I discovered the truth on Febuary 7, 2017. I guess the truth had been haunting me despite a happy relationship… there was something wrong. Funny thing is, I thought I was unhappy with not having a job or something. No idea that the root of my unhappiness, discontent and insecurity was stemming from my seemingly 'perfect' relationship.
But there I was at 2 p.m. playing a game on my phone when I got a message from "her" that read:
He doesn't love you, I've been fucking him. We talk on Snapchat he has me saved as "Braydon"
My heart was pounding and my body was shaking. It took less than two minutes to hack into the account and as my phone screen refreshed I prayed that I wouldn't find anything. But it wasn’t. I found 3 months worth of messages from her to my boyfriend detailing a 3 month long affair. I wanted to scream but my boyfriend was home with his friends. I couldn’t even scream at him.
I sobbed in my bed alone wondering how and why we got to this point.
I knew I shouldn’t torture myself with the texts but I began to read through them. Her messages to him were mostly sexual, describing their encounters detail by detail. Them planning to get together and him planning on leaving me for her. I skipped through the texts picking dates that had meaning to me, days he didnt come home. Was he responding to her or initiating the texts? How did this begin without me noticing? Was I blind? Was I that far removed from my boyfriends’s life?
The questions flooded my brain. The pain of what he had done was overwhelming. I physically got sick. I couldn’t sleep. I kept going back to the messages in my head.
Did he want our relationship to end? Did he ever love me? I’d never felt pain like this. Ever. It was straight to my core.
I loved this man. I gave him everything. I loved him dearly and we discussed our love as though it were unique, something everyone wants but not everyone receives. So how could a man that looked me in the eyes and say he would never risk losing me enter into a affair? I knew who she was too. She was his ex from before me. The woman who had put my boyfriend in jail previously for demestic issues.
I struggle with how many details I want to know. Once you know something, you can’t un-know it. He says she made him talk to her by saying she would drop the charges. He says she kissed him that day. He kissed her back. Then two weeks later he stayed the night at her house and told me he was at a friends. This continued almost on a weekly basis if not more, until the day I found the messages.
So here I am 2 weeks later. We are still together, living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed and we are still in love. When I confronted him, he acknowledged everything. At first, he tried to defend himself by saying he was doing it for us and so we would be able to have a good future with him not having any charges. Then he tried to say that I am the love of his life but he doesn’t think he is the love of my life.
It took him a full day to break down. I think he realized that he risked our relationshp, his relationship with his parents, his job and everything that is meaningful in his life for a woman that he doesn’t even care to see again. When I told him that if she wasn’t 100% out of his life then I was going to be–he didn’t bat an eye. He said he was relieved. He said he tried to end it twice. I don’t know if that is supposed to make me feel better or not? He says he slept with her for her needs, not because he wanted to.
He begged me to forgive him and said he would do anything. I believe him. I’m not saying that I trust him again. But I believed him when he said he loved me. He was self-destructing and he failed to recognize that the real devastation was to me, his girlfriend. He may live with the guilt, but I live with the pain, the endless images in my mind, the triggers that catch you off-guard and the sadness that fills my heart. I can’t sit on the toilet without thinking: my boyfriend cheated on me.
I guess I am writing this blog because I want to know why he did it. Honestly, we had (have) not just a good relationship–a great relationship. We are that couple that our family and friends try to emulate. We talked. We made love. We got along with each other’s families. We went on vacations. We supported each other through really tough times. Yes, we had our moments but we were thankful for each other. When we heard of people cheating we acknowledged how lucky we were to be with our soul mate. So why did he doubt my love? What makes a person risk a life they built with their true love for someone that is meaningless? How did he allow it to continue for months? How did he live with the guilt? How did he look me in the eye? How did he tell me to surround myself with honest and good-intentioned people if he was not doing the same? Why was his need to make her feel better more important than me?
I am hoping these questions will be answered here.
In the end, I love him. That’s all I know right now.
