I feel stupid and traumatized and unsure how to regain trust

I found out two weeks ago that my partner of four years cheated on me two years ago with two different women over about a six month period. Unprotected, and infected himself and me with chlymydia as a result, which was only discovered along with all this.

Not only that, over the past two weeks I also learned that he completely and atrociously lied about his sexual history prior to us being together.

The only reason I am still here is because, aside from being madly in love with him, he is doing and saying all the right things now. He even told me to come to this forum because this is not his first rodeo with infidelity. He claims he is ashamed and disgusted with himself and made the decision two years ago to never engage in this behavior again, and is prepared to deal with all my rage and instability for as long as it takes. He has without any resistance given me access to every crazy thing I've asked for, and agreed to therapy for himself and us.

The first two years of our relationship was indeed a "situationship". It started during the pandemic and we both had chaotic things going in our lives and only saw each other once a week or so. That said, sexual exclusivity was discussed EXTENSIVELY as was the clear agreement that each would inform the other if we hooked up with anyone else. I checked in with him before, during, and after this six month period of infidelity.

Additionally when we first got together he told me he had been celibate since his ex-girlfriend four years prior, due to recovering from the shame incurred from losing her due to a previous episode of infidelity. He painted a picture of himself as a celibate person recovering from his former sexual indiscretions.

In all of this I learned that from 2017-2020 he actually went on what I can only describe as some kind of unhinged sex bender where he had a series of partners without disclosing his activity to the others. Most of them were casual, but a couple of them had strong feelings for him and were shattered as a result of him ultimately ghosting them.

He stopped for a period of a year when he met me, and then picked it up again for a period of about six months without telling me with the two aforementioned partners, and then, apparently, became disgusted with himself, quit, and about six months after that made a more formal commitment to a relationship with me. All was great and wonderful and we got a house about six months ago to start a life together, and then I find out THIS and I'm traumatized.

Everything he says does make sense. He describes his need to do this as a need for validation (I've since dubbed the term "validation kink"). In all honesty in spite of his many great qualities he is a bit of a hot mess as a person existing in this society, struggling to make things work due to executive dysfunction, severe ADHD, and some kind of other neurodivergence I'm sure, and a history of trauma - but he is handsome and charming and frankly damned good in bed, so when a woman is interested he says explains it as a kind of impulse to react to it and exercise his 'power' in that arena.

It all sounds pretty self-aware and as I said, he is doing and saying everything one could hope for in a person that might be genuinely remorseful and want to recover from this.

BUT DAMN. The Lies. FOUR YEARS of LIES is what's getting to me. I asked him SEVERAL times before we committed to starting a life together whether he had been with anyone during our 'situationship' or had any other secrets to disclose because I had a sense he was hiding shit from me due to the vibe of our 'situationship' He told me 'no' time and time again. And when I caught him, his first impulse was to continue to lie and downplay the level of sexual activity, and then continued to lie when I started questioning him about his past until I went nuclear and (with his knowledge) just started snooping relentlessly through his past shit and even having conversations with women from his past. Only then did I finally wear him down and he started volunteering what SEEMS to be the whole story.

But DAMN. The lies. And how he could deliver them for so long with such a straight face.

I'm so emotionally disregulated about this right now. In my heart of hearts I FEEL like he is sincere and that he wants to make this work and wants to be a better person. But he's also shown me what a damned good liar he is. I've looked him in the eye and BEGGED him to just leave me if this is another act. Said that if he cares about me even a little, if he's not genuine and if he's going to do this just get out of my life and leave me alone so he can go fuck around as much as he wants. But he insists he wants to make it work. He's 45 years old and he says he's disgusted with who he has been and just wants to be with me and grow old with me and never do that shit again. Meanwhile, me, 48 and have never been with anyone other than my former husband of 22 years and him in my whole adult life. I'm demisexual and I can't even fathom how someone does what he did on any kind of emotional level.

I want to believe him, but I don't know what to believe. My heart says once thing and my brain says another. Every time I'm with him there are horrible mind movies playing in my head and from one minute to the next I want to scream at him or just climb into his arms. UGH.

21 comments posted: Wednesday, August 28th, 2024