Shall I dump him

[lemonadecar]

Basically I’m divorced with kids, had my bf for a year and a half. He has kids too and lives about an hour away. It’s been nice and I really fell for him. His identity was he’d been cheated on and left, and that’d happened in previous relationships too. He gave a big speech about how he didn’t like cheating and never had etc.

Except. Since the beginning he’s been constantly texting this woman who he had a little fling with before me. He really wanted her but couldn’t move it forward for some reason. But she still keeps him on a thread and he still jumps for her. I can just feel she’s always in things. I lost it early on about this and now he never mentions her.

If I were to broach it now he’d get cross and say I’m jealous. I just feel like all my trust is gone and I hate it, why would he keep doing it. It’s disrespectful.

Thanks. It’s depressing.

@lemonadecar no he wasn’t but he previously had slept with them and didn’t confess until much later, maintaining they were just a friend until one day he said oh ok yeah you’re right but it was years ago (it wasn’t as I saw messages) - he’d also arranged to meet them while we were together and picked fights to do so, or stood me up to do so, eg met them
instead of me and my work colleagues once when he was expected to join me at a work event- and after months of him having an ongoing relationship in some remote way with his ‘friend’ who was so ‘supportive’ I lost the plot and said it’s me or them you would not like it
He carried on for a while after this row but then he agreed he wouldn’t and promised to change
and for a while we got better and he tried and then he did it again with another one If his exes, who reappeared in his life, and he picked a fight so he could do this too
and arranged her to come and stay (!!!!)
maintaining she was just a friend
(She wasnt!) and that she was now married so what’s the big deal
(while asking for her to stay and talking about her to his mates as “my ex” and tells her she looked beautiful)
when I lost it over this one he promised he would change He promised me the world
Needless to say it poisoned the relationship hugely and I then was like fine, I’ll text this guy back (never slept with anyone I texted) but I’m not proud of how I let his relationships with his exes make me feel and let it ruin the whole thing with him (he’d often disappear for ages, days and weeks on end)
I don’t think he slept with anyone else but it poisoned us so much that I then became less loyal to him by talking to other guys and I became the bad guy when it was him who started it!!
yes I realise my reaction was not great but there we are, it damaged our relationship totally

So I don’t think these things end well
unless he realises why you’re upset and cuts her off completely.

I do have friends who are exes though but I’d never have a pseudo relationship ongoing with them or hide it from my partner. It’s the hiding and stuff that is a bad thing.

I was a complete doormat tolerating his behaviour and I then started to act in a way I didn’t even like myself as I was just so cross with him and lonely. I would cut your losses now as I spent years of my life hoping things would get better while they were fundamentally stuffed as he didn’t really stop what he was doing for very long.

That sounds so similar. It’s really confusing behaviour. It’s so useful to me what you’ve written, thanks

@burntbagel have you got
any ideas about why he acted like that?

Sorry for my terrible grammar and punctuation
I found out less than a year into the relationship about this other woman and it was really inappropriate of him the way he’d message and meet her and then say she’s just a friend
I feel like such a fool for staying and it made me very unhappy
he did cut her off for a while when I insisted but it didn’t last
he then blocked me while we were still together so I couldn’t see him liking her posts and stuff
I went into the relationship so full of love for him and genuinely thinking he was great and he destroyed my self esteem with this sort of behaviour
he was avoidant to the max but he tore me down with it rather than being honest
more than a year after I first realised what was going on we went away for a weekend after he’d been absent for a while and I saw her calling him at nearly midnight one night we were away
he snatched the phone away (which was locked anyway)
it never really went away but he flipped it on me and said I was the problem as it was not long after that I think I quietly started to give up a bit really
he totally forgot the things he had done to make me feel like I felt

He’d say I’m paranoid or controlling
(erm he had many female friends I had no issue with at all! Just not this one)
I put it down to him being emotionally unavailable and not wanting our relationship to progress
or maybe she was the one that got away
we had so many fights over her I just stopped mentioning her
it ruined it

I saw messages about her leaving her earrings on his bedroom floor not long before our relationship
but be claimed he hadn’t slept with her for 15 years or something
I should have left at the time
for him it was basically an emotional affair but he clearly found her attractive and maybe she had knocked him back before we got together I don’t know
he hid her from me before we were together (we were friends for years and he said he was totally single never mentioned her at all)
I don’t know why he did it he seems never happy enough in what he has
it definitely poisoned it
he needs to be no contact with her if he is serious about your relationship

Did he get together with this lady after you broke up?

It sounds so similar, the way you had great feeling and love for him and it went.

It does feel like a way of being avoidant.

Well no we kept breaking up then getting back together
he is incredibly avoidant unfortunately
all it’s done is waste years of my time and it sort of poisoned the whole thing
no he didn’t get together with her

I’m sorry you had to go through that. Well done for seeing through it, it sounds like you have good clarity now. And thank you for being so generous as to share your insight with a stranger.

Everyone’s answers have been really useful, thanks