Go easy on me please, discovered my partner of 8 years is a serial online cheat

[Lifeisruined]

I don’t even know where to begin really. About 6 weeks ago I asked if I could check his Facebook was set to private (I’m really funny about people seeing in to my children’s lives) and he has had NO issue handing me his phone before but this time he went grey, he was visibly shaking and I could see his heartbeat through his t shirt. He fumbled and went on to his Facebook messages, there was a work colleague and the only message was ‘If only you knew what was waiting for you on Snapchat’ he played dumb, I demanded he downloaded it - I say downloaded because I had NO clue at all he ever still used it. We used to send each other silly snaps of the dog back when we first got together so I’m talking I didn’t know he’d used it in 6/7 years.

He downloaded it and there she was sending him a nude. I went berserk, left the house and after a while came back and he admitted he’d used Snapchat to speak to her as friends only and that she was the one sending nudes with zero encouragement from him, yeah right I thought. Anyway, I messaged her, turns out she too has a husband so I also threatened to tell him. She knew who I was and replied almost instantly. She said she was an arsehole, a wanker, a piece of shit and it was all her and I shouldn’t punish my partner because of it. I didn’t believe it at first and thought she was covering for him but I made him also message her on his Facebook and ask her to explain herself, she replied again saying it was all her and ‘there was nothing more she could do to help him’. Best believe I also told her husband everything.

Anyway, I thought I could get over that, he left his job and has since found elsewhere working from home. But in the weeks he was out of work I just had this AWFUL suspicion in my gut and I checked his phone further. I won’t go in to too much detail about how this all came out but over the past 4/5 weeks I’ve slowly discovered all of his serial online cheating. Almost as though he’s been living a secret double life. I first downloaded his Reddit, it was FILLED with porn. Now I will say I told him porn was a hard no at the beginning of our relationship, that boundary has been there since the start and he agreed to it.

Unfortunately that was just the tip of the iceberg. Reddit lead me to a secret Snapchat I’d never heard of before. I couldn’t log in though for some reason and he CONVINCED me that it was because he’d already deleted it in a panic when the stuff with his work colleague came out. He said it was just messages to sex workers, where he’d try and get free content, photos he’d saved and he was part of group chats where men circulated photos of women. On his Reddit I also found his Onlyfans. Never in my wildest fucking dreams did I think he’d use Onlyfans. He denied it at first ‘NO WAY have I EVER had an Onlyfans account’ he protested. So I reset the password and there it was, a link through to his email and I logged in and saw it all. Endless subscriptions, paying for personalised content, paying for messages from sex workers and the real kicker? He’d subscribed to a friend of mine, an old neighbour of ours. He didn’t just subscribe, he pestered her for to her ‘play with her p*y’ it was honestly gut wrenching to read. He used to mock her all the time when we lived next door to her, constantly saying how desperate for fame she was and even saying ‘who’d subscribe to her honestly’ erm, you?

Over the next couple weeks I found out he’d also used Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr and TikTok to view porn. I found he’d regularly go on Chatroulette and Omegle to have sexual conversations with strangers. Then the worst for me was finding he was on Tinder for 3 fucking years of our relationship, not just at the beginning either, as though maybe he didn’t delete an old account, oh no he created a profile after we’d been together 2/3 years. I was mortified, heartbroken, sick to my stomach - all of the above. Again he used it to have sexual conversations with women he matched with.

Going back to the Snapchat, I saw he had a second email address when I logged on to his Apple account yesterday and I used that to reset the password and there it was, he hadn’t deleted it at all. There it all was in front of me. Multiple and I mean MULTIPLE conversations with every day, regular women he’d find on tinder. He PESTERED them like that fucking creepy guy you get in your inbox sometimes to send him pictures. Trying to butter them up first by calling them beautiful, messaging them sweet dreams etc at night. Saying how badly he wished he was in bed with them to wake up cuddling them ‘whilst he poked them in the back’ it was all very obvious he only saw these women as objects for sexual gratification, which is fucking disgusting I know.

Since this came out, he has started going to therapy. Has packed his PC away, deleted all his social media and all his apps, has Google family link on his phone so I can track everything he does. He gave up the job with the work colleague who sent him nudes and generally I could see he was much more present in our lives. We have 3 children together, 3 young children so it was hard at first to not give him a chance as fucked up as that sounds.

Since I found out he hadn’t really deleted the secret Snapchat and he lied about there being conversations with women from Tinder we have separated. I’m unsure yet if this can even be worked through. He’s begging me to give him another chance but I actually don’t want this, I don’t want a life where I have to worry like this. I have been fucking completely floored by this and I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start rebuilding things. Before the extra lies that were revealed last night I had started to somehow move on but I don’t know how to after this.

Thank you to anybody who has gotten this far and I know what most of your reactions will be, but I really could do with a handhold and some support through this as this man was my world. He was very much a golden retriever kind of guy, sweet, loving and kind. He always appeared to put me first, he’s nursed me back to health when I went through a major health scare a few years ago, he has been my rock. Like I said I’m devastated, totally and utterly fucking devastated.

OP, my heart goes out to you. This is awful.

I firmly believe that some people compartmentalise their lives so efficiently that they can appear to be very different people in different circumstances. So to you he was the Golden Retriever man; happy, loyal and dedicated. The other side of his personality is a lecherous sex pest who sees every woman as a shag opportunity and as something to get his rocks off to.

You will never reconcile the two. You can never trust him again, or get back that view you had of him, because you will always know what he is capable of, and that his 'other side' is likely still seeing women in this way.

I'm so sorry.

That’s quite the story.

And I could tell you similar stories about my ex who's a sex addict and compulsive liar.

My father started cheating on my mother before I'd even started primary school...my younger brother would have been 4 at the time. This was back in the 70s, so of course no internet, but it was also with work colleagues. Every time my mother found out, he'd change job and we'd move. I'd moved more times than years I'd been alive before I was 6!

He never stopped. Got worse when I was 9 and he started working abroad - he was in a full on affair within 3 months. He finally left my mother for another woman 6 months after my younger brother turned 18....my father had just turned 43.

Your partner has already proven to you that even when caught he won't stop - just like my father. Don't be like my mother, and end up wasting 23 years. He will not change.

There is 1 question you need to ask yourself even with therapy could you ever see yourself trusting him again?

The reality for majority of women given his actions is no and so regardless of family situation it is not worth staying in a relationship with someone who will constantly have you feeling paranoid and unhappy.

The whole porn is a massive no you will find issues with going forward but there is a difference between a bit of porn watching and what your DP has done. Pretty much every bloke in some way looks at some sort of porn at some point. Thats just reality. He's gone for in person, trying to establish and get very close to crossing the physical line.

I went through something similar. Mine was a labrodour . But like yours a whole other lifestyle and interests . Absolutely shocked to my core as it was never something I thought he would do to me or my family . The scope was also huge as nowadays the Internet opens possibilities like never before . Despite all the remorse , the guilt etc I have never gotten over it and will never trust or believe anything he says . And neither will you . It won't hurt as much and will fade a bit but I really don't think you can salvage this . Spillting up with young kids is scary and the idea can be overwhelming . Take your time make considered decisions and get the best deal financially for you and your DCs. Let your family and friends support you through this . You won't regret leaving him but you will regret wasting any more of your precious life with someone so unworthy of you . Don't hesitate.

I was in a relationship similiar to this OP. He was a serial liar. I gave him two chances. The first time I believed him when he said he’d just accidentally fallen into something and wanted help. The second time was after therapy and he called it a ‘relapse’. I should have left him then but if I’m honest, I was scared of what my life would look like without him. Third time (and yes, there was a third time), I was out. He begged and pleaded and promised to change but I just didn’t want to live my life like that. All these years later, it was the best decision I ever made. Life is good! It is not worth spending your days stuck in a revolving door with a man who deep down, doesn’t really want to change.

Ditto. These sites would go out of business if there was no market for them.

So sorry OP. A similar thing happened to me.
I left him cold turkey. I lost so much respect for him and now find him disgusting.
May I ask how was your sex life?

It’s been great - honestly.

It’s lacked for 2-3 months here and there after each of our children were born as I’m sure all women can understand. But when we would ‘get back to it’ we’d be doing it 3 or 4 times a week. It might be tmi but we have always been a very touchy couple and very appreciative of each other intimately, fair amount of foreplay, I’d always send him photos of myself, was always excited to show him any new clothes or underwear sets I bought, he has ALWAYS worshipped my body and loved it.

It makes the whole thing ten times more confusing to me. I don’t understand why he’s done it except for the sheer fact he’s an outright piece of shit. It’s even more frustrating, and I don’t even care to admit it, but he truly is punching. He used to say to me when we met that he’d sit up in bed and look at himself in the mirror saying ‘how have YOU pulled her?’ And yet he’s still done this to me and risked our whole future together, and for what? Some women from Tinder whose names he can’t even remember, a secret collection of random strangers vaginas. Risked it all for some fleeting moment of validation from total strangers who mean nothing to him and now he has to live with the fact he’s lost the best thing that ever happened to him and has totally forever changed his children’s lives in the process.

But that wasn’t real. You just didn’t know then.

I am so sorry OP, you must be devastated. This is his character. It is who he is, and nothing will change that. He will do it again if you stay.

I'm so sorry.

Clean break (as far as possible with children) and don't look back. Let him sit in the corner for eternity, watching fucked up porn and covered in his own semen.

The pain in this is so clear and heartbreaking. It’s awful that you not only have to grieve the relationship, but also the version of the person you thought you knew so well, who you trusted without question.

Do you have family and friends you can call on to support you irl, and do you have access to counselling where you are? A betrayal like this, where you’re utterly blindsided and had absolutely no inkling right up until the moment you found out, can have an effect on how you trust others/your own judgment in future - I hope this isn’t the case for you, but it might be worth thinking about having some support to process this, when you’re ready, if you think it might be helpful for you.

Hope you’re doing okay OP

Agree. I'm so sorry op, utterly heartbreaking.

has Google family link on his phone so I can track everything he does @Lifeisruined

This is not fair on you.
He's obviously not capable of making the changes necessary from an internal motivation.

He wants the external motivation of you constantly watching him, instead of him doing the work and making those decisions minute by minute himself.

It's not going to work until he is able to stop himself because it's the right thing to do out of love and respect for himself, op and the women he involves, rather than out of fear of being caught.

His manipulation of unassuming women is incredible. All those women thinking he was a genuine prospect/ date and he was using them to prop up his ego and sense of masculinity. God so awful

This is very odd OP and a deceit that run for a very long time. Seems to me he had everything and just blew it up in the air.
Does he know why he did it? Has he offered an explanation?

He’s only sorry that he’s been caught. He is, and will ALWAYS BE, a filthy, cheating scumbag. This is utterly grim 🤢

He will never change. Leave for the sake of you and the kids.

He’s fleetingly gone between thinking he’s messed up mentally from his childhood, porn addiction to straight up saying ‘I don’t know why I did it’.

I will admit, his childhood was grim and I’ve always felt for him in regards to it. He has told me he feels he was SA’d by his stepdad so could that have played a part? Maybe. But I genuinely just think he’s a gross man and he’s done this because he wanted to.

What a heartbreaking read.
I don't think this behaviour can be fixed unfortunately.
I wonder how this new ID system is going to impact all these porn addicted men.

My friend is a GP and told me the number of patients with porn addiction and sexual problems like death grip is astounding in men in their 20's and early 30's.
It increased massively during Covid.

I've been through this too. Internet not as widely used back then, but he tried it on with ALL my friends, my sister and even my Mum. He cheated for the whole of our 20 year relationship (unknown by me, obvs).

He was also massively punching. I know how bad it sounds, but he was 5 ft 6, a very average Joe, I was STUNNING with a gorgeous figure (not so much these days in my 50's, ha ha). We also had regular sex. Some of the women he tried it on with weren't even pretty. So it's not about that. It must be some kind of validation needed.

FWIW, I am now married to a very good looking 6ft 3 man who NEVER does any of this shit. Go figure. He's good looking - no validation needed!

Honestly, I know it's hard to leave - it took me 4 years after finding out - but it's the only way. You deserve happiness with someone who doesn't lie and cheat. I am now planning retirement with my lovely husband, and that old life seems a very long time ago (well, in fairness it was 17 years ago).

You didn't deserve this. And he won't change (mine still cheats on his partners)

Wow I could have written this because I’d say - as awful as it sounds because I’m not trying to tear other women down - they aren’t even remotely attractive. The work colleague he accepted nudes from is very unfortunate looking and the neighbour - despite being my friend - isn’t a very nice person and has no physical attributes that I know he likes.

It makes it all the more confusing and awful. It doesn’t make it any better and I know these are still real women etc. and it’s not nice to say these things but it’s very true. He keeps saying he’s not attracted to them so he doesn’t understand himself why he did it.

He is swearing blind that he isn’t going to do this again to me, grovelling, sobbing uncontrollably non stop. He has slept in his car the last 3 nights and hasn’t eaten anything. I’d like to say I’m worried or care but I just don’t. He’s really pushed me to this point now where I must prioritise myself and my children.

Thank you again to everybody for your replies, they’ve helped a ton! ♥️

Not caring about him sleeping in the car is good. You have arrived at a place where hopefully you can with no feelings of sympathy or guilt to influence you getting the best deal for yourself and the kids.

@its5oclocksomewheresurely Your Mum ??! 😤 sick bastard