Hello,
I’ve been with my dp 8 years, he’s 33 and I’m 30. Mortgage but not married and no kids.
In August 18 my partner started cycling with a woman from work. By September 18 he told me she had sent him some strange text messages. When I read them, I thought they were subtley putting the feelers out for him to see if he might like her. She was single but around 15-20 years older than him. He concluded it was strange but I was reading into it and he just wanted to forget it. However I became preoccupied and wanted him to stop cycling with her. He felt this was controlling and became resentful. For the next 3 months we had huge rows, unlike anything before. I felt like he didn’t care how I felt and he felt I was controlling. I lost all perspective of the situation as I knew my dp wasn’t interested in her, had been honest with me and hadn’t done anything wrong. I just didn’t like the fact he wouldn’t stop seeing her “for me”. He did stop though because winter came. By Christmas we had stopped arguing.
In January 19 I found out that he had met a new co-worker in November in the midst of all our arguments. She worked on the same floor in a large open plan office, but not in the same team so their paths would not naturally meet. They met on a training day and spent lunch together and two other people they knew and the 4 of them went for a walk. A few days later my dp saw her in the kitchen and got chatting. He asked if she wanted to go for a walk with him as he was just off to go for a walk (he would walk into the local town most days). She said yes so the two of them went for a walk. A few days after that he sent her a private message using their staff intranet asking if she wanted to go for a walk. From that point on they would message each other on the staff intranet and go for walks twice a week.
This went on for two months totally unbeknown to me. The first time I became aware of her existence was in December I went on his Instagram and she came up as a recent search. I didn’t know who she was and so just assumed she must be someone he used to know. I didn’t ask him about it.
Then in January I went on my google history and realised my dp had used my computer and had been searching for her online and then wiped the history but it had saved to my google history. I then realised she worked with him. I went to his work and confronted him, at this point just to find out why he kept searching for this co-worker that I had never heard of. He then told me they were good friends, went on walks twice a week and he hadn’t told me because of what he perceived my reaction would be due to the cycling woman. He said he had feelings for her, then later said he didn’t, he just said that because I was saying it to him over and over again.
He never had her phone number so I have no way of knowing what any messages said between them. He said he didn’t want her like that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I kicked him out for 4 days. In that time he told me he messaged her on the staff intranet saying “I can’t message you anymore I’ve got issues with my girlfriend which I need to resolve”. He said she replied “okay hope you get things sorted”. He has now stopped seeing her and calls me every lunch time.
I am consumed by it. It’s really opened my eyes to how stupid I was about the cycling woman and I don’t care if he sees her. But I just feel broken that he could have lied to me like this and pursue someone else.
It’s been 6 months and I decided to forgive him as I could see my part in all this and I don’t know how things would have been different if I hadn’t become some insecure and stupid about the cycling woman. I had always wanted to get married but it hadn’t happened because we couldn’t agree on the kind of wedding we wanted, and were recovering from house renovating financially. But now we had compromised on the wedding and decided to go abroad and he has bought a ring.
Do you think this will get easier? Am I being silly to still be preoccupied? I fear for something like this happening again in the future.