Can I trust a man who has cheated on me with TWO women?
DEAR BEL, SIX months ago, my partner and I moved abroad for his work. We’ve been together 12 years and for the past two years were living in my home.
He’s ten years younger (I’m 62, but don’t look it), but claims this was never an issue: he loves me, finds me sexy.
I felt we were perfectly matched in every way, and he was the most stable, honest, monogamous man I’d ever met.
But three months ago, I found he’d been seeing another woman (his age) back home.
This began about the time he moved in with me. She’s married; and I now believe (though he denies it) that the only reason he stayed was that she couldn’t leave her husband.
So everything went on as usual (all bills paid by me), but he was constantly in touch and seeing her whenever she could manage to get away.
In messages, he told her she was the love of his life — he’d never felt like this about any other woman he’d known.
I discovered he’d flown secretly back home twice to see this ‘love of his life’ — and, incidentally, have sex with a second woman, who’d happened to catch his fancy right around the time we were preparing to relocate.
Devastated, I packed my bags. He cried, saying that he didn’t want to lose me.
I flew home. Two days later he told me he had broken up with her over the phone, and I came back.
Now, we seem to be in a renewed phase: closer than ever and he swears he’ll never hurt me again.
He promises all communication with the other woman has stopped — but he was communicating with her for several days after the ‘break-up’.
Each time I asked he looked me in the eye and said: ‘No, there’s been no communication whatsoever.’ This was a lie.
So, I have lost trust in him. He says he’ll win it back, but I can’t believe him. I’m reduced to a stressed, jealous, insecure woman, feeling ‘second choice’, looking for any opportunity to search his phone.
I remember those messages and lose sleep. Not to mention the dark thoughts of wreaking havoc in her life by informing her unsuspecting husband.
How can I move past this? And more importantly, should I?
If he called another woman the love of his life, am I foolish to believe he doesn’t intend to see her again?
A friend said I shouldn’t give him a second chance because he’ll keep repeating this behaviour. Another friend said even the worst criminals deserve a second chance.
What is your opinion? ANYA
To be honest, I feel torn. Although I feel very strongly that forgiveness is a key part of all good relationships (especially after infidelity, I have to say), warning bells are ringing in my head and I can’t help thinking your sensible friend is right to suspect he will do it again.
In your uncut email, you go into some detail about your partner’s youthful (and faithful) marriage and remark that he seems to be making up for sexual experience he lacked in his earlier life. You seem to offer this theory as a sort of mitigation — whereas to me it has little to do with the events you describe.
The man moved into your house (after a long while), let you pay the bills, then two-timed you with a married woman — and had a sexual fling with a third woman too, lying all the time. No wonder you have ‘lost your trust’. Surely only a rather foolish woman would go on believing a man who behaved like this?
I have here a similar (though much shorter) email from ‘bella’, whose new partner did something similar.
After all his excuses, she still loves him, ‘but I consider his actions a betrayal of the bond I thought we
had. How can I get past what he did — with calculated precision?’
How indeed. There is no avoiding the truth that you, Anya, have been betrayed as deliberately as Bella was. There are only two choices: to end the relationship or continue in the knowledge it will never be the same.
How could it be? You had your dream of life with the perfect partner, then woke up to the revelation that he is nothing like the man of your dreams. Having said that, it is still possible to love a flawed individual, as we all wish to be loved ourselves.
The trouble is, your sleuthing and subsequent discoveries have ruined the quality of your life and changed you, in ways you hate. You don’t want to be this shadow of your former self.
In your jealous distress, you’ve even thought of spilling the beans to his ex-lover’s husband, for which nobody could blame you — although I doubt that it would make you feel better for very long.
The central question is how you and Bella can process the reality of what happened, and move into the future in the full knowledge of what the beloved has done.
Honestly, I don’t know, as I have no idea how strong you are. An unfaithful person (man or woman) who might well repeat dishonest behaviour can be lived with, but only under supervision, like a probation order.
A central condition might be laid down — which is full and open access to all phone and email records. The true penitent will agree, and pay the price.
You could try this, before you finally decide.