Hi Everyone,
So I'm struggling with a recent break up (it’s been nearly 2 weeks) and I need some advice on whether this is all my fault due to having anxiety. I'm really beating myself up, we have a lot of history so I'm going to write it as a timeline as I feel the details of our past are important. Sorry it’s really long!
August 2012 - We started our relationship (him 20, me 23). The relationship was wonderful, fell in love very quickly he was an amazing and loving boyfriend.
May 2013 - He cheated on me drunkenly on a night out (went back to somebody's house and went as far as you can go without having sex). He didn't tell me but I have my suspicions at this point, I ask him the question and he completely denies.
October 2013 - I find an email on his phone to a girl he has been talking to on a video chat site. I confront him, he apologises, says it was a onetime blip. I forgave.
June 2014 - Relationship is good (I still don't know about the cheating in May but my anxiety about it has grown consistently, I think about it pretty much every day but tell myself I’m being stupid. We've had numerous conversations but he completely denies that anything happened). I take it that there's something wrong with me and we move in together, I feel happy.
July 2014 - He goes on a boys holiday and whilst he’s away I find conversations on his laptop from the early days of our relationship where he has been on Skype webcam chatting to girls inappropriately and sending them inappropriate images. When he gets home I confront him and he says he was stupid, he hasn’t done it in ages, it meant nothing and it was a substitute for porn. I forgive.
My anxiety over the cheating incident in May 2013 then heightens ALOT to the point where I feel I need to go to the doctors, he still denies.
October 2014 - One day I come in from work and tell him that I know he's cheated, he confesses to the May 2013 cheating and then a few days later also confesses to kissing 2 girls on holiday and attempting to kiss another.
I'm understandably absolutely devastated, having just moved in together my whole world has come tumbling down. You may think I was silly for moving in with him but at that point I was being told he'd done nothing wrong and believed it was all in my head.
I speak with my family who know him well, they advise me to stay with him due to the May 2013 being so long ago and to not let the meaningless holiday kisses break us. I don't think they quite understand the extend of the lies he told me about the May 2013 cheating (he told me hundreds of times that he hadn't cheated and watched me get very poorly) but they advised that he obviously didn't want to lose the relationship over a meaningless one night thing.
I stay with him for the next year, he was unbelievably remorseful and apologetic and went above and beyond to make it up to me and truly believed he loved me very much. But I found it very hard, I became very untrusting, looking in his Facebook, phone, wanting password etc. We had some lovely moments in this year but always tinged with a bit of sadness.
October 2015 - He left me saying that he couldn't do it anymore. I was devastated. Within a month or so of me pretty much hounding him he deletes me off everything and wants nothing to do with me.
April 2016 – We ended up speaking over text and he mentions that he needs to talk to me. He comes to my house and confesses his love, says he wants me back and he wants our old life back, he’s very emotional. He is seeing somebody from work at this point but its early days.
I say that I'll think about it but that he needs to call it off with the other girl. He doesn't do it straight away and I get quite upset and mad at this which pushes him away again.
April 2016 to July 2016 – In these 4 months he can't decide what he wants (a relationship with me or something new with the girl from work). He goes back and forth between us a few times. Calling it off with her and then coming back to me and so on. This happened 4 times in total.
August 2016 - He finishes work girl for good and we 'see how it goes' for a month. He's reluctant to say that he definitely wants a relationship with me and just wants to see how he feels. Just writing this makes me realise how ridiculous it was for me to go along with it. I should have told him where to go and come back if he decides for sure. He's off and distant with me at times, I never know what he’s thinking and I feel very insecure.
September 2016 - he ends it saying he's not in a position to put his all into the relationship.
April 2017 - We see each other in a local pub and he texts me when home. He wants to make it work again. I said I would meet up with him to talk.
We met up and he was very genuine. Apologised whole heartedly for everything that had gone on (bear in mind we’re a bit older now and more mature) and said he finally knows what he wants and that he’s sorry it took him a while to get there. He said he hadn’t been in a good place the previous time but was happy now, except there was me missing.
I agreed to see how I felt.
Well from then on I was completely woo’d - I got concert tickets bought for me, flowers on my door step, presents, love letters and lots of other thoughtful lovely things. It was lovely and he did everything that it took to make me see that he was genuine and wanted this.
We began a relationship and I was happy. He lied to me quite incessantly about a few things I asked him about the time we were apart (I wanted to know when the last time was he’d slept with someone before we got back together and if he’d slept with a mutual friend of ours that I’d had suspicions of, they were the only things I wanted to know). He lied a lot until he eventually confessed, this didn’t get us off to a good start. My family advised to ignore these silly lies as they’re about stuff when we were single which we shouldn’t have been talking about anyway. He said to me he thought I may not want him if I knew the truth.
Then a few months after this I started to develop what I can only describe as horrendous anxiety. I somehow convinced myself that since we got back together there was something to hurt me/something I didn’t know/something he was lying to me about. I never ever brought up the previous cheating in our first relationship nor did I talk about any of the girls he’d slept with in the break up, it was just an over whelming fear that there was something in this relationship that would hurt me.
I would get so worked up I’d feel sick to my stomach but kept telling myself it was my anxiety and I needed some help with it. I went to the doctors and got some tablets and tried some over the phone counselling which was a bit rubbish.
It got to the point where perhaps 2/3 times a week I was asking him whether there was something to hurt me/something had happened/ had he kisses someone on a night out. I would never be mean/shout or argumentative more very fearful in how I was saying it but I still think it verged on a little abusive the amount of times I was asking. But it was just eating me up inside so I felt I had to speak about it.
He was extremely reassuring at first and very very patient which I appreciated a lot. He swore down on family members lives he hadn’t put a foot out of line, which looking back I firmly believe, but at the time I just could not get it out of my head.
If I had my rationale head on I knew there was nothing to worry me but if I was ‘in one’ it was all consuming.
So much so that he ended it 2 weeks ago (just after I’d been to the doctors and been referred for in person councelling so I was genuinely starting to see the light). I told him anxiety was treatable and asked if he could bare with me until after my treatment. He said he knows I’ll get better but he’s ‘scarred’ by all the questioning and doesn’t want it anymore. To be fair to him he did put up with it for around 5 months and put up with A LOT.
I now feel awful that I pushed him away like that when we finally had a shot at being happy.
I guess I’m just writing on here to get some outside perspective, I lived through all of the above so it’s hard for me to see it clearly. I feel like I ruined a chance to be happy with the person I love after we’d finally grew up and put all of the rubbish behind us.
Looking back I don’t think he’d done anything to hurt me in this relationship nor do I think he would have done anything going forward. But he just doesn’t want the relationship no matter how much I tell him that I just needed some outside help with my underlying issues.
Any opinions welcome and sorry it’s so long! Has anyone been through anything remotely similar?