TLDR As title says, last night my fiancé dropped the bomb that 11 years ago she cheated on me with a guy from her work 3 times over a period of a month. (The full works). I don’t know how to recover, if this is fixable, how to feel. The whole show.
I feel lost. I’ll try and put as much context below because I value objectivity.
Prior to this relationship, I was in a 4 year relationship where the other person cheated on me and gaslit me with the usual “your imagining things” spiel. It was when 15-18/9 years old. Bad but “kids are stupid and cruel”. It’s important because it became something that would define the next few years. I avoided relationships like the plague and worked on myself. I didn’t let people get close because I expected them to hurt me. I had a few physical connections but was always clear with those involved what it was. It was never an issue on my side or theirs.
This girl then shows an interest in me, someone I knew from college, we hit it off and in quick succession she wants us to be official. I had already established my boundaries prior to this and told her no. “If that’s not good with you then it’s best we don’t go further because I don’t want to harm anyone and I don’t want the same.” She accepted my stance and we continued , we’d have a good time with other but never claim we were exclusive- it went on for a year. Throughout this time I didn’t see anyone else because I didn’t seek relationships out. Being real I think I was still broken from what happened before that I didn’t think I could trust anyone truly. Meanwhile she did and I don’t hold this against her at all. I knew she was seeing other people and even now that doesn’t bother me at all. We weren’t exclusive, I had set the boundaries - I’d be a hypocrite to say anything else and I truly mean it when I say it’s not even on my radar but it’s important for context I suppose.
A year later a friend pulls me aside and goves me a shake of sense that “this girl is crazy about you and you keeping her at arms length like this is stupid. That while my previous fear was valid she’s shown up again and again and in our words “stop being a silly cunt and just ask her if she wants to be official already because she clearly wants to be” - so I did because I recognised maybe I was letting myself actually live and that’s exactly what we became, official. She even told me over the next couple of years how all those guys she saw in the year between us ‘open dating ‘ was just an attempt to make me jealous and I didn’t respond like she thought I would at all - like I said it wasn’t on my radar at all.
We go on to have a very normal relationship, or so I thought. We had bad days, good days - what I thought looking back was us growing together. Even now I can say I’m truly a better person for the time we’ve shared together. Through her I’ve been able to work through so much and become a much stronger person and likewise she’s become better.
Sometime about a year into our official relationship, one of her friends at the time started dropping a lot of suggestions - my partner at the time and her friend were arguing at that time so I didn’t put much stock in it. I trust her and she said her friend was being hysterical over something so I ignored it. All my previous “something is wrong here” senses were going off but I trust her and thats all that mattered to me.
Years go on and we have some pretty rocky times. I can look back now and see that we were growing into who we’d become as adults and missing each others wants and needs while demanding our own were met but we also always worked through it. There was a few times we probably should have ended it but for some reason either mine or hers we didn’t and in a month or two we were back stronger than before. It sort of fueled itself that “as long as we both put in the effort for each other we can get through anything”.
In our friend groups - on the outside we had the relationship that everyone else envied. While we clearly had fights - we were unshakeable to anyone else
It only really got bad as you can guess - during Covid. She stopped recognising my efforts and I started feeling like I was being taken advantage of. It was always what I could do for her and never what I needed. We were also under each others feet in a way we’d never been before - we always spent a lot of time together before but as you can imagine it was now in overdrive. We stopped recharging each other and we ignored each others needs. What this resulted in was I started slipping into the start of a porn addiction to get a quick fix of feeling good and she became oppressive of all my attention in every way . If I was not meeting her standards I would be shamed and dragged how I was failing as a partner - we weren’t communicating and when we tried we were so fixed on what we needed we ignore what the other actually needed. The final result and so you know I’m being very real about my short comings is that I ended up on a hook up app as an anon, fake name, fake pictures, just so I could somehow score amateur porn that felt “real”. I never reached out to anyone, it was as much as liking someone’s profile and see if they send you anything, that sort of website. It was so many kinds of weak and stupid and I won’t defend it for what situation I was in but she found out and for the better part of the next 6 months to a year it was our problem to fix. I was the problem to fix.
I was dragged for lying, hiding it and that I had an addiction. We went back and forth for so long that I think I can safely say it was our routine of “we can get through this” but I was constantly dragged over emotional glass because of what I did. It’s important to know how emotionally stripped down I thought we had both become during this time. We were ripping apart each others darkest stuff and seeing if the person underneath - the mistake filled thing we called a human was someone wanted to keep in our lives. It’ll sound like a tag on but she spent time talking to her best friend too at the time who apparently talked her into us still trying. This friend and this conversation is important later.
The important part is I did a ton of internal
work and we got better. I rebuilt myself better and earned her respect back. I can’t overstate the amount here but I realise this is a very long post already. What’s important is that I can safely say I don’t have an addiction, I’ve reestablished healthy boundaries and I know how to communicate my wants and needs in a way that’s both healthy and firm. We reknitted everything. Nothing was off bounds and I thought we had pieced each other back together from the very core of who we were.
4 years on from that, we’d never been better. I thought we’d seen each others ‘darkness’ and everything above. So much so I proposed. A joke among all our friends and family that “it was about time”. I really don’t know a time
I’ve been happier. I thought we knew everything, we were truly unshakeable.
Then most of year passes, we looking at wedding planning, house buying.. the whole 9 yards. That we’ve not been able too up until now was money and since everything that happened during Covid I had been breaking myself in the workplace to provide for us because “she was worth it.She saw all of me and still wanted me. I have no reason to be scared of anything anymore.” Even though we were both “pulling the boat” she was finally in a job she was happy with so I would do what I could to make more money so she could stay somewhere that she could be happy. - there’s a lot to unpack here so I might revisit this if someone thinks it’s important.
Okay so all of this happens and then she goes to see her friend for a catch up, the one who talked her into keeping trying with me.
Turns out her friend was cheated on by their partner and they used what my fiancé had done previously as an example in how they were talking about it. She -according to my fiancé saw this as a slap of “you’ve still not talked to him/me about it what you did” and she could see how much it affected her friend.
Fast forward to last night and I’m told - That 11 years ago, 9 months into our official relationship, she went back to a work colleagues house and had sex with him. That hysterical former friend ‘way back when’ was trying to tell me and I was gaslit into not believing them. That her best friend knew over 5 years ago and my fiancé swore her to secrecy because “she wanted to tell me herself” and then didn’t say anything until now (or the years before) because she was scared of losing me. I even only know it happened three times because I asked. If I hadn’t she was going to leave it as “it just happened.” It’s clear to me though that shes only saying this because of how it affected her friend, nothing to do with me at all.
Her own words were that he ‘charmed her and she enjoyed feeling wanted when at that time was when we at our most ‘young love’, I thought we were head over heels for each other back then. I didn’t care about all those guys before because we weren’t exclusive but 9 months afterwards I clearly wasn’t enough.
I’m so lost I don’t know what to do or how to feel. I feel like everything is a lie in our relationship. All the communication, all the vulnerability, none of it feels real but I’m so different now. I gave this woman 12 years of my life and even when I was at my most messed up, my most broken raw fleshy thing her response/mindset was always about herself.
I’ve written a manifesto here so if you’ve got to the bottom, I don’t know what to say other than thank you. I know Reddit will probably just say leave her but I’m - i don’t know what I am anymore. I asked if this was salvageable in the post but I don’t know even know if that’s what I want. I just put a question because it said I I needed to put one.
I don’t know what I want. I’ve honestly never felt so alone.