Not sure how to handle this...

[catstar16]

Hello All

AIBU?

I met my partner in July 2017. So we’ve only been together just over a year. We live together and get on very well.

Tonight, I had to go on his laptop to help him with some writing (he has dyslexia) and......I don’t know what came over me but I thought I’d take a sneaky look at whether he had used the dating site we had met on since we had got together. He is at his friends house tonight.

I know...not very trusting...but I just had a weird feeling I should should check it.

Anyway...I found that he had been using it.....here’s the timeline:

1. met July 2017. In the early days, he worked away and so we only saw each other at the weekends. Fine with me.

2. September 2018 he’d viewed girls and made contact with them (well...even though we’d already had a chat about being ‘exclusive’, instigated by him might I add, I figured this wasn’t such a big deal. Still new in the relationship, less than three months

3. October 2017 - over the duration of a week, he contacted 5 pages worth of girls in the area in which he was working away. Our relationship was fantastic at this time (well...I thought it was! We were crazy about each other. He has literally contacted and viewed pages and pages of women).

4. November 2017, he speaks to me about giving up working away and moving in with me permanently to work from home. I’m happy, so is he. We’re really excited. I move out of my house share and in to our own place. At the same time, he makes contact with women on the dating site

5. December 2017 he moves in with me. No more action on the dating site (he stops contacting them end of November).

.........I’m just really annoyed at this.

I know we were newly in a relationship but it was serious.

The month that he had contacted the pages and pages of women (October), he hadn’t been home for a month. I found this to be a struggle. Once in October, after I’d gone through him promising me for three weekends he’d be back but then cancelled due to work at the last minute, I text him in a very grown up manner to say, ‘I appreciate you’re busy down there but...when we met, you said we’d be seeing each other every weekend. It’s been three weeks since I saw you and I have to tell you that I’m not looking for a long distance relationship. So...if this is the way your work has developed, it isn’t an issue...I just need to know’. His response was for me to please hang in there! Had I had known he was playing the field, I would have dumped his bot and perhaps enjoyed myself again too!

AIBU to be upset over this?

I called him tonight and his response was (he was drunk)

1. I DIDN’T MEET ANYONE! (Well...that’s OK then - NOT!)
2. I can’t remember accessing the site
3. my mates might have borrowed my laptop and used it (!)

He then got his mate on the phone to me to tell me how much he loves me and how much he speaks about me all the time 🙄

I have counted ten+ dates when he used that site...ignoring my texts but happily engaging with the women on the site! Surely...he must remember accessing that site so much.

Also a bit concerned that...there were nights that he ignored my texts and went quiet.....no doubt he hooked up with someone.

No idea how to handle this. But I’m bloody annoyed.

I guess one solution is for me to just accept it was still early days and that since he’s moved here and in with me, there has been no contact.........but something is sitting uneasy with me.

Sigh.

Anyone have any ideas? Thank you xx

May I ask what anyone else would do in my shoes? Xx

OP seems to have gone

Oh god op he's not originally from the north east is he??..

I've had something similar happen to me recently.. this is all sounding painfully familiar.

I also found out he had been using a dating site when we were supposed to be making a go if it.. I wasted a long time on that man. My god did it hurt when I found out the truth and what i really was to him. Turns out by "working away" he was in fact shagging his way around the country.. I'm sorry you're going through this

Everyone....I want to thank you so much for your messages. I am truly grateful for the support and I have taken away a fair few learnings!

So....his excuse (describing it as that because I can’t see it as a reasonable explanation) is that up until the time we moved in, he didn’t see us as exclusive!

Erm....he was the one who begged for this, not me! He was pushy from the start...too keen.

He said in a moment of madness, he figured it may not be best for us to continue dating considering he was finding it hard to maintain working away and then seeing me at the weekends and so he went on to look at women in the area he was working.

(Why did he have to do that several times when we were still together...? He could have chosen not to do that behind my back).

He says he was likely drunk and did not meet anyone.

I was furious when he said, ‘but then I came to the realisation that you were a keeper and so I gave up everything to move up here with you. I chose you’

Like I should be grateful for him having gone on those sites and then decided that wasn’t what he wanted and so he wanted me and him to have a serious go of things.

He is home. He is devastated and cannot see why I am so upset as it was early in our relationship.

He is treading ridiculously carefully around me...making a huge fuss of me....but as I was just sat beside him, I started to feel heartbroken again...I kept looking at his face and imagining his eyes looking at the computer screen with women on....I looked at his hands and imagined them typing out messages to other women.

I got up just now and said...I’m going to change rooms...he asked why...I said ‘I need some space’....he asked, ‘from me?’ And I said ‘yes’.

So typing from the bathroom :( xx

Once again I am so grateful for you all coming out like this to help me.

On one hand I’m like...well it was early on....on the other I’m like....NO! He did not have to contact other women behind my back!!!! If he wasn’t sure about being able to sustain the relationship he could have just told me....not keep me hanging on thinking everything was ok and then looking at other girls.

Gosh....my head hurts. I know what I need to do..........xxxxx

Ps I’m one of those girls that feels a bit wobbly when out of a relationship. I know you may think that this is responsible for a bad choice in men....but I do have insight in to this and have spent almost two years single before him....not just wanting to settle out of whatever it is subconsciously that craves the safety of a relationship all the time. I have only had two ‘bad’ boyfriends...him being one of them.
Just...I can feel my subconscious kicking off about the potential of being single again....hmm! Xx

Scary and heartbreaking!
I don’t think I’ll be able to trust a man again now....I honestly would never have thought he could do that to me :(xx

Op don't let the "it was early on" excuse sway you...if a man is in a relationship with you then they should be with ONLY you...that early days excuse is just an excuse to try and explain cheating...

Dreadful

Do not forgive him when he comes begging

OP. I think you need to get away from the situation. Last night, you talked about contacting your sister. Can you stay with her for a few days. He is a talker - he convinced YOU to be exclusive to him but didn't pay you the same respect. If he was unsure, than surely he woukdnrhibjibg time - why did he need to contact other women?

I would worry about him being addicted to the thrill of contacting women. If the internet can make keyboard warriors of spinless idiots well it can also make keyboard studs from wallflowers. Would he have approached 10s of women in a local bar? He claims he was drunk when he did it, when sober why didn't he delete the account? Why did he go on to do it again, change his details? Why log all the women he had contacted in file. It's sleazy.

I know it's a cliché, its not you, its him. Don't wobble at being single. Its better to be one your own and hopeful than alone in a loveless relationship.

Take care OP

So....his excuse (describing it as that because I can’t see it as a reasonable explanation) is that up until the time we moved in, he didn’t see us as exclusive!

I can easily believe this. It's depressingly common, even 'nice guys' seem to think like this now.
If you can be sure he's not lying to you now, and has been exclusive since the moment he says he was committed to you, you can probably work through this (if you want to). Still feels heartbreaking that they didn't feel the same as you from the start, but I believe a lot of ppl hedge their bets until they are sure. So chances are, your next OLD partner would be thinking in exactly the same way. I didn't, but I did fall foul of it.

It’s your choice of course, but if things were otherwise good I think ending things might be the wrong thing to do. He’s not been on it in nearly a year. It was early on when he was using it. He probably didn’t feel about you then the way he feels about you now.

I would think carefully before you throw your relationship away.

My DH treated me quite badly when we first got together (we lasted six months).

The second time we got together was a few years later and was completely different.

I’m just trying to say that people can make mistakes they later wished they hadn’t and feelings change quite dramatically.

Take some time to decide properly- don’t make any quick decisions that you won’t be able to undo once things have calmed down

I would suspect that he was extricating himself from a previous relationship during the time when he went off the radar and was working on convincing you to move quickly to exclusivity.

The behaviour that you describe about his pursuit of you - over the top gushing and rushing to move in - reminds me of men who line up another relationship before breaking another.

I think there's more to him than meets the eye. Sorry to hear that such a creep has broken your heart.

Why is always claiming to be drunk when messaging women and when confronted?

Do you believe that he's not responsible for his actions because he was intoxicated?

Do you believe that his so-called drunkeness is anything more than a way of buying time ......... to cover his tracks?

OP stay strong. Being single is a million times better than being in a bad relationship. You’ve been single before and showed you can do it and so you can again now. It will ultimately free you up to meet someone truly worthy of you.
So glad you are going to move on and allow yourself to be with a better man who you can trust. I promise you that you’ll thank yourself for this down the line.

Thank you so much everyone xxxxx

Gosh...I am being an absolute b*tch :( this is disturbing....I am never usually like this :( xx

He has been ridiculously careful around me....the house is spotless....cooking dinner....fussing around me and buying me stuff to say sorry.

Tonight...I just lost it.

It must be confusing for him...he thinks everything is fine and then I lose it.

I have had a huge angry outburst tonight. I asked him about the cheating...he got annoyed and said he doesn’t know why I’m so upset because we were newly dating and that I need to move on!!

He denies it was cheating....I shouted at him and so he left in the car for two hours. We text. He’s just got back and I’m angry....said some really personal and upsetting things about him.

It was like I was observing myself saying them....I said some really horrible things :’(

Part of me is like.,,.yeah I want to say all these things to him!! He deserves being punished and feeling in pain but the real me (I haven’t ever been like this before) is like....whoa....come on....punishing isn’t your style....don’t hurt him :(

It’ll be another night of limited sleep I think :( xxxxx I was very personal and he looked so hurt :( xxxxx urgh.

I don’t think we’re going to be able to recover from this. There is no going back after what I’ve said tonight that’s for sure

I think because I am usually quite laid back and bubbly...he’s never seen me like this...I’ve never seen me like this come to think of it!!

I'm glad to hear that you have withstood the manipulation and gaslighting. A spotless house, dinner and making you doubt yourself - they are all well worn techniques that seem to come naturally to him.

There must be a nagging thought in your mind that in the future, when he feels like you aren't giving him enough attention/sex/whatever, that he will have no hesitation in going back to the dating sites.

Please don't think that you are the bitch. You have had your heart broken and he probably needed some home truths.

This is slightly off on a tangent, but while he was away and contacting women on the site, it's a bit gross that he was contacting LOADS of women so it seems it wasn't to meet someone special, but what? For sex? For attention?

Surely to contact pages of women is weird?

I agree with Osirus.

My DH and I had a rocky start. We were both very young and involved with other people, it was messy and complicated but we chose each other.

It’s been 15 years now and we are still in love and very happy. we have two children and we have been faithful and committed to each other every day since.

I know you feel betrayed and hurt but I don’t think you should make any rash decisions while you’re upset.