Would you forgive?

[zooloo88]

Looking for some other people's opinions on my situation as honestly I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and hard place trying how to move forward, been with DP 2 years and just had a baby, I found out last year he was dirty messaging another woman at the start of our relationship apparently before our relationship - the content of these messages was awful like really nasty stuff I then find out this woman is so much older than him (he is late 30's) and it's all just never gone away I can't forget about it since then our sex life has taken a nosedive - non existent initially we blamed the pregnancy however we have just gone from having an amazing Sex life to a non existent one. Well today we had a tiff and he admitted it was during our relationship in the first few months! Now my predicament is he has changed and out so much work into being a good decent man which he wanted to be - that I guess what I'm looking for is what would you do? I can't seem to erase the messages I've seen from my mind and I feel so rubbish about myself that he can talk to this woman like that yet we have a non existent sex life however I love him !

Why would you want to forgive him and stay? Apart from the rather nebulous concept of “loving him”, how does he make your life better or enrich your days? You don’t have any sex life, ultimately because you don’t trust him; and in an argument he thinks it’s a good idea to throw in your face that he was essentially unfaithful - not out of guilt and thinking you deserved the truth but out of spite and wanting to get one over on you. I wouldn’t find some crossover with somebody else during the early dating stage a dealbreaker personally; but the dealbreaker for me would be the spitefulness.

You might love him now but just two short years ago you’d never set eyes on him. That’s nothing. You managed without him then, you’d manage without him now if you chose to leave, you’d fall in love with somebody else again.

The fact that there was crossover aside, this doesn’t sound like a healthy or functional relationship which can go the distance. You couldn’t have sex with him because you couldn’t stand the idea that he’d sent sex messages to somebody else before you met. If you couldn’t get over that, how on earth are things going to improve now you know it wasn’t only before you met?

The trust has gone.
And you 'love', the IDEA of him not the reality of him.
How could you love the reality of someone who has basically broken you?
If there's no trust there's no future.
Cut your losses OP.
You can't fix the unfixable.

What's to love? He's a liar and a cheat and that won't be changing. Don't wait around until he has his next affair.

Why do you love him?

I feel so rubbish about myself that he can talk to this woman like that yet we have a non existent sex life however I love him

You need to understand, and really understand, that this is a nonsense way of thinking. He did wrong, so you feel rubbish about yourself. Is it because he chose her over you? If so, that means that you put a large part of your self esteem in his judgment of you. Your self esteem is meant to be about how you judge yourself.

You seem to think you should just be able to erase your negative judgment of him (for doing an actual bad thing), and yet you're holding on to what you perceive to be his negative judgment of you. Can you see how messy and confused this line of thinking is?

I suspect that your self esteem is taking a stand. Nobody posts this kind of post if they think that MN will come back with a resounding 'You are wrong, you need to forget your feelings and move forward with your lovely man.' I think what you're looking for is validation of what you feel: He did wrong, and no, you shouldn't bloody well forget your feelings because they're damned important.

The question is, if your self esteem is inside you, and that's the kind of thing it's saying... Why aren't you listening to it?

Not an easy decision when you have a young child together, do you feel confident now that it's stopped? Has he deleted her from his phone and social media? The sex I'm not sure if that's more you or him not wanting to but if he hasn't made to feel secure by erasing her and if hes not wanting to be intimate then maybe think if you really want to put up with that.

So Mumsnet always state that you should date a few before you decide who you want to settle down with. So I guess, he was doing that too.
So that was early days?! You've had a baby, most people's sex life drops when a new baby arrives.
But he's shown you that he has tried really hard with your relationship since this time.
I think that you need to work on your own self belief too. I think that's what is at the heart of your issue. .
Just make time for each other and quit worrying about something that happened months and months ago.