Long post...Is this all or is it just all I know?

[iwanttobehappy]

Okay...I need some advice on how in the world I can get past the jealousy issues I am having.

 

Here's the breakdown of events:

 

1) I met my husband online in March 2004. We chatted every day and talked on the phone A LOT and eventually we met a few weeks later. A few days after we met he told me that he had an ex-girlfriend who was harassing him and would not leave him alone. Not only that...she was also pregnant with his child. Um. Okay. He never told me about having a recent girlfriend at all...But I figured it was before he and I started talking so it wasn't really important. I moved in with him a few months later and found out two things. 1) She had an abortion and 2) He had been seeing her for a year and a half and broke up with her either the day before or the day after he met me. Never in the weeks that we talked on the phone and computer did he ever mention he was seeing someone.

 

That was strike one. His defense was 1) he didn't "love" her (he just kept around for sex) and 2) he didn't consider her to be his girlfriend because he didn't love her. ("I had been telling her I didn't want to see her anymore for months but she kept coming around.")

 

My husband is BIG on the whole "faithfulness" thing. He said he had NEVER cheated on his exwife even though she cheated on him all the time. He can't imagine me ever cheating and swears he wouldn't cheat on me...He was angry with me for even calling this situation with this chic "cheating" because he hadn't met me yet. Okay, so maybe it wasn't cheating...but it was being pretty shady.

 

I still married him and got over the whole ordeal with the girlfriend...but then there were bigger fish to fry. My husband and I had massive problems and arguments over the last 2 years stemming from 1) my bipolar disorder and OCD and 2) my being overwhelmed with raising my 2 children AND his THREE children while trying to run a home business. The problems took their toll on our marriage and we separated the day after our first wedding anniversary in May of this year. He drove 900 miles to his hometown and I stayed here in our home.

 

We have since moved back in together but I still have major issues with trust. Why? Let me TRY make a long story short...

 

1) A few days after we separated he was emailing me and calling me wanting to come back. Getting nervous because he was basically in his home state with old girlfriends, I was being nosey and checked his email. I found an unread email from a woman he had talked about before as the slutty friend of his exwife's.

 

First of all, in the email, she apologized for letting him down on the phone that day. She told him that she loved him and because she had loved him for 20 years she just couldn't do a "fling." She went on to say that the night they had shared 6 years previously was wonderful but she couldn't do it to herself again.

 

My husband called that night telling me that he loved me and wanted to be with me more than anything. I asked him if he had talked to any ex's or other girls about hooking up and he said "no way..." but eventually came clean after I asked him 3 times. After a long discussion over this he finally admitted to something else. He called her a couple of weeks before leaving me. She had emailed him her number and he called her from work. He said he was just checking in and saying Hey to an old friend...but one part of er email seriously disturbs me:

 

"I hope you didn't leave for me because like I told you a few weeks ago there is nothing here anymore. No matter how hard we've tried in the past it never works so I think it's best if we just stay friends. Like I told you there's nothing left in New York, nothing left of me, and do not even think of starting the talk that we both seem to start when we think of each other." That doesn't seem like a "hello" to an "old friend."

 

What I am having problems dealing with is knowing he called her before we separated and busting him in lies...about calling this woman that day, about the nature of his relationship with her and for lying about his character in general...He had made himself out to be so faithful to his exwife and how horrible she was to cheat on him but I find out that he slept with her BEST FRIEND?

 

My question obviously now is "Is this all...or is this just all I know? And having busted him in lies, how do I possibly trust him??" I want our marriage to move forward but I actually find myself wanting to do something unfaithful to even the score...that's SO childish and is not my nature at all...but still. I think to myself that if I could do it then it wouldn't hurt so bad that I have been lied to...Also, the "unknown" wouldn't matter as much because I had my secrets, too. I would never do this, I know. I have been cheated on in the past and had these same thoughts but I have NEVER cheated on anyone in my life.

 

Can I get some advice on how to move past this or deal with this? I do want the marriage to work and I am in counseling but as of now we are simply dealing with my bipolar disorder...we haven't even moved on to the marriage counseling part yet.

[Batya33]

I would say that from almost the first day you met him in person you knew he was not a trustworthy person. Even if you could put aside those early lies you quickly found out that there were other significant lies. You knew this about his character when you married him. This is not an "I told you so" post but since you knew he was not a trustworthy person and had all sorts of justifications for treating people selfishly/badly, I am not sure what you expected would change once you got married or once you got back together.

 

I don't think you need marital counseling. I think you need him to say that none of these lies ever will happen again, that he will be faithful to you and he will do anything you want to prove his faithfulness (i.e. sign an agreement that you get his most prized possession if he is unfaithful again). Then you have to decide whether you trust his representations such that you won't feel like you are constantly checking up on him. Without that element of trust I don't see where you can have a real relationship.

 

I would go to counseling to figure out why you agreed to marry him and agreed to get back together with him in the first place. If the reason is because you loved him then figure out why you have so little regard or love for yourself that you would choose to be in a relationship like this.

 

Best of luck.

[RayKay]

First of all, don't go "even the score" - at least not if you truly want to work on this marriage. I promise you it will make YOU feel bad about yourself, and will do nothing to help you feel better about what happened. You may even feel more insecure about it all.

 

That must of been devastating to read, and I certainly can understand the pain and frustration you feel right now. Do you feel that maybe he is not with you for right reasons, that maybe he is back as he was rejected?

Do you believe he really wants to work through this marriage?

 

I suspect you are not confronting him as you snooped through his email and don't want to admit that?

 

Honestly, I don't think there are any ways of tiptoeing around it. I think you have to admit you snooped and put the information out there so you can deal with it. Or else you will be trying to get him to fess up, resenting that he does not, and not really able to work through these issues.

 

Either he was seeing what the prospects were before leaving...or he innocently emailed her and she took it wrong way - I don't know. But you cannot deal with a pink elephant in the room until you both acknowledge it is there.

 

- RayKay

[Beec]

Well, first I bet in his mind, he still has never cheated. What he did was go to the store and check out the merchandise, then he broke things off with you, and figured he was thereafter free to mkae a purchase. Does this make sense to you? No, but I bet it would if I explained it that way to him.

 

And I bet he thinks his dumping of his ex, in a timely manner, before things ever got anywhere with you, also absolves him of that label. In many men's minds it would.

 

If I dumped someone, I was free the next day to do what I wanted, in my mind. And yes, I went looking while I was dating a woman in my past (long past, by the way). What does this tell you? One that he is unlukcy to have sex with another woman while he is with you. If he won't cheat, and that's cheating, I doubt he will do this.

 

But, that does not mean that when things stink with you that he is not looking at other women thinking about what may or may not better with them than with you. Maybe, he think, the graas is greener on the other side of the fence. How can you stop this? I don't know, because neither of you seems that committed to working on making what you have so good that you won't risk giving it up. Things took their toll on your marriage, what things? How can you be so flippant about that? That's the story here? He was leaving and when he thought it would happen he looked for something. Why did he want to leave?

 

So, in his mind, he has not cheated. Once.

[iwanttobehappy]

Wow...you guys definitely know your stuff.

 

I would say "You would not believe how easy it is to believe what he tells me...he is very convincing" but you all probably already know the type. I also thought that I was a very good judge of character and would never be "fooled" but, boy, was I wrong.

 

As for the girl he was seeing when he first started chatting with me, I had no idea it was going on while we were chatting until I had been living with him for 2 months. I thought it had ended probably just before we started chatting or right around that time. Finding out it was going on the entire time we were getting to know each other before meeting was a huge blow. (we had chatted for about 2 months). Had I found this out before moving 200 miles to his town I would have stepped off the train immediately. After moving in with him and finding out, I had no where to just run to and after having a few days to discuss it, I chose to try to deal with it and move on...I still haven't, apparently.

 

As for my husband, he seems to honestly believe that he did NOT cheat on me or decieve me (or the other woman for that matter)...As I reminded him of conversations we had and things he had said BEFORE we physically met, he seemed unphased. "I was captivated by you. I just felt drawn to meet you!" Me: "And then you would hang up with me and go sleep with the girlfriend you had been seeing for a year and half after you and I had talked without letting me know she even exists?" He stands by the theory that he kept telling her he didn't want to be with her but she wouldn't go away...

I would go to counseling to figure out why you agreed to marry him and agreed to get back together with him in the first place. If the reason is because you loved him then figure out why you have so little regard or love for yourself that you would choose to be in a relationship like this.

Good point. This is where I feel pretty stupid. I love the guy but after the situation with finding out about the girlfriend in the beginning coupled with the fact that he was contacting another woman in the month before leaving ME, it just seems a little like a cycle he repeats. I feel like the stupid high school girl who doesn't want to believe that her boyfriend is unfaithful and everybody in the world is just lying to her. I mean, he is that convincing...almost so convincing that he seems "real." So, that leaves me questioning myself...Is it him? Or is it just me?

 

Do you feel that maybe he is not with you for right reasons, that maybe he is back as he was rejected? I'm sure that he loves me... Of course, what drives me nuts is that everything he does is either "totally innocent" or it's MY fault. He said that he didn't tell me about sleeping with this woman in 2000 when he was with his exwife because he didn't want me to think he would do something like this to me. He only did it because his exwife cheated on him so much and he wanted that mistake to stay in the past. "You aren't like her and I didn't want you to think I would do this to you." His reason behind calling the woman he slept with in 2000 after he left me in May was my fault too. He had logged into an old AIM account of mine and saw that my old exboyfriend was on there. I hadn't even USED that account in over 2 years...but he claims he didn't know that, thought I had added him recently and it bothered him to a point where he wanted to get back at me by calling HER...but he knew he had made a mistake. Blah blah. My fault for having an old AIM account with an X on it. After finding out about the phone call, I did a search and found a profile of his on adult+friend+finder. Really graphic...horribly graphic...he deleted it after I asked him about it and said he only signed up for the account to look for me because I was on there in the past...He wanted to see if I was signing up to get guys...Again, my fault because I once signed up for an account on that site.

 

Do you believe he really wants to work through this marriage?

I'm pretty much convinced. He came back to the south to be with me and gave up an opportunity to live near his family so that I would be happier (I would definitely be happier in the south.)

I suspect you are not confronting him as you snooped through his email and don't want to admit that?

He knows. I forwarded the email to myself and then deleted it from his account. Not cool, but I did it anyway. I waited for him to tell me the truth about the "love" stuff she was discussing...about how they "kept trying to make it work." When he played it off as a friend of his ex's that he just had a one night stand with for about a week, I finally just had had it and read the email to him. He seemed shocked and emailed her a very long email asking what in the world she was talking about...that they never had love in their vocabulary and that he knew calling her was a mistake. That he loved me and we wanted to work things out and he wanted her to stay out of our lives. He cc me on the email. I haven't heard from her since...(Yes, I had heard from her before...She actually emailed me before he left me saying that she was happy for us and that she had run accross my website and that she was a friend of my husband's. This is when I asked him if he knew her and he said she was "the slutty friend of his exwife's and that she was nothing but trouble." Little did I know, the 2 of them had already talked on the phone about God only knows what...His reason for calling her a couple of weeks before he left me? "She emailed me and asked me to give her a call sometime...I just called to say "hey" to an old friend. That's it." Yet he told me a few days later that she was trash and trouble. If it was no big deal why didn't he just tell me?

 

Things took their toll on your marriage, what things? How can you be so flippant about that? That's the story here? He was leaving and when he thought it would happen he looked for something. Why did he want to leave?

This is a whole other forum all it's own. Our big problems were our kids and my responsibilities and expectations. My step kids have a history of playing one parent against the other...When I met my husband I was a single Mother of 2. Seven months later I was basically the single mother of 5. His kids were with me all of the time while he worked. I was responsible for every aspect of their needs, wants and desires and I had a lot of problems in raising them because suddenly I was the one having to deal with the "playing one parent against the other." I didn't mind being occasionally responsible for doing things for them and I certainly didn't mind my husband getting custody...but all of the sudden Dad dumped all responsibility of these 3 (6 and 9 year old boys and 11 year old girl) on my shoulders. In addition to that bio Mom is almost $5000 behind in child support while my ex paid...When my husband fell short on the bills it was me buying their clothes, birthdays, everything...My work at home job PLUS my sons child support was used for the care of the whole family. That definitely took it's toll on our marriage. I felt used. I WAS used. And we argued almost constantly. I even asked at one point that he put his kids in daycare. He thought it was a stupid idea because that's not what family does for each other. BUT, One condition of our working things out was that he become more responsible for his own children, as well as keeping them in daycare and picking them up at the end of his work day. He has done this and it is working out well.

 

My only fear is that he will do to me what he did to his last girlfriend...look for something "better" to come along and then dump me. In fact, it certainly appears that that is what he was doing with this woman he called before he left me...

 

I truly don't know what to do from here.

[Beec]

Well, I don't know what to do either, unless you can get him to see things through your eyes. The man seems to be doing everything right as far as demonstrating committment. When things were going away from you two being committed, so did he quickly.

 

Men do this sometimes. I have. More commonly, when one of my realtionships has ended, I am right backout there. Sometimes within days, once or twice it took a couple months. An ex and I once got back together, and she did not get how I was out within weeks with other women. I don't know, but I think if you keep things good between the two of you, that he won't look elsewhere, but that's easier said than done.

[Rabican]

seems to be a pattern of shady behavior, acting very untrustworthy.

 

Also a pattern of looking for the next booty call before ending the current relationship. And a pattern of keeping one around for sex, or going back to someone for sex.

 

Time to move on without him?

 

Ya.

[Batya33]

Instead of analyzing his feelings and what he says about his "connection" to you, make a mental or written list - in objective language - about his actions towards you. Decide whether those actions are caring/loving. Watch the feet, not the lips.

[iwanttobehappy]

Instead of analyzing his feelings and what he says about his "connection" to you, make a mental or written list - in objective language - about his actions towards you. Decide whether those actions are caring/loving. Watch the feet, not the lips.

 

Wow...I like that...a lot. Very good point!