Right, here goes.
Bf has been weird for the past few months. Distant and a bit checked out. Sometimes it really seemed like he didn’t like me anymore. He stopped inviting me to events with his friends, and the last one I went to (a bbq in the summer) his best mate was really odd with me. Went from proper ribbing (he’s the kind of guy who reserves the worst insults for his closest friends) to being all smiley and polite like I was a stranger.
A few weeks ago I found out bf was doing drugs, when previously he was very anti them. He lied about it to my face. Made me suddenly think - well what else has he been lying about? So I checked his phone.
Turns out he’s been cheating on me with multiple women. Summer 2021 it was with a girl in his friendship group. Then some random girls who it looks like he met online or on nights out. One night stands mostly. Then this year he had a longer fling with a girl he knows through work, and then most recently an American friend of a friend. The American one he’s been saying he loves and wants to be only with her. The work girl is a staunch Catholic who he got pregnant and pressured into having an abortion only in the last couple of weeks.
To all of them, and all of his friends, he’s been lying about me saying the most upsetting things. They all know about the American and they’re all “really happy” for him. He’s been saying I’m a gold digger and have been abusive, and that I’ve refused to have sex with him for years. We went on holiday not long ago and he told them all that we had separate hotel rooms, that I picked fights with him, and that we spent the holidays entirely apart. Utter, utter nonsense. I couldn’t believe what I was reading (although it does explain why he would only take selfies while we were away and not let me take any pics with him).
He told them he broke up with me straight after the holiday, that we’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms since, and that the only reason he hasn’t made me leave yet is because he cares for me too much. One of his female friends in particular keeps saying “kick the gold digging b*tch out haha”
So they all think I’m this evil witch and so have actively applauded his cheating (although I think they only know about the American, not the pregnant girl).
I feel sick and I don’t know what to do. Obviously I’m outta here as soon as I can afford to get a flat but I’m utterly winded that he’s managed to make all his friends (and possibly family too??) think that I’m the bad guy in this.
He has cheated before - we broke up for 18 months 6 years ago when I found out he’d been on Tinder and and was sleeping around when he went for work trips. He has always denied it despite me seeing all the messages. So yes, I feel really stupid for getting back with him and believing he’d changed. From what I’ve read I think his friends don’t know about that either and think I was just being fickle or something when I ended it back then.
I’m holding it together and I don’t want to confront him yet. I want to make him pay.
He’s so innocent looking and a real life-of-the-party type; he knows how to make people like him (my mum LOVES him and begged me to take him back after he cheated because she was sure there must’ve been some mistake - “he would never do such a thing”). When he first cheated it felt so bizarre because I trusted him so completely that it never occurred to me that he might do that. It never occurred to me to be jealous, ever. He’s really good at playing the innocent and pretending to be someone he’s not.
I want all his friends, his various girlfriends, and his family, to know he’s a lying cheating gaslighting scumbag. I’m not usually a vengeful person, but this is a different level.
What the f* do I do?