Sexting

[Razorlightnight]

First post, long time lurker. Sorry for barging in and asking for advice.

A couple of weeks back I logged onto our shared iPad to see my bf's twitter account opened at his DMs. There were lots of explicit messages back and forth to one woman. Not all messages were there unfortunately - so some didn't make sense. There was a bit of chat, as in "hey sexy, how're you today" etc but mostly dirty stuff. Last message was her saying she had depression and him asking if she wanted to meet the next day to talk about it. There's nothing that confirms they had met before that (in fact more evidence points to no meeting) and, after going through my texts he and I met for lunch the day in question. I confronted him straight away. He admitted they'd been messaging since mid-Aug to mid-Oct. He said he realised it was getting silly and the messages just fizzled out.

He immediately gave me access to his phone (which I went through thoroughly) and now leaves it around the house instead of in his pocket etc. He also went through his diary for days we didn't meet for lunch (we work very close so travel to and from work together and meet for lunch pretty much all the time) and has married the dates up with work appointments he had. I've seen the emails verifying the meetings. He's been open since I caught him - as far as I can tell - and he seems extremely sorry.

I told my best friend who said 'you're naïve if you think this is it and if I were you I'd leave'. I really don't want to leave but equally I don't want to set myself up for another fall. There's no kids and, moneywise, I'd be fine alone. We rent so no ties at all really.

I thought we had an amazing relationship - no rows, lots of laughter etc. We pretty much spent every minute together.I've lost a lot of respect for him now though and I'm being really nasty. I don't really know what I'm asking here to be honest. Will he do it again? If I choose to forgive will I ever stop thinking about how betrayed I feel? Would you contact her to ask for her side of things?

Thanks in advance and sorry if this isn't that clear - I've just blurted it all out.

It's still that girlfriend comment though. Before you said that I thought it could be something you could work past

Thanks, I do appreciate your thoughts on this. Never thought I'd be put in this position so I'm not finding it easy knowing what to do next.

Sorry Razor, you are clasping at straws, how could he actually deny when you have read the messages.

Forgive - when you have just discovered, I don't see how that is possible, forgiveness will take a lot longer than that.

Not that hard really, just don't see him for a few days and have a good think about what you want to do.

It does sound though that you are going to accept and put behind but please have your radar on, he's proved to you now that he's not to be trusted so don't trust him - not until he really does prove that it was a one off!

Have a proper good think about he said, razor

Do you see yourself having a long term future with the kind of man who thinks some women are for treating well (at least on the surface...he has actually treated you like shit) and some "other" women are for dirty talk

That's misogyny, right there. Imagine a man like that having daughters. Or sons, to bring up with the same division into women who are "nice" and some that are "sluts"

what he said

I've done nothing but think for the last two weeks. I've told him that I actually feel a bit sorry for her - being sought out by people like him for one thing. Although she appeared to get as much from it as he did. All her tweets and pictures are of a similar nature to her messages to him.

It's highly unlikely that we'll have kids even if we (I) stick this out due to my age but I know that's by the by.

I agree with your best friend.

Sorry but he sounds like an idiot and like he's not trying very hard to fix things. My dp cheated and we got through it. Although if we didn't have a baby at the time I wouldn’t have. If I were in your position I wouldn’t bother tbh.

What should he be doing to show he's trying to fix things?

I'm human, I love this man - despite what he's done to me - and I have to admit that I'm a bit confused by some responses here. They make me feel like protecting him rather than running for hills. He's deleted his social media accounts and given me access to his phone. What else should he do? Not trying to be obtuse but people do clearly get over things like this. How? How should he be behaving?

I'm still utterly torn about what I'm going to do and I do appreciate all opinions.

People on here deal in absolutes. LTB is thrown about like confetti with little concept of the impact it will have if someone follows it.

Sometimes it's absolutely the thing to do. Sometimes it's not. Only you know and from your posts, it sounds like you love this man enough to want to believe him. There is not much more in the immediate moment he could do to reassure you beyond what he has already done.

What matters is what will he do to maintain that level of reassurance if you wish to go on with being together.

It reads from a post you made earlier that you put your relationship on a pedestal ( think you used to the term "I was always smug about our relationship" or something like that ). People don't stand up to being put on a pedestal. We're all human, with human failings. What makes a relationship special is recognising them in our partner and accepting them as humans rather than some kind of perfect ideal.

You can get over this if you both want to. If this is the first time it has ever happened, then it might be that you go on from here to be even stronger together than previously. Or it might not. No one can predict the future, especially not from what we read on a forum.

Go with your gut feeling, which seems to be what you're describing on your last post. I totally understand for some people this would be an absolute deal breaker. What you need to decide is whether it is for you. Does your love for this man outweigh the damage he has done ? Do his actions since make you feel like he is serious about repairing that damage and putting in the effort to regaining that trust ?

So long as he understands that once broken, trust can never really be fully regained and there will be times in the ( possibly distant ) future when you need reassurance ( and you must make sure you ask for that rather than stew on things ) then you might have a solid foundation on which to move forward together.

Good luck whatever you decide.

RLD.

Well, he can't "fix" it as such because the deed is dome and we can't turn back the clock

It comes down to whether you can live with knowing he has done this, and going forward whether you trust him not to do it again. Mainly though, whether you think he is worth it. Personally, I think no man is worth compromising yourself for but clearly many women feel differently.

OP, you have no ties with this man so I would take it very slowly and see if he makes it up to you, only time will tell really how sorry he actually is or if he is sorry he just got caught.

Fact is, the intention to cheat was clearly there, he has some making up to do I'd imagine.