Submitted by ThrowRA_Independent4 t3_11yis36 in relationship_advice
Hello all. I’m new to this although I’ve been reading subreddits for years. So I know if I want some honest, unbiased advice, this is the place to do it.
This post is long so please, bear with me…
My now husband and I have been together for three years. Things moved on pretty quickly as we started dating during the pandemic (worked together & lived together so we were together for the better part of the day). I was cheated on by my ex boyfriend which took a serious toll on my mental health. I stayed single for about three years, fully recovering from my past trauma. I shared with my now husband (before we were official) about all of the trauma I endured during my relationship and the aftermath. Also to note, my ex was very jealous and would makeup scenarios in his head. I never cheated on him or had any intentions to — I’ve also never been the jealous type. So when my husband and I got serious, I full on trusted him because he had never given me a reason not to. We were very open with one another. I never felt a reason to distrust him or even dare look at his phone.
A couple of months later, we were at work and I was in his office (we hadn’t disclosed our relationship to HR because we were in the same project & I didn’t want to be taken off of it). When suddenly I see his phone go off, naturally, I looked and as I mentioned before I had never felt the need to, but this time I did. It was a message from his old classmate, and it read something along the lines of “thank you for everything, I loved hearing your voice 💕”. Which stood out to me because when was he talking to her if we’re literally together all the time and also the heart emoji. So naturally I was concerned. Then there was another message from another woman saying “hi good morning, I’m doing good.” Bear in mind, I know his family and this name stood out bc I had never heard it before. We had work phones so I knew it wasn’t work related.
A couple of days passed and we got into a huge argument about it, as I had confronted him. He gave me the typical “it doesn’t mean anything”, so I left our place to go stay with my parents. A couple of days later, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I said screw it, and looked through his phone that night. He also didn’t have a passcode so I thought if he was hiding something then he’d for sure have a passcode. I begin looking through his texts and fair enough there were those two of the women I mentioned. Except the second woman were much more graphic. This was a woman he had slept with in the past (I found this out later). I also would like to note, when I had first seen the message, the name was listed as “Lauren”, after I confronted him & read the messages, the name was listed as one of his cousins, so clearly he was hiding something. He talked about how he wanted to fuck her again and missed her pussy, he asked for photos & even went as far as sending her a photo of him jerking off. With good reasoning I went ballistic and once again confronted him. He tried to place blame at me saying I left that night & he was angry etc. which Is BS because he started talking to her two weeks prior to that fight.
Later on I found more messages with his ex, to be fair, it was mostly her trying to initiate the conversation. But this was months after he swore to me there was nothing else going on. A lot of messages were archived on FB (I guess he didn’t know they wouldn’t get deleted). I found countless photos of other women, nudes, selfies, etc. even videos of him and a woman having sex (he said he saved it bc one weekend when he went out of town, there was no internet so he saved them for pleasure but why tf do you need to be jerking off on a weekend away??) For a while we didn’t post anything on FB about our relationship because we had coworkers on there and didn’t want anyone to know so clearly it’s as if he were single.
We started going to therapy because I was going through a downfall once again. I’ve been diagnosed with depression and severe anxiety in the past, which almost lead me to suicide (more so the thought of it). So I definitely felt like I was going down that spiral again. And you might say “why didn’t you just leave?” Well, it’s definitely not as easy as it sounds. I thought about it numerous times, but we had bought a house together and I truly loved him. Then later we got engaged. But this was only after the therapy.
I know this is an extremely long post but I thought it was necessary to include as much as possible. We’ve been going to therapy for a year and I feel it has worked significantly but I still feel like there is so much to discuss. But anytime I bring something up, it’s as if he’s annoyed, as if he wasn’t the one who hurt me. And even now, I feel like he’s still doing something behind my back, it’s a feeling I can’t shake off. Our therapist says it’s just the anxiety and the PTSD, but idk, you know they say to always trust your gut.
It’s just so heartbreaking to think after everything I shared with him, about how it almost broke me to get cheated on to me opening up to another man, to him doing it to me. He swears there’s never been anything physical, it’s all been via text, which doesn’t takeaway from it but it’s still emotional cheating. And that he’s no longer doing it, he tells me he understands I will never be able to fully trust him but he promises me he’ll never do it again. I really do want to trust him but it’s hard after the betrayal.
So is it all in my head?