Should I believe the gossip that my lover is a cheat?
AFTER six years, I fell out of love with my husband; we divorced in 2017.
There was a lot wrong, we had a poor sex life (I craved passion and creativity). But I did love being married and loved him for many years, especially at the start.
After the separation I masked my feelings with inappropriate men and alcohol. He remarried. I sought therapy to manage any regrets/anger and sadness.
After one year of separation (at the end of 2015), I met someone online. He lived three hours away, but I travelled to see him most weekends — falling for his carefree attitude, passionate personality and exciting sex. After six months, he asked me to move in — an exciting new romantic adventure. We had a few bumps in our relationship — women kept appearing on his phone (casual past hook-ups mainly) which I excused as we were new still and like me he had a past which he didn’t hide. After six months of living together, I tried to look at his phone. Then I was contacted by a nameless person on Facebook saying he was cheating. I did some digging, confronted him and he denied it.
Other incidents followed, then in April he didn’t come home until the very early hours of the morning. He phoned from a taxi at 5am saying he’d passed out on a friend’s sofa. Then three weeks ago I had another message on Facebook, from a woman who claimed he was with her the night he was so late home. Lots of details given, in many messages.
What’s so hard is that what she said doesn’t match the man I love. We have such a strong relationship, sex is plentiful and I can’t understand why he would. Do I believe him or her? It’s bits of both.
He denies sleeping with her, although I’ve said that, if true, I’d rather know now than later. After three weeks of ups and downs, we went away and had a lovely time, but now I’m having vivid dreams about rage and anger. Although he’s really trying to reassure me, I just cannot shake it.
I don’t know what to do. A friend says if I choose to stay, that’s my decision and no one is perfect. But I don’t want a relationship with someone who disregards my feelings for a thrill. He says if he wasn’t happy, he’d leave.
This is the part I don’t understand. He’s such a moral man, raised by liberal parents, works in the social sector and holds strong views on things such as infidelity, lies etc.
The man I know isn’t the man this woman is making him out to be. Am I blind-sided by idealism? Will I become a nervous wreck (never knowing where I stand) or get over this and move forward?
ROSA
This is one of those times when i must inform readers that your uncut email would have filled the whole double-page spread of this newspaper, with no advertisements. it took me ages to edit, so i have time as well as information behind my response.
You give no indication of your age, although i know you have no children and that your husband was nine years older.
The impression i gain from your very long letter is of an impetuous, easily-bored, loving, sensual and needy woman who has always been ready to bury her reservations about relationships with men because having a romantic partner was more important than anything else.
For example, after knowing this man for only six months (just weekends), you gave up your previous life, moved into a house ‘not up to my previous standard’, accepted a lower income (your own as well as his) missed your friends and family, and so (in effect) put yourself at the mercy of somebody you didn’t really know, and soon came not to trust.
There are strange contradictions within your letter which indicate somebody who is perhaps (forgive me) a wee bit mixed up.
For example, you fell out of love
with your husband and ditched him, yet say you loved him and were actually devastated when he quickly got a new partner and had children. So he found happiness while you had therapy, sex and booze.
With the new man, you thought that ‘simple pleasures’ would please you and yet you clearly missed your old life.
You liked being married before, want it again, say you feel ‘loved and cared for’, yet also tell me this man is bad at communicating his emotions.
For a while now, you’ve been tormented by messages from women who claim to have slept with him, yet you still refuse to believe them. Are these communications malicious and if so, why? Or are they true?
He calls you ‘selfish’ for being worried — when after four years you have every right to be suspicious, annoyed and upset.
This ‘moral man’ doesn’t sound that thoughtful and upright to me.
Perhaps the disconnect between the one described in the messages and the one you think you know comes because people are complicated, while your romantic views have been pretty simple, and now you are disillusioned and deceived.
Your friend is right. Nobody is perfect and it’s your choice whether you want to stay with somebody who has betrayed your trust and is making you unhappy.
You could make attendance at couple counselling a condition of you staying with him. If he refuses to do that one thing to please you, it will tell you a lot, won’t it?