DP has accused me of cheating on him

[AllFakeFurCoatAndNoSpanx]

On phone and crying snotty mess so apologies for errors.

DP and I due to get married in 4 weeks. He's been withdrawn and cold to me for a few weeks, since returning from working away over the summer. I thought he was getting depressed, and yesterday asked him if he'd consider going to a GP about it. I'd also noticed that whenever any wedding stuff came up he sort of closed down, so I asked him if everything was okay with us (he was excited and involved in wedding planning before.)

His response was to say he wanted to go to Relate to deal with the "fact" that I cheated on him back in 2013 and try to work through my betrayal.

I have not ever cheated on him. I feel completely bewildered and hurt.

When I sat with my mouth hanging open and asked what the fuck he meant, he launched into a long convoluted list of "evidence". I was crying and in shock so I am not sure I have this all right but this is the gist...

1. I had a positive result for chlamydia in 2013 after getting a screen as part of investigations into UTIs. I was gutted at the time and cried when I told him, as I felt awful that I had an STI and would have given it to him. He has taken this as a sign of guilty conscience.

1. His test came back negative, which he says must mean I had caught it only recently, and not before we got together (in 2009.) Ergo had slept with someone else.

1. I have a gmail email, and unbeknownst to me (or him) a full stop in your gmail address doesn't matter so you can send with or without. Once I sent him an email without the full stop in...so he thinks I have a "secret second account" for, I don't know, organising secret shagathons.

The gmail thing is batshit and easily explained so he gets that. The chlamydia thing I cannot explain. I KNOW I have been faithful. I can only think mine was a false positive? Or his a false negative?

This is completely and utterly out of character. I thought we were in love and happy, bar the last few weeks of coldness from him. I am on a train to my sister, devastated and confused.

The audio book is an excellent idea. If you need to avoid disturbing people, you can get a pillow speaker, which only you can hear. I found it useful to have a playlist of happy, inconsequential pop that I could put on in the day as a kind of soothing background noise.

I agree with people saying: get up, get going, think about some of the practical stuff. This will hurt like hell, because part of your mind won't be in the present and dealing with everything that is happened, and you need to drag it into the here and now and make it accept what is happening. It is better to go through the extreme pain in the short term than to do the long, drawn out death-of-a-relationship thing, where the end is the same but it takes months of lower level misery.

Think about seeing a counsellor. It really, really helps.

You're so brave.

The chlamydia is clearly a red herring here. Even if it was a genuine positive, he has known about it since 2013 you are now 4 weeks off your wedding and suddenly it's a big issue. It's about something else, and whatever that something else is, his way of handling it is the reason you shouldn't marry him.

I am so sorry you are going through this

For whatever reason, he does not want to get married but isn't man enough to admit it so is using nasty lies to create the outcome he wants.

Look after yourself

Thank you. I don't feel brave at all. I feel so lost.

I got up but didn't get dressed in time for the school run. I did get to see my little niece in her school uniform (she just started year 1) looking so grown up!

They adore him. He is so good with them, and my other nieces my brother's daughters. Before he went mad, he was just wonderful. And it can't be early infatuated love goggles talking, because it was eight years. Eight years of being lovely. I felt so lucky. I was so happy.

As for practical stuff, we don't have any joint accounts though his name is on council tax etc. His name is on the house deeds, but I put all the money in because I sold a book and put the advance straight into the house. He has a 10% stake. I have a joint tenancy thing that states the 90/10 split. If I end up having to move I will be furious. I bloody love that house.

Things keep coming back to me about Weds and yesterday. When I went back to the house after being sent away from work and wandering around crying on the phone to my sister, he said he had seen me on the way to a tutor meeting but hadn't wanted to disturb me. So he watched me sobbing on the phone and just kept walking. And when I came into the house, he was just working on his PhD as though everything was normal, whereas I was shaking so badly I couldn't write on the whiteboard.

So I think he just doesn't love me anymore.

We have a counsellor at my school that I think staff can access too though of course pupils get priority.

I'm so sorry he's done this to you but thank god it was before you got married or that house would probably be 50%his if you were married. He's a massive shit.

He has completely disconnected from you. That suggests all his emotions are now engaged elsewhere.

Don't bother with counselling he clearly is not interested. It will be a stick to beat you with about your 'cheating'. You can't win telling him or anyone else you didn't so don't waste your time trying to make him see this.

Ask him to arrange to move out as soon as possible and see what you can do financially to buy him out. Cancel all you can that is booked for the wedding. Any deposits/insurance you can claw back can go towards his 10%.

Keep going OP, you have dodged a major bullet. I'm sorry to say this's but my family was replete with womanisers and every damn one of the said their wives were cheating. My grand father send my nan to an early grave with the constant accusations.

Any man that does this will not change, don't believe any fake remorse.

Oh you poor love.

Echoing everyone - he's cheated, wants to call out all off but doesn't want to be 'the baddy'. He could have just been a grown up and talked to you. Yes, there would still be tears but 'we agreed to part' would have been far better. Had similar happen to me - turning cold, disconnected, didn't care that I was sobbing my heart out...it's over for him, and was ages ago. You still have to grieve your way out. Hold your head high, you will get through this.

He's checked out of the relationship I'd say.

My daughter has a positive result recently after being with a partner for 10 years. Nobody could explain it and neither have them have cheated

Oh, OP, what a lovely family you have. If you're in London, try and get out in the sun today and just have a walk in the sunshine for an hour or so.

He sounds so strange. Can your parents/ sister speak to him? Ask him what's going on? See how he is with them? He sounds so cold with you, it's too painful for you to communicate with him, I think.

I think he's done something/ realised something (maybe he's gay, maybe he 'fell in love' whilst away, maybe he just doesn't want to get married) and can't talk about it because he feels so awful/ is having a breakdown. That would more match his profile of being lovely for 8 years. He will be totally disconnected from you if he is totally disconnected from himself. The way he is handling it is not good, awful for you but also quite damaging for himself. He needs to open up about what's happened or how he is feeling and stop talking about stupid chlamydia.

I'd tell him this:
*I can't marry you now. You don't trust me. And I'm very shocked about that. You have insulted and deeply wounded me. You are convinced I have cheated on you when I haven't. The very fact that you are saying these things just before we get married, and haven't ever before mentioned any of these thoughts and assumptions you've carried around for years, suggests something strange is going on with you. If you didn't want to get married you should have said, instead of bringing up these ridiculously trumped up charges against me, the woman you love. Presumably, you hadn't come to your 'conclusion' about what sort of person you think I am when you proposed that we marry. I am beyond hurt and insulted. And I can't help wondering whether you have done something you are ashamed of, and are projecting it onto me.

He sounds flaky, at best. Not decent husband material.

So sorry

Agree totally that th stir thing is a red herring. It's like he's punishing you for clipping the car in 2010, or burning the turkey last Christmas. It's done, was done years ago and he's getting cold feet, whether he's cheated or not.

Just re counselling, for you I mean, perhaps find someone independent of work. It might be awkward to spill everything about your personal life to someone connected to your employer.

There are plenty of counsellors around if you need someone to talk to.

Your family sound great by the way. Lean on them in the first instance.

xxx

Hi op, u believable what your dp is accusing you of.
What would hurt most is he seems to be OK with dumping this distrust and unfounded allegations at you and he isn't upset or distraught at the thoughts he invented in his own head about the woman he wants to marry in a few weeks.

He's left you with the internal turmoil knowing you haven't done that which you've been accused of!
He has emotionally detached himself from this.

There is no relationship or marriage without trust and how could joint counselling session prove he trusts you now? he'd believe a stranger in Relate over his long term partner/fiancee?

A family member of mine had same accusations thrown at her. Her ex wanted her to jump thru hoops not so he could believe she hadn't cheated but just to make her beg over n over. He was quite sadistic, in end she thankfully dumped him after finding messages to other women.

*unbelievable

My ex fiance had 3 long term relationships before me.

They all left him. He told me that even if he isn't happy, he would never leave someone.

So he made it so that THEY left HIM. He turns out to be the good guy, the hurt guy, while they appear to have broken the relationship.

I was the 4th!

allfakefur - I want you to think, for a second, about how you'd react if you saw a friend of yours crying. What would you do? Could you pretend it wasn't happening? Ignore it? Let them suffer on their own? Or would you have to go to them, like a calling, to comfort them and find out what was wrong?

Then think about what your partner has done. There's a complete lack of empathy or sympathy for you there. For some reason, he's been able to tune out on you - on your pain, on your voice, on your perspective. He can clearly look at you and feel nothing.

How far is he through the PhD? That piece of information slightly changes my view of this. I'm not saying that people are wrong that he cheated on you, but there is another possibility here - that he's having some kind of breakdown. Doing a PhD is not like doing anything else: it is incredibly isolating, lonely, and it will break even very strong people, let alone those who are mentally vulnerable already. I've known a strange number of people end relationships towards the end of one; it seems to be a strange kind of a pattern, part of a weird and unhealthy transition undergone by the kind of slightly one-eyed, obsessive person who takes on a project of that type (I have one myself, so I'm not criticising others, though I managed to get through mine without breaking up relationships).

Does this change anything for you? Absolutely not. Whether he's done this while unwell or while in total health makes little difference, because you now know he's the kind of person who could do something this self-centred and cruel. I suspect that he is really quite lost as a person right now, but he's taken it out on you in the worst possible way. He's crossed a rubicon and he can never, ever take back what has happened. It might sound like it would be amazing right now if he were to fall on his knees in front of you right now, admit he's had a breakdown, and beg you for forgiveness. But in reality, you would for years be repairing this damage, looking over your shoulder, wondering when it was going to happen next. And you wouldn't be able to get married - ever - without fearing this. It's a hell of a thing to have to do, and the burden of the work would fall on you as the injured party.

The absolute key thing is this. His behaviour here is appalling. It could be for any one of the several good reasons folk have offered up here.

But that is only part of it. The core is that you would be a fool to marry someone who can behave like this. Who can be so hideously cruel. Who would choose to deal with an issue like this. Who is, as you say, one minute a normal wonderful partner adn the next a vengeful stranger.

Don't marry a person like that. Don't end up as a parent with a person like that!!!

Thank god this happened before you married.

I hope you can buy out his 10% somehow - you could stay, and it would certainly be the cheaper way of splitting the house than an actual sale which could benefit him too.

Prepare for him to backtrack on this btw.

And second btw - I think it's likely he is cheating. Or has had his head turned and isn't sure about the wedding now but wants it to be your fault.

there is another possibility here - that he's having some kind of breakdown. Doing a PhD is not like doing anything else: it is incredibly isolating, lonely, and it will break even very strong people, let alone those who are mentally vulnerable already. I've known a strange number of people end relationships towards the end of one; it seems to be a strange kind of a pattern, part of a weird and unhealthy transition undergone by the kind of slightly one-eyed, obsessive person who takes on a project of that type (I have one myself, so I'm not criticising others, though I managed to get through mine without breaking up relationships).

So did I and so did every single one of the many people I know who have PhDs. I don't recognise any of that description I'm sorry. Yes it can be really stressful but just for the record, the majority of people who complete their PhDs manage to do so without wrecking all personal relationships and becoming strange/weird/unhealthy in most of their dealings with the world. If he were kicking off about never getting time to study, being unable to sleep or concentrate etc I'd say yep, but the level this is at - I think saying 'PhD stress' is just not acceptable. If his PhD is at the root of this - he needs to not be doing a PhD and OP needs to leave him regardless, because he's a cruel nasty oddball.

I get what you are saying but it doesn't wash.

Allfake

Glad you had loads of support from your wonderful family.

You are right, none of those messages will get you anywhere just now. He seems completely detatched, ignoring you crying and shaking and just getting on with whats important to him.

What a horrible way to end things, he is a coward and you are well rid of him.

Let your family take care of you and then decide what to do next, get your ducks in a row and tell him to jog on.

Take care.

He is showing you who he is.
Take note and do not marry him. Get him out of your house and your life. No decent person would put someone they loved through this shit 4 weeks before marrying them.
Look after yourself.