SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My boyfriend and I have been together for 5 years. I fell so hard for him. He made me feel safe because he is so sweet and loving. I moved in with him in May 2013. A couple months after I moved in, I noticed he was sort of distant. He would barely look at me when I undressed. He wouldn't have sex.

Well, towards the end of last summer I found out that he had been flirting and chatting with several girls on his phone. He was also using a different phone (that I didn't know about)to text and have short phone conversations with these girls. When I confronted him, he told me he downloaded a chat site on his phone and met these girls thru that. He broke down in tears, saying that he was depressed and he used this as a way to pretend he was someone else. I felt bad for him. He swore that he was willing to put a stop to this.

In the first week of March 2014, I felt like I should check his laptop, to be sure he was keeping his promise. I found at least a hundred pictures of nude girls (some looked young,like barely 18). I also found a video he had taken of his erect penis and a downloaded sex chat site. I was disgusted and hurt. I broke a picture frame and tore up our pictures in front of him. Then, I left. I immediately regretted it because I love him so much.

He said he wants to try therapy and thinks we should be distant until he figures things out. I moved out, reluctantly. I look at my phone every day hoping to see a text from him. He barely contacts me at all and I'm so sick with worry and depression over this. I barely eat. :( I want things to work out, but I don't want to be waiting on him to figure things out. How long should I wait? What should I do? I feel so betrayed and heartbroken.

About us:

Him: 38

Me: 23

Not married, been together 5 years.

[This message edited by Broken0915 at 10:58 AM, March 15th (Saturday)]

Broken0915 - Hugs to you! Sorry you are here, but you've come to the right place! SI is a great place for support.

I would read the 180 and focus on yourself right now. Weather or not you get back together, you need to make sure that you are ok, with or without him.

Remember to eat even when you don't feel like it, and get plenty of rest, drink plenty of water.

Remember that it is not your fault, and you didn't do anything wrong.

Come back often, there are some awesome people on here!

Thank you 4everfaithful83, I will read the 180 you just mentioned. I'm thankful for a place to talk about this...

I'm so so sorry.

I understand how hurt you must feel.

But whatever the reason for his lack of contact--shame, depression, whatever--it is the actions that matter, not whatever excuses we find.

Believe me, some of us are great at making excuses. He needs time! He is struggling! Blah blah blah. He is an adult and does not need pity.

But what about you? Direct your worry and energy on yourself. You are worth it. Don't wait for him. Move on. Find new hobbies, strengthen friendships, learn a new skill, choose to pursue a passion or simply allocate all of your energies to self-care and healing.

This relationship appears to be dead in the water but you can move on to have an amazing life without him. Letting go is so hard but really necessary.mCheck out www.baggagereclaim.co.uk to help you get a new perspective, I found it very useful.

Stay strong, don't reach out to him and be good to yourself.

Ps....please get into the habit of thinking of him as your ex boyfriend. It's hard but true at this point.

ETA: I just saw how young you are and the age difference between you. I'm guessing he has major commitment issues and you can't change that. Yes, you hurt so badly and it will take time to recover, but you WILL recover and will find a healthier relationship in the future.

[This message edited by norabird at 1:56 PM, March 15th (Saturday)]

I appreciate your comments and advice.

See, the thing is we agreed to figure out what went wrong and try to fix it. He agreed to go to therapy and I agreed to move out. We agreed that we hope this will be temporary.

My fear is that I will continue to hope that we'll reconcile and then he'll tell me that he's figured out he doesn't want to continue the relationship. OR we'll be together and I won't be able to trust again.

Something seems really wrong here.

You were just 18 when you two met. He was 32. First "yellow flag"

Then he seems to have a sex problem that causes him to gravely disrespect YOU multiple times. Giant red fleg.....actually a parade of red flags.

He has repeatedly lied to you. Extreme giant red flags...

My question to you is this: Why do you want to live like this when you have no legal ties or children? Don't think about him, but think about you. Why would you do this to yourself?

I am so sorry he has been like this to you. You have your entire life in front of you. Go read in the Divorce Forum to see what your future could very well look like if things with this relationship stay the way they are.

Both of you need individual therapy to help you heal and grow. Watch his actions....not his words.

I totally understand that the first impulse is usually to make it work. After all, you're in love! And that feeling is real, even once the basis for it has faded.

But it would probably be good for you to really have time on your own and figure out who you are, what you need. Your being young and with him for so long means your growth has probably in some ways been limited by him. It probably seems very simplistic to you that we are making assumptions from the outside, and I'm not saying you aren't mature already at all. Just that you have no external frame of reference. Whereas on the outside--maybe the chats are all with teens because he is only interested in them. Harsh but certainly possible.

While he gets therapy I hope you get some too. Do you have some issues in your family history that make you fear abandonment, or want to have a sort of father figure around? Sorry for the amateur psychology and I hope it isn't offensive. But sometimes this treatment means we need to pull back and look at how we got ourselves into the situation to begin with. It doesn't mean you're to blame, but it may mean you need a new perspective or at the very least an infusion of a feeling of independence and self-confidence.

Norabird:

My father was abusive and I was placed in foster care when I was 17.

I have never looked at him (the boyfriend)as a father figure. I am more mature than most women my age and at the time I met him I had decided that I was not interested in college boys for maturity reasons.

I don't trust men because of my father, but I don't know if this has anything to do with needing a father figure....

I certainly understand that, having been on your own, that you might have been more mature for your age, but the fact remains that you were 18. You are now 23. He is filling his phone full of photos of

nude girls (some looked young, like barely 18)

. It is possible that your WBF may be primarily attracted to young women and may be trolling for the next young thing he can "date." Now that you're out of the house, it will be far, far easier for him to do as he wants, meet up with OW, and continue to look on-line.

This is a horrible thing to hear. I'm sorry about that. Unfortunately, it is something that needs to be considered. You see, you only have HIS word that he is, indeed, pursuing counseling and he has been proved to be more than capable of lying to you. I fear that this is what the rest of your life together may look like.

(((hugs))) Keep coming back for support. We're here for you.

I'm sorry to hear about your father. You sound like a very strong woman after everything you have been through! But it does give me the feeling that maybe your WBF took advantage of your being somewhat alone in the world when you met. Something about his contact with these other young women makes him seem somewhat predatory.

Again I hope this doesn't sound like it trivializes your decision to be with him or what the relationship was...I'm sure you got good things from being with your WBF. Maybe your time with him has run it's natural course though, and this is, in some ways (and I know it doesn't hurt less for this), an opportunity to move on to the next part of your life.

You were just 18 when you two met. He was 32. First "yellow flag"

I'm sorry but this was the first thing I saw as well. Frankly it seems a bit creepy to me that he was dating you just barely out of high school. I'm assuming you were? Regardless if you think you were mature, you were still 18.

You're young and have your whole life ahead of you. Move on unless you want a future of this type of behavior, because I guaranty its not going to stop. Especially given that you caught him and he's still at it.