is going to be the closest I can get.
When we first met, I had a fiance. Things were totally on the rocks with the fiance, both of us had just about entirely emotionally checked out of the relationship and both of us were going through depression which left both of us totally unable to end it when we should have. The break up was in no way caused by my meeting BF, but it also didn’t help the relationship.
BF and I met online, in a chat room associated with a forum I had been a long-time member of, and one he had just joined. He had posted a photo, some females thought he was cute, they linked him to the chat, and he showed up. There was a general air of flirting. Raunchy pictures were posted from a lot of different parties and the subject came around that at the time, I was doing a form of mild online sex work. It just so happened to be the same type of sex-work that he was into. As far as that subject went, he and I hit it off immediately. I was curious, so was he, etc. We spent the better part of the evening talking. At this point, I considered our relationship mostly business casual, I wasn’t sure if he’d become a customer, etc.
After about a week, it became clear that there was no business side of the relationship, which was fine, because we were hitting it off amazingly. Had a ton in common, same sense of humor, similar interests, etc. We became really close friends and spent a crazy amount of time talking to each other. We were sharing really personal thoughts and feelings with each other, etc.
Soon, I realized that if I weren’t attached, I’d be really interested in seeing where this could go. And I was open and honest with my then-fiance, who pretty much knew at that point anyway. Pretty soon after that, the fiance and I broke up, and I moved back in to my parents house.
During the time I was still living with my fiance, I met in-person one of the members from the forum where BF and I met. It was exciting, somebody I got along with, and somebody I lived near and could seriously be a potential friend. She and I just hung out at a local Wal-Mart and then went to eat. Through this forum, all three of us (friend, BF and I) knew each other/talked together in the chat, etc.
When I got home, I had finally worked up enough courage to go sit in my car and call BF on the phone for the first time. All in all, this was a really awesome night for me.
It wasn’t until I had broken up with then-fiance and moved back home, that I found out that BF had at least two sexual conversations with the friend. One of those conversations happened on the night I had met her for the first time, and furthermore, happened at the same time I was on the phone with him. So basically, I was totally crushed. I felt like I was betrayed by the friend, since it was SUPER clear that I was totally infatuated with BF and I felt betrayed by BF, since clearly, this girl is a newly made friend.
I was angry, sad, upset, and a ton of other emotions for awhile. Eventually, we were all able to talk, for the most part, and figure things out. The friend and I have never really talked since then, and I hold a bit of resentment that I lost a friend, essentially, due to this. (I feel like I’m the one being punished!) I decided to give the BF another chance. I felt like, he had a reason to feel like he wasn’t obligated to not have sexual relationships with other people, since when this happened, I was engaged. Our relationship was so weird and undefined, that even though I was hurt by what happened, and I was angry about it, I didn’t really have any claim on him.
At this point, we discussed things, and I felt like we laid down some basic ground rules, and worked to define our relationship and what that meant. During this period, we essentially decided that we were officially, but not publicly, going out. (We decided that it would be best to put a bit of time between my relationships since I was still dealing with ex-fiance at this point regarding possessions and whatnot and I didn’t want anything to set him off. Furthermore, I didn’t want to deal with friend/family criticism. We told some close friends, however. )
Maybe a month or so goes by and I find out, through his reluctant confession, that he has been having a pretty regular role-play relationship with a woman online. A small backstory to how I found out about this. I was aware that the two of them role-played online. I was, however, unaware of the *extent* of the sexual content of said role-playing. He was aware that I wanted to set boundaries within the relationship and essentially asked what I thought about him continuing the role-play online with the woman. I said I wasn’t sure, but that it would probably help if I could talk to her. The three of us got together in a group chat where she all but urinated on him in what seemed, to me, like a display of “marking her territory.” Basically, I told her that I thought she was acting highly inappropriately and that the only reason we were talking was so that I could pass a judgment on whether this could continue between the two of them. I felt that in order for this to work, I not only needed to be kept in the loop, but I needed to feel like she understood that *I* was at the top of the hierarchy, and not her. She, unsurprisingly, took extreme offense to this, threw a giant fit, and refused to ever speak to me again. Essentially, she both caused the end of their role-playing by being a gigantic ass, and by leading me to inquire about their role-playing.
The way she acted set my gut-feeling off, and I requested chat transcripts between the two of them. He sent bits and pieces, and seemed so hesitant about it, that I was even more suspicious and demanded *everything*. Eventually, he sent the entire file to me. Almost everything was a non-issue for me except the last couple conversations. These conversations happened *after* we had decided we were exclusively a couple. And, they were decidedly outside the bounds of role-play.
Obviously I was once again very upset and felt very betrayed. He immediately stopped contact with her, deleted her as a contact, etc.
I felt satisfied with the situation. This was another “we don’t know how to define this relationship” type SNAFU, and we were communicating and getting past it. I felt good about our relationship.
Eventually it became clear to me that BF had more of a problem than I had initially realized. His real problem isn’t lapses of judgment, or bad decisions based on hazy understanding.
BF has a kink, that actually kind of boarders on fetish. And not only that, but he’s damn close to being considered a sex-addict, or porn addict, or however you want to define it. Basically, at the time, he hadn’t had a relationship in four years, and spent most of his time unemployed, living at home, able to be in his room all day. And basically spent this time looking for new material for his ahem..collection (if you get my drift.) Things had gotten out of control with him. He wasn’t able to talk to me about things due to shame and embarrassment about his habits, and he had gotten used to lying about the things he did. He spent a lot of time in the seedy-underbelly of the internet looking at porn/his version of porn [due to the fetish/kink, his “porn” isn’t traditional “porn”].
I resolved to stick by him through this. Our relationship was fantastic. We got each other on a level that I had never been able to experience with somebody who I was also totally sexually interested in, etc. To me, this was, and is, a relationship worth saving, and one with potential.
We’ve had minor slips. These in and of itself are not really the problem. It’s that when he slips, he can’t find it in himself to be able to tell me about them. So, really, the issue is lying about the slip-ups.
What it’s down to now, is that he’s on his last chance with me. We are officially broken up, at this point. I have an account on a dating site, and I am “looking.” I don’t remotely want to go on a date with another guy, I don’t *want* a relationship with another guy. But he needs to realize that this is serious. If he doesn’t stop with the incessant porn, find a job, make a name for himself and be able to support himself, as well as get therapy, I just can’t be in a relationship with him anymore.
I want more than anything to reconcile with him. I want to make this relationship work. He really seems like he wants it to work, too. We’ve met in person, things were great. Everything was incredibly natural and I felt like I had been there with him for years instead of having just met him in person. A lot of people would, and have, told me to just move on. But I’m finding even the thought of that to be heart wrenching. It’s just not what I want.
I’m not sure if we can do this. And if we can’t, I’ll have spent over a year trying to make this relationship work. But if it DOES work, this relationship could be really wonderful for the both of us.
I guess what I am looking for is to see if anybody has a similar story. I tried to tell this story on a sex-addiction forum, but I was met with a lot of, essentially, scorned and hurt women who told me that since the relationship was so young and I had no serious ties to him, I should get out now, while I could. I understand where they were coming from, and maybe a smarter woman than me would have, but I chose to stick with him, and I am still choosing to stick with him.
I’m hoping for a better response here. How do I get over the feelings of betrayal? Because even these slips bring back allll the feelings of being cheated on (I guess that’s what I’d call the earlier problems?).
Things still seem crappy from the immediate perspective, but if I look at the changes that have been made since we first started this journey, he has really made a lot of progress.