Just found out partner has cheated on me, don't know what to do
08-30-2009, 10:04 PM
Sorry for the naff user name, but that's all that comes to mind right now. I also apologise for the length of this post, but it's a long story...
Up until this year, I had been in what I thought was a happy, though admittedly unusual, relationship with a guy I love deeply for eight years. I say unusual because our relationship was never that sexual and we didn't even see each other that often, because we never lived together - up until a month ago, that is, when I moved to his city as I got a new job.
We always had a very warm, loving and caring relationship based on genuine affection. At the beginning he (I'll call him David, that's not his real name) was hopelessly romantic towards me. It took a while for me to trust him, as it was my first real relationship and I was in my early 20s at the time. But a few years ago he started to come under pressure from his parents to get married, because he is from a country where all sons are expected to marry and have kids. He started to discuss with me the possibility of him having some kind of sham marriage with a lesbian, possibly involving kids. I had reservations, which I told him about frankly, but I said that in the end it was up to him and as long as he still loved me and we would be together, I would support his decision. And I genuinely meant that.
He found it very difficult to find a girl from his country, and as far as I know he is still looking, but over the past 3 years or so he stopped talking to me about that. He is now in his mid-30s and getting desperate because his parents are putting more and more pressure on them; there is no way he will tell them the truth.
This year things between us started to get worse. He used to phone me every day (he would phone me because it was free for him), but sometimes he wouldn't, and then there was a period about 3 months ago when he would be very brief on the phone with me. We had seen each other only fairly rarely, maybe every 6 weeks to 2 months or so at weekends. I had hoped long ago that he would ask me to move in with him, but it never happened and I didn't want to pressure him. Meanwhile, our unspectacular sex life ebbed away. He couldn't climax and I thought he might have erectile dysfunction. I didn't know how to handle this, other than making it clear that my feelings for him hadn't changed (and they hadn't).
Nearly 3 months ago, when I started getting seriously worried something was wrong, I wrote him an email asking him if everything was OK between us and why he hadn't suggested I go and visit him for a long time (3 months). I used to visit him because I am living with one of my parents still, who doesn't know about my relationship. After an ominously long delay, he told me he thought it was fairer if we could just be friends, but didn't really give me an explanation. I was terribly hurt and asked him to explain. Over the next couple of days we talked, and he said he just didn't want a physical relationship with me any more, even though his feelings for me hadn't changed. I tried to probe into the reasons but he just avoided the issue. I gave it a lot of thought, and decided I still wanted to be with him. I can handle the idea of a close relationship without sex (many marriages are based on much less), and he said that was fine, but there were some contradictions in what I said and I didn't know whether to believe him. At this point I still trusted him to some extent.
Since I have been living with him over the past month, his behaviour has been odd at times. I go home every other weekend or so, but the rest of the time he has avoided me a lot and sometimes suddenly seems anxious as to when I'm planning to go home. There was a week when he came home very late at night every day (supposedly due to a very heavy work schedule), and I planned to catch a train home on the Friday evening. He didn't phone me much that week, but on the Friday afternoon, around the time I was due to leave work, he sent me an email asking if I had managed to catch the train. I got suspicious, and then just 15 minutes later he phoned me for virtually the first time all week, asking if I was on my way to the train station. Then I knew something was wrong, but I acted innocent. Then I turned around and headed back to our flat, phoning him just 5 minutes before I arrived, to say I had missed the train and would go tomorrow instead. There was audible disappointment in his voice, and when I got back, he was already there (much earlier than he had been all week). He immediately went out, saying he had arranged to meet friends. Obviously I doubted this, but there was nothing i could do. The next morning, before I left, he was very cold towards me, almost angry. When I got back on the Sunday evening, he wasn't there. I phoned him, and very unusually, his phone was off. When he eventually got back, I got upset and asked him why he had been cold towards me the day before. He pretended not to know what I was talking about. I asked him if he still loved me and said that if he wanted to end our relationship, I would leave. He said I was "the only person I have ever loved in this country" and assured me he wanted us to stay together, but couldn't even look me in the eye when he said it. I knew he was lying, but there was nothing I could do - he just didn't want to tell me the truth.
Today I managed to get into an email account he uses. I'm not proud of myself, but I did it because I love him and want to know the truth, which he hasn't given me. Aside from a load of emails from girls in his country whom he has been "cultivating" in the hope of finding one to marry, I also found a passworded document and managed to guess the password. I wish I hadn't. Inside I found a letter he wrote to a man last December, in which he talked about their relationship and also about me. Apparently David and he were having a passionate relationship (he said this guy was the only person he has felt passionate about since coming to this country, which means he didn't feel that way about me). He had bared his chest to this guy about our relationship, which he said was purely platonic, but he also said he felt guilty about treating me the way he has and will always have an emotional bond with me. He told the other guy he "needed time" to get his head together. I don't know whether he's still seeing this guy, but the fact remains that he has been sleeping with someone else while supposedly still in a relationship with me.
I feel like my world has come crashing down. The problem is that I have allowed myself to become completely emotionally dependent on this guy. I am a very introverted person (I'm in a line of work where I'm pretty isolated) and completely trusted David. I would have done anything for him, and have made many sacrifices for him over the years. If I tell him what I know, he will throw me out and I will have no place to stay. I will be completely on my own, and I'm terribly frightened of that - so frightened that part of me wants to hide what I know. I must have zero self-respect to want to carry on living with this guy! He is still a little bit affectionate towards me - hugs and so on, and I feel like I need that kind of attachment because when it goes, I will have absolutely no one. I cannot face the thought of looking for someone else because I won't ever be able to trust them and the gay scene is basically just a glorified meat-market anyway, I have always shunned it. This guy was different, I really felt our love would stand the test of time. What would you do if you were me?
Up until this year, I had been in what I thought was a happy, though admittedly unusual, relationship with a guy I love deeply for eight years. I say unusual because our relationship was never that sexual and we didn't even see each other that often, because we never lived together - up until a month ago, that is, when I moved to his city as I got a new job.
We always had a very warm, loving and caring relationship based on genuine affection. At the beginning he (I'll call him David, that's not his real name) was hopelessly romantic towards me. It took a while for me to trust him, as it was my first real relationship and I was in my early 20s at the time. But a few years ago he started to come under pressure from his parents to get married, because he is from a country where all sons are expected to marry and have kids. He started to discuss with me the possibility of him having some kind of sham marriage with a lesbian, possibly involving kids. I had reservations, which I told him about frankly, but I said that in the end it was up to him and as long as he still loved me and we would be together, I would support his decision. And I genuinely meant that.
He found it very difficult to find a girl from his country, and as far as I know he is still looking, but over the past 3 years or so he stopped talking to me about that. He is now in his mid-30s and getting desperate because his parents are putting more and more pressure on them; there is no way he will tell them the truth.
This year things between us started to get worse. He used to phone me every day (he would phone me because it was free for him), but sometimes he wouldn't, and then there was a period about 3 months ago when he would be very brief on the phone with me. We had seen each other only fairly rarely, maybe every 6 weeks to 2 months or so at weekends. I had hoped long ago that he would ask me to move in with him, but it never happened and I didn't want to pressure him. Meanwhile, our unspectacular sex life ebbed away. He couldn't climax and I thought he might have erectile dysfunction. I didn't know how to handle this, other than making it clear that my feelings for him hadn't changed (and they hadn't).
Nearly 3 months ago, when I started getting seriously worried something was wrong, I wrote him an email asking him if everything was OK between us and why he hadn't suggested I go and visit him for a long time (3 months). I used to visit him because I am living with one of my parents still, who doesn't know about my relationship. After an ominously long delay, he told me he thought it was fairer if we could just be friends, but didn't really give me an explanation. I was terribly hurt and asked him to explain. Over the next couple of days we talked, and he said he just didn't want a physical relationship with me any more, even though his feelings for me hadn't changed. I tried to probe into the reasons but he just avoided the issue. I gave it a lot of thought, and decided I still wanted to be with him. I can handle the idea of a close relationship without sex (many marriages are based on much less), and he said that was fine, but there were some contradictions in what I said and I didn't know whether to believe him. At this point I still trusted him to some extent.
Since I have been living with him over the past month, his behaviour has been odd at times. I go home every other weekend or so, but the rest of the time he has avoided me a lot and sometimes suddenly seems anxious as to when I'm planning to go home. There was a week when he came home very late at night every day (supposedly due to a very heavy work schedule), and I planned to catch a train home on the Friday evening. He didn't phone me much that week, but on the Friday afternoon, around the time I was due to leave work, he sent me an email asking if I had managed to catch the train. I got suspicious, and then just 15 minutes later he phoned me for virtually the first time all week, asking if I was on my way to the train station. Then I knew something was wrong, but I acted innocent. Then I turned around and headed back to our flat, phoning him just 5 minutes before I arrived, to say I had missed the train and would go tomorrow instead. There was audible disappointment in his voice, and when I got back, he was already there (much earlier than he had been all week). He immediately went out, saying he had arranged to meet friends. Obviously I doubted this, but there was nothing i could do. The next morning, before I left, he was very cold towards me, almost angry. When I got back on the Sunday evening, he wasn't there. I phoned him, and very unusually, his phone was off. When he eventually got back, I got upset and asked him why he had been cold towards me the day before. He pretended not to know what I was talking about. I asked him if he still loved me and said that if he wanted to end our relationship, I would leave. He said I was "the only person I have ever loved in this country" and assured me he wanted us to stay together, but couldn't even look me in the eye when he said it. I knew he was lying, but there was nothing I could do - he just didn't want to tell me the truth.
Today I managed to get into an email account he uses. I'm not proud of myself, but I did it because I love him and want to know the truth, which he hasn't given me. Aside from a load of emails from girls in his country whom he has been "cultivating" in the hope of finding one to marry, I also found a passworded document and managed to guess the password. I wish I hadn't. Inside I found a letter he wrote to a man last December, in which he talked about their relationship and also about me. Apparently David and he were having a passionate relationship (he said this guy was the only person he has felt passionate about since coming to this country, which means he didn't feel that way about me). He had bared his chest to this guy about our relationship, which he said was purely platonic, but he also said he felt guilty about treating me the way he has and will always have an emotional bond with me. He told the other guy he "needed time" to get his head together. I don't know whether he's still seeing this guy, but the fact remains that he has been sleeping with someone else while supposedly still in a relationship with me.
I feel like my world has come crashing down. The problem is that I have allowed myself to become completely emotionally dependent on this guy. I am a very introverted person (I'm in a line of work where I'm pretty isolated) and completely trusted David. I would have done anything for him, and have made many sacrifices for him over the years. If I tell him what I know, he will throw me out and I will have no place to stay. I will be completely on my own, and I'm terribly frightened of that - so frightened that part of me wants to hide what I know. I must have zero self-respect to want to carry on living with this guy! He is still a little bit affectionate towards me - hugs and so on, and I feel like I need that kind of attachment because when it goes, I will have absolutely no one. I cannot face the thought of looking for someone else because I won't ever be able to trust them and the gay scene is basically just a glorified meat-market anyway, I have always shunned it. This guy was different, I really felt our love would stand the test of time. What would you do if you were me?
![[-]](https://gayspeak.com/images/duende_v3_local/collapse.png)
