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Nicole
writes, "My partner and I have been together for three
and a half years. From the start everything moved quite
quickly. I
got pregnant after only 2 months of being with him.
When I was 16 weeks pregnant, I found out I had
miscarried. This destroyed me and I
fell
into bad depression. I felt I couldn't discuss the
loss of our baby with him, so I kept things bottled up.
I didn't think he cared like I did. We moved in together
right after the miscarriage, and my
depression got worse due to being away from my
network of family, friends and work. I'd decided I
wanted to
try for another baby and my partner agreed. Me and
my partner started to argue a lot and then I started
getting
suspicious that he was cheating on me. I had never
had these feelings before, not even in other
relationships. I
confronted him, and he denied it and said he wasn't
cheating on me. However, the thoughts didn't
disappear and the arguments got worse and he started to
act more and more strange and different. We decided to
stop trying to
get pregnant until we had sorted out our problems. I
then found out that he actually had been
cheating
on me, by reading his
text messages. I knew this was wrong but something
inside was just telling me to do it, so I did. I told
him I was prepared to
forgive him and we could
move on, but he didn't want to. He wanted to be with
the
girl he had been cheating on me with. This broke me
and I begged him to stay with me. But he didn't want
to."
A few days later Nicole
found out she was
pregnant. She adds, "We'd stopped trying too late, I
guess. I told him and he wasn't happy but said he wanted
a part in the
baby's life.
I still wanted to be with him. A few weeks later after
begging and trying to convince him, we did
get back together. We were very happy for a couple
of months and my trust for him grew back. Then one day,
out of the blue, the
girl he had cheated on me with sent me an
explicit video of my partner that he'd sent her the
previous night. This, again, broke me, and I didn't know
what to do. I ended up forgiving him again and we stayed
together. But since then nothing has been the same.
I can't trust him and I have found on several
occasions that he has still been texting other women and
exchanging
explicit photos and videos. Every time he's done it
I've
forgiven him because
I love him too much to leave him. But my paranoia is
getting worse and worse. Even when he goes to the
hardware store, I think he's
cheating on me.
My self
esteem has become lower every time he does it. And
especially since I have
had his
baby. I'm
overweight and this doesn't help, but I am trying to
do something about it. But I am terrified of him
finding someone better than me and
leaving me. I feel like I'm just waiting for the day
for him to turn around and just say he's
found
someone else. I feel like he's settling for me until
he
finds someone better. He says he's
learnt his lesson
and won't
cheat again because he loves me and our son too much
and that we mean too much to him but I can't help but
think he will any way. He said it all before and still
did it again so
I
don't know what to believe. I want what's best for
my son but I can't bear the thought of not being with
him. Do I
trust that he won't do it again and are all these
thoughts about him still cheating just in my head
due to paranoia? I'm constantly accusing him of cheating
on me but he denies it. And I know it's getting on his
nerves and that I'm probably just pushing him away but I
can't help thinking it. I really don't know what to do.
Please help."
This man is a cheat and you both
know it
Obviously, your
fear is not baseless. He has
cheated, you have the
evidence for it, and therefore, you are being
completely logical and reasonable in suspecting that
your partner is
addicted to cheating. I think he is
addicted
to sex with more than one woman and if you have not
seen anything recently, it is simply because he is doing
a better job of hiding it. This man is like
Tiger Woods, a
compulsive cheat, who knows how to lie and does not
even realize what he is doing and how it maybe
hurting him and his family.
If you choose to be with a man then
trust him
Having said that, you have a choice to make. If you wish
to be with this man either because of your
child together or because you love him or because
you see no other
choice for you, then, you will have to
blindly trust him. A
relationship without trust is painful as you are
finding out. Remember he is a certain type of man and
you love him the way he is and that means you will need
to love him with all his weaknesses and shortcomings,
including his
addiction to women, and
propensity to cheat. If you simply agonize over his
behavior, fight with him every day, he will still do
what he wants, maybe do even more of it as a
revenge or to find solace, but in the process you
will go crazy. As you already know, if you keep accusing
him daily and get on his nerves, if he has any love left
for you, that too will disappear over time and either he
will leave you or just live with you like a roommate
under the same roof. I want
you to know that a woman cannot
stop a man from cheating (and neither can a man). We
are all
grownups with access to money and
technology that it is nearly impossible to
catch
a cheat. So if he wants to do it, you cannot stop
him, but if that is all you think about, then, you will
go nuts trying to catch him and turn him away from you,
if he is not cheating.
If you do not trust a man then
leave him
Alternatively, if you two are so far apart emotionally
and there is hardly any
happiness in the relationship, what are you doing
with him? Personally, I like to believe that our
partners should provide tremendous joy and
every day
should be full of happiness. If that is not the case, it
is best to do something about it rather than whine or
worry. So if you are merely
waiting for him to dump you, the problem is not
going away. It is better to be proactive and leave him.
Trust me, it is not going to be so bad. A lot of women
do it and once they do it they wonder why they did not
do it a long time ago. Go on with your
weight loss plan and once you are
single (and my expectation is that you will be much
happier and your
self esteem will go up) you can really
turn your life around. And then I see no reason why
you wouldn't
find another relationship with a man who will love
you and you will love him back like most
normal couples do. |
