Am I being deceived?

Hello all, about a year ago I started dating a coworker. She is amazing, thoughtful, giving, helpful and I am in love with her. When we met, she told me she still lived with her ex but they had been separated for about a year, they were raising their 7 yo daughter and his 10 yo daughter whom only visits on weekends. She explained that their relationship was "complicated" and so I inquired. They had sex once a month, whenever each was in the mood, they slept in separate rooms and she cooked, cleaned, laundry, shopping and still packed his work clothes for his trips, but they were not a couple. Well, after we got a bit more serious, she claimed most of the duties, besides cooking, shopping and cleaning were no longer done by her. It is his house, he owns it, and she is just living there paying rent.

After a few weeks of hanging out with her, I thought I would find her on Facebook to kind of see what she was all about, sure enough, there she was. She had mentioned a week prior she had deactivated her account 2 years previous, so I confronted her asking why she is still active and she claimed it was weird there were things on her page when she hadnt used it in 2 years. I didnt think much of it until I realized she was posting things that she was telling me she had done those past few weeks. I again asked and all of the sudden her page vanished, well, she blocked me. So, I looked at his and she was tagged in several posts but I couldnt access her page. I let it all go and moved forward. Over the next few months she would spend alot of time with me after work and stayed the night once or twice, finally I mentioned if I could stay at her place, I did and it was nice to be able to see her living space. One night she decided to stay with me and was immediately guilt tripped the next day because he has cameras outside of the house and saw her leave late and come home early, he had been watching her. He knew of me, I met him at a small marathon I attended with her, so he wasnt unaware of me. All of the sudden she comes to me and says he wants her back, he wants to marry her, he wants her to himself, she decides to break it off with me for only a few days and then tells him it will never work, so we got back together. Back story with him, he has cheated on her several times in the past (which is why they split), he is addicting to dating sites and porn, he is possessive but a "nice" guy to everyone else, even me! Ha! As a result of him seeing she had stayed with me he tried booting her out of the house but kept telling her to come back, because lets face it, the dude is useless without her, as a result, she is still there, 8 months later.

She has been looking to buy her own home and keeps telling me once she does things will be different and he will be out of her life for the most part, she has been saying this for months. I have given her keys to my house, she has met my mother twice while she was visiting from out of state and I have only met hers once and they live 20 miles away. I am never invited to her parents house for holidays or gatherings but he is. I have met her daughter a few times in secret and I feel as if I am a third fiddle. I have kept nothing from her, put my trust in her and have shown an extreme amount of patience. She has done many nice things for me but she continues to stay in her situation with him, I often wonder what I dont know.

Relating to the Facebook thing again, and this isnt about Facebook, I dont care about that, what I care about is honesty, I found her profile to be active again so I confronted her about a month ago, she claims she hasnt been on it at all this year and it must be him or his friends hacking her account. Well, turns out Facebook has a nifty was of searching post and photos and she has been active all year and will still not admit it. My thoughts are this, she is submissive to him, he gets off on her having a boyfriend, and likely still has a relationship with him unknown to me because she is hiding something if not many things...am I wrong to feel I am being deceived?

Um, NO, of course you are not wrong to feel that you are being deceived! That is because you ARE being deceived! I know they say "love is blind" and I've been there myself so do understand how it feels. I was in a two year thing myself where someone was just stringing me along but I did know it and finally ended it and deleted him permanently. That was six years ago and never looked back.

This woman is completely using you and has no respect for you. No she is not "very nice and wonderful" because someone truly nice would not do that! I mean first of all she did tell you what her arrangement with the supposed "ex" was, was basically that she was still his housewife and they were still sleeping together! I don't really understand why you got involved with someone that was already with someone else in the first place. But that aside, when you found out that she lied to you about the whole Facebook thing, why did you "just let it go"? I mean she blatantly lied and fooled you for months so why were you OK with it! And her lies are not even good, saying the ex's friends are hacking her Facebook! I mean why would they hack it, for what purpose?

I mean everything about this whole situation just screams that you are being used and I think deep down you know it but for some reason after a year you are still allowing yourself to be used. She lives with the other guy, takes him to all her events and family functions, and let's be honest most likely still sleeps with him too. You are basically just her back up plan while she's trying to see how everything will pan out with him.

Why do you just assume she is a victim un this and the guy is controlling her? I mean if she really loved you she would at least add you to Facebook and invite you to family functions and things like that. She's been basically keeping you a secret from all her friends and family.

I know you love her but it's been a year now, do you want to be a side dish forever? Or do you want to be the main course? If you actually want to find someone who truly cares for you and above all respects you then I suggest you tell this woman she is a heartless using such and such and cut her off forever. She never added you to any of her social media so you don't even need to block her. Just delete and block her number and never speak to her again.

She is still emotionally involved with him or she would have gotten a house of her own by now. It's been a year. She also has no problem lying to your face hence all the facebook malarkey. Break up with her. At this point you have seen who she is and you are making informed choices. Living with her ex was a huge RED flag to begin with. In the future, stay away from women who still live with their ex.

Dude, wake up. This woman is unstable. What are you doing giving her keys to your house and bringing her to meet your mother? This is the type of girl you slip into your house after dark hoping no one sees her and get her out before dawn. You're having an affair with a married woman and she's jerking you around. You need to find someone who loves you and isn't running some sort of scam.

OP, what are you thinking?

Get rid of this woman. You know she is not girlfriend material. Overlooking the gigantic red flags isn't going to make it all better.

Sorry to hear this. You are correct. She is full of it and making excuses. It seems you are a pawn in her dysfunctional partnership. Perhaps she's trying to get even with him about cheating or he's not attentive, whatever. Does she want you use your place as the love nest/escape? In any case her motives are not in your best interest.

A friend of mine were recently joking about a messy relationship he got in. He said, "I saw all the red flags, but I decided to knit them into a pretty scarf." You've done something similar here, and basically admit it with lines like "I didn't think much of it" and "I let it go and moved forward." You saw the story, not the reality, and did what you could to keep the story going no matter what.

We ALL get ourselves into some funky pickles when it comes to romance, so I don't mean to sound harsh. But, c'mon: there must be a part of you, even while writing that down, that knows this situation is just bonkers. I mean, you meet a woman who is living with her ex, occasionally sleeping together, eating and raising kids together? I'm not saying you can't have a relationship with such a person, but you have to be 100 percent okay with being a thing on the side to someone who is highly unstable.

Because this woman? HIGHLY UNSTABLE. The subtext of your post could be: "I've spent a year submerging myself in lava—why am I so burned?" To which we're all saying: "Dude, it is LAVA!" And I'm sorry it hurts, but the writing has been on the wall from day one. It's time to take the steps to extract yourself from this situation, do some searching as to why you gravitated toward taking "seriously" someone in these circumstances, and you'll find yourself into a much better spot to give and receive on a genuinely stable and sustainable level.

You truly, legitimately can't tell that this is a bad situation?