Should I forgive?

Many of you will just say that I got what was coming to me and that is your opinion and you have a right to say it. I’m not proud of what I did and if I could change the way it was done I would.

So I met this person we will call J, while I was married to another man.

I wasn’t looking but the night I met J I ended up hiking on a mountain impulsively until 4 am. Meeting him was the most surreal and magical moment of my life and ever since all my time spent in his presence gets better and better.

J goes to school in another country. When I met him he was on break in the states and was leaving for school again in two weeks. Once we met we spent every single day together right after we met. Nothing sexual happened but just being beside him I felt like the luckiest girl alive. I wished that I could be a part of his every day life. We talked about what were experiencing and how we’d never had such an amazing physical, mental, and soulful connection.

I had married young to only the second man that I was in a relationship with. He is a wonderful man and I hope he will make someone very happy. We started off well but we never grew together and never learned to communicate. We had zero connection and communication. It was an infatuation that dissipated quickly after marriage. I was in a loveless marriage. That is not an excuse for cheating but cheat I did.

So J and I spent the next two weeks doing everything together but we weren’t physical. We shared a kiss before we left but that was all. I remember sobbing like I’d never done before on the night he left. We both did. We exchanged a gift for one another. I asked him not to contact me after he left. I was going to be moving away from the area. He goes to school for 9 months at a time and then spends 3 months in the states for break. I should have been gone by the time he returned.

Due to a change of events I was still in the area. He contacted a mutual friend to see where I might be. Around 8 months after he left he contacted me and told me he was in love, that he hadn’t and couldn’t be with anyone else, that he hadn’t tried because he thought of us every day. He returned home and we started seeing each other every single day. Every day spent with him was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. I started hanging out with his family, who didn’t know I was married. I started hanging out with his friends, who did know I was married. I fell so deeply in love with him. I had never had a best friend and this man was my best friend. He brought out a happiness and love of life I didn’t know was ever in me. I was barely seeing or speaking to my husband. I was horrible with confrontation and should have divorced as soon as J returned but I didn’t.

When he had to go back to school we were both devastated but honestly I’d say it was easier than the last time he left because we knew we would have a future together. J wasn’t attacking me but asking me to divorce at this point.

Shortly after he left I moved out and away from my husband for a job. J and I became even closer when I was living away from my husband. However, now I know that J and I became extremely co-dependent. We would go to sleep on the phone almost every night and we were video calling daily and the majority of the time if we weren’t working or sleeping. Things became obsessive. A couple months into the job I told J that to get the divorce I had to see him one more time. He left in the middle of finals week and flew to see me. That was the most amazing two weeks of my life until the next time I saw him. This time it was like living together and we traveled together and camped the majority of the time. I had never felt so secure in my life. I had nothing to hide from him, I told him everything. In previous relationships I hid things for no reason, no one ever knew who I really was, and I never was truly myself. J was the same, he’d never opened up with anyone and I’ll explain why later. With J I told him everything, I never lied or had to hide, and felt 100 percent myself. Those were the happiest days of my life where I felt the most free and felt that I had what everyone was looking for in life. Before J I had always wondered if my life would be happier with this stranger on the street or that one. Now he was all that I saw and all I ever wanted even through the long periods of time without seeing one another.

Then I returned to where my husband was living at the end of my time at that job. I knew I had to ask for a divorce and tell him what was going on and it took a couple of tense weeks. J, in the mean time, was on a short break from school and was traveling around that country. He started drinking way too much and smoking too much weed. He was still in constant contact daily but I got angry with how much he was drinking. He said it was his vacation and he felt like he deserved to enjoy it but that if I wanted him to not drink until I came to visit he would. I didn’t agree to that because I didn’t think he was capable of it and I didn’t want to be let down. I just wanted him to control it better. A couple of days before the end of his trip a girl and a guy joined his group. J is extremely charismatic, charming, and athletic. Girls like him. So I of course wanted to know details about the girl. J said she kind of had a thing going on with the guy that was traveling or that they seemed to like each other. He said nothing about her was attractive. J would sleep in his tent and the girl and guy were couch surfing in the cities. They did a day hike one day and explored a city another day. On the last day before he was to leave for the city and school we got into a big fight. I won’t lie I attacked him for drinking so much and said some really harsh things that I knew would hurt his ego and self-worth. I was upset that he knew I was trying to get up the courage to ask for the divorce and he wasn’t being as present as usual and it felt he was being neglectful during such a hard time. I said very mean things and told him that if he couldn’t do this one thing (drink less) I wasn’t sure I was making the right decision. I remember saying we were done but he knew that wasn’t true. The last thing he said was that he’d do his best and that he was going to make us work, that he would do better. Shortly after, I called to apologize and he didn’t answer his phone for the next couple of hours. Once he answered he accepted my apology and we talked, he said all was okay. He smoked and drank some more and went to sleep with me on the phone but his voice seemed devoid of emotion and strange.

During the couple hours J and I hadn’t spoken I talked to my husband, told him everything and we agreed to the divorce which I told J about. The next day J was 100% back to normal, being loving and respectful. He was heading home, he read to me, we drank together, and did everything we usually did, and celebrated to our future.

About a month after the divorce J paid for half my ticket to come to the country he goes to school in. We were finally free to be together without anything stopping us. Again every day only got better and we only grew closer. I felt like this is what everyone wants out of life and I didn’t know such happiness existed. We lived together for a month, traveling on the weekends. It was the most wonderful time of my life. Even the smallest moments living in third world conditions in a ty apartment with no AC during summer, all of it was wonderful. Every single time I spend with him I love him more and more and everything gets better.

Leaving was unbearable and the hardest thing I’ve had to do in life. He wanted me to move there and just stay until he came to the states in November but I love my career and had gotten an opportunity I had to take.

I returned to the states and moved to a new city. Within two weeks of me leaving he started drinking very heavily. We would still talk every single day and night but he would get so drunk he was talking jibberish and fall asleep on the phone really early. While I was there we tried coke a couple of times together and he told me he would never do it without me. He started doing it three times a week with his friend at his apartment for like two or three weeks. I couldn’t understand why he was doing all of this and why the was he destroying us.

Then he told me that on his last night on his trip something had happened. He said that the girl he had mentioned before had come into his tent and that she started kissing him repeatedly but never with tongue and that she took off her top, her pants, and his shirt. That she put his hand down her panties and he admitted to using his hand on her but for a very short period of time like less than 30 seconds. He said she then sat up and pulled a condom out of her bag. He said things clicked in his brain and he told her no, I’m not doing that. He said she then took his sleeping bag and went to sleep in his tent. J said that they didn’t speak or touch afterwards and that it was awkward and the whole thing lasted less than 5 minutes. I didn’t believe him and thought that they had had sex. He gave me her number and I called to ask her myself. I know that’s crazy but I had to know. At first she was rude. She claimed she didn’t know he had a girlfriend but J had spoken to me in front of her many times. I heard her and the guy in the background and J was using very openly I love yous and whatnot. I asked her if they’d had sex and she said no. I told her what he had said and she said that was all true.

He says that he didn’t want her and wasn’t attracted to her. I’ve seen the girl in a picture she is unattractive and has no figure. How can I believe him when he says I’m all he wants or wanted? I know that is the case for me I couldn’t cheat on him. He says he wasn’t even attracted to her, is he just lying?

J thinks part of it was the fight and his past of completely separating his sexual and emotional worlds. He was sexually abused as a child by a relative. His whole life he kept his sexual and emotional worlds completely separate. He had a couple girlfriends through the church community but he never slept with them. Every time he had slept with someone it had been a one night stand and one girl he saw a couple times but never was in a relationship with. When we were together his inexperience was blatant at first but we grew so much and have an extremely passionate sex life that we also made work over the distance. He keeps telling me that he didn’t want her and that I’m all he wants but how can that be true when he cheated? I know he’s all I want and everything I have ever wanted. I can’t and couldn’t do what he did.

If you really love someone can you cheat on them like that?

Also, a week after it happened the girl was still traveling through the country. J was in the town he goes to school in and she texted him and said she was coming through. He told her that was fine she could swing by the park but that he and I were doing great and he didn’t want anything to do with her in any way other than friends. She said he shouldn’t have fooled around with her if he had a girlfriend and she expected better of him. I don’t know why she said this because I know she was 100% aware he had a girlfriend before. I saw these messages. If he was ashamed of it and felt guilty like he said why would he ever see her again?

When I asked him this he said that since he was never attracted to her in the first place and he had no intentions and knew nothing would happen he didn’t think it was wrong but that he wasn’t thinking and he sees what is wrong with it now.

Considering he hid the whole thing he knew it was wrong. She came to his city for a couple of days but they only saw each other for 2 hours in the park with a group of friends there on one of those days. She invited him out dancing and he didn’t go. They both said the same thing when I asked about her coming there.

After he told me all this, the drinking and drugs stopped.

I could never have done that to him. Any time the opportunity came about to do something with someone other than him (my husband at the time) I got a complete mental image of J and I and literally could not go through with it. After he told me about it I was so upset and reacted stupidly. I tried to have a one night stand, which I had never done, and I couldn’t go through with it and I came very close. I am still profoundly in love with him.

He was so selfish to have hid this from me knowing that I was getting a divorce for him. I came to visit him there after the divorce and he still hid it from me and I know a secret like that would have eaten away at me.

I have forgiven him so many times for the drugs and alcohol. I feel like if I keep forgiving is he going to continue to hurt me? Should I forgive him for the girl? He tries to get every single day back to normal now but I can’t drop what happened. Every time I feel happy with him or start to think of our future again I relive what happened between them in my head and my imagination makes it worse. How do I start the process of forgiving or should I even do it? I dwell on the thought of how could he think of what a beautiful relationship we have and then do that knowing the damage it would inflict on us. I wonder why I wasn’t enough for him. I wonder why he didn’t love me enough to tell her no.

Yeah, there's something going on with this guy. It could be the abuse he suffered when he was younger. Or there could be some other mental issue at work here. You seem to be so taken with him that you haven't noticed some of the danger signs. I can only guess that the drinking and drugs may be a kind of self-medication for anger, depression or bipolar disease. You're concentrating on this one incidence of mild cheating. Hey, it's difficult to throw a half naked girl out of your tent. But I think there something else going on with him. And as the song goes, you were too blind to see.

I think you should re-analyze your relationship with this guy and think about any weird stuff he did that you didn't think about at the time. He may have problems with relationships because of the abuse he suffered. And it might be best to move on from this guy.

I could never have done that to him. Any time the opportunity came about to do something with someone other than him (my husband at the time) I got a complete mental image of J and I and literally could not go through with it. After he told me about it I was so upset and reacted stupidly. I tried to have a one night stand, which I had never done, and I couldn’t go through with it and I came very close.

Seriously?!?! You could never have done that to him...you did! Two fold at that; your husband and then that one night stand to get back at him. You are a complete hypocrite. Don't tell me "but I never touched my husband" that's utter crap. You were married and cheating on two men by definition, and not by your weird, messed up definition you use to rationalize only your own actions. You're a cheater and hypocrite with a persecution complex.

You're right about one thing - you treat people like crap and then you get crap, which is your now druggie boyfriend. Do you honestly think he's done with drugs? You just don't quit a coke and alcohol addiction like that. He will go back, I can tell you that much, based on the statistics for addiction recovery (5%) and his behavior. He has the classic signs of a repeat user: "I'll quit drinking", goes back to drinking, "I'll only do coke these times only" (with you), then goes back to doing it more (3X per week), "I'm completely off drugs", then next it will be he's secretly on drugs again, worse than before, and then you find out about it later because he can't hide it anymore.

I believe you at least made the right decision towards your husband. You set him free to find someone he deserves. Not someone who married him because of infatuation, which reflects in your relationship now. The new guy is also based on infatuation. This isn't what true love looks like. You really need to be alone for a while before you ever think of getting into a relationship again. At least a year for you. Then you could better yourself through self help books, therapy (group or one on one), and develop a life outside of your relationships (hobbies, friends, career etc).

You are way too codependent in this relationship. It needs to stop and you need help. You need a more fulfilling life on your own. This can only be done by you, not someone else. For God's sake, here you are doing drugs!!! Don't do that, come on now...don't screw your life up for some low life.

I definitely know I have done very wrong. I'm glad that my ex husband can move on and find the love he deserves and no matter what happens with this I won't regret that decision.

Thank you for being honest and I do value your opinion. I know that I need help and this certainly isn't my first co dependent relationship. My first relationship of 7 years was extremely passionate but very physically and emotionally abusive. I think it instilled serious bad habits that I've never sought professional help to deal with. Seeing someone professionally I know would help, unfortunately I don't have insurance or the money to do so.

I want to fix things with him, I feel like I should step back, but when I think about stepping back I'm so afraid of what he will do or how he will handle it. I know you shouldn't live in fear of what a loved one is going to do. I think that it's taken over my life. Times of extreme happiness and times of fear are primarily what I feel.

For the first two years I never had problems with him drinking soooo much. It was during his vacation and after the cheating incident that he started drinking heavily. After he admitted to the cheating the heavy drinking has stopped and so has the cocaine. He's actually living at the hospital now going through his rotations so I know he hasn't been doing it. He also gets drug tested.

To DanZee:

You are absolutely right about the self-soothing. He uses those behaviors to manage his feelings about that event and he has admitted to that. A few months ago I asked him to start therapy. He has been going on and off.

They are trying to work on alternative behaviors he can take up when times get hard instead of turning to things he knows are bad for him. He also comes from an extremely over the top religious family that knows nothing of his alcoholism and drug use. They didn't even know of the sexual abuse until last year when he told me and I asked him to seek therapy. He then opened up to his parents as well.

I don't know if I should consider this excuses or the truth or both. He says that he has always felt worthless, that growing up so religious left him feeling undeserving of love after those events tarnished his purity and he always felt worthless and tainted. He thinks that sometimes he goes to those bad habits to self-soothe and that he gets destructive in our relationship because sub consciously he feels he doesn't deserve the love he is getting.

Do you think there is a chance to work things out?

I know he has a lot of problems and I wanted to help him through them. I do understand now that you can't change a person that they have to change themselves and the whole thing has left me feeling like I'm not enough.