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I was cheated on by my signifigant other (we are not married) and found out because the woman he was cheating with decided to "stalk" me. he was trying to get out of the affair and she decided to find out who I was and stalk me by phone, email as well as drive by visits. how it all started was by phone. I started to get numerous hang-up calls from a blocked number. Per his actual suggestion, we got the police involved and a tracer was put on my phone. The police finally contacted me and gave me a name of a woman that I did not know. For several months prior to this coming out, I was feeling weird in our relationship. There had been a lot of stress due to my job and my Mom being in a nursing home. For the past two years out sex life had diminished. I sensed something was happening, but I just did not want to believe it. We are not married, but own a house together. I confronted him with the name of the woman the Police gave me and said, "if there is something you need to tell me, now is the time to do it"! He confessed and said he had a on and on again affair with her for 2 years. I immediately left our home and stayed with a close friend for 3 days. To include information on me, I had been having my own feelings about wanting to leave the relationship and had been thinking about just leaving ! I think due to the fact that I was feeling something was not right. I am now back home and after many days of discussions I learned that because I did not want to marry him that he felt very insecure in the relationship. He also felt I was very self-absorbed with my job. We both want to see if we can fix our issues in the relationship and are seeking couples counseling. We have out a time line of January 1st on the relationship. Yes, I feel betrayed, but I also feel that I was not honest with him. In my professional, I do have opportunities to move out of state and I have been looking. I feel right now that I can play the victim, but where will that get me. I know we both love each other very much and still want to try. If I don't try, I feel I will have regrets. I think I need to figure out why I am so afraid of marriage. I have never been married and come from a family with infidelity issues. He has been married once, no children and I have no children either. Any advise is greatly appreciated.

Welcome, ShedSomeLight. I'm so sorry you had to find this place.

Just because you are not married does not mean he didn't owe you complete fidelity. As you can now see, being married doesn't cause or prevent infidelity.

I also want to mention that just because you were considering ending the relationship that does not stand as a reason for him to have an A. His choice to have an A was his alone and there is nothing you could do to make an honest man cheat. Nothing.

I hope you find a good counselor who can help you both and I hope your SO will work hard to deal with his issues.

It is important that you take good care of yourself during this time. Stay hydrated, make sure you eat and seek help if you find yourself going into depression. Betrayal hurts like nothing I've ever felt.
Keep reading and posting, too.
Big hugs to you.

[This message edited by hardtimesinlife at 12:41 PM, August 7th (Wednesday)]

Welcome to the club no one wanted to join. You will find many here with great advice.
As far as not being married - Um you are as close to married as you can be.
It doesn't really matter, you obviously were both in a commited relationship.

So his A was 2 year on and off thing? How long have you been looking to leave? Was it prior to that? If so were you feeling the disconnect prior to that? If you were I would push for more info from him....Just saying cheaters minimize, especially when they think we don't have proof.

Read in the healing library up on the left side of your screen there is a ton of useful information on how to start healing, and move forward from this point.

You should probably do a few things to help protect yourself, and start healing yourself.
1. See a lawyer, find out what your rights are and what would happen should the relationship dissolve. Knowledge is power, and power gives you strength.

2. See your Dr. get STD tested, yes YUCK but it is the harsh reality of it. IN addition if you are having trouble with sleep, eating and staying hydrated talk to the Dr about it, and see if you need a little pharmaceutical support (ie, antidepressants, or antianxiety meds) to help you through it.

3. Tell yourself everyday, and multiple times a day that his choices to do this had absolutely nothing to do with you. He is 100% responsible for his actions, and neeeds to own that.

4. Take time to figure out what YOU want. If you want to try to R. What are your conditions, get that stuff figured out. So that when you start therapy, you can tell him what it is going to take to make you feel safe.
Choosing not to stay is ok too. He never made you feel safe enough to say I do. Why? Perhaps individual counseling will help you to understand that with yourself.

keep coming here, and posting, we care, and many of us have BTDT.

(((and strength)))

Thank you so much for your kind words. I am taking all advise from here. I am going to try and see if things can be worked out, but I have out a time-line on it. I am not wasting much time and I hate to put it that way...but I am only giving myself until January 1st. If I am not feeling some sense of security by then, I am out. We signed up for therapy and he is jumping thru hoops trying to make things better, but until I can get thru my anger, I am afraid that things will not improve for me. To make matter worse, I have a very terminally ill parent and I am dealing with feeling of loss from that as well. I have signed up for "martial-arts" to try and get some of anger out!