Blognonymous : Cyber Cheating
Editors note: This post was submitted to me to within the ethos of Blognonymous. The writer would like to remain completely anonymous. Please feel free to comment on this post and offer your advice.
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Ladies (and perhaps men!) of the Blogosphere, I need your advice.
After being in a relationship for 2 and a half years with my OH and living together for nearly 2 years of that – I was left devastated at the weekend when emails popped into his inbox thanking him for registering at lookingforsex.co.uk. I was on his PC at the time, sorting out photos and was about to email them across to my PC for my blog posts. He was upstairs, “sick in bed” and happened to be using his phone. His internet phone I should add.
Of course I confronted him – he denied all knowledge but wouldn’t show me the history on his phone to say what sites he had been on. It later transpired that he was going through my Twitter account and DM’s (I had used his phone earlier and left myself logged in) and he didn’t want me to see that he had been doing that. A handy excuse?
After I showed him the emails on his PC, his first response was “It must be someone else called **** who lives in ******* as well”. What a joke! This then turned into “I swear on our relationship/the dog’s life/my mum’s life etc that it wasn’t me, someone must have done it as a sick joke”. I told him it was over anyway no matter what, so he might as well tell me the truth, but he still stuck to his story. I left to stay at my brother’s house for the night but came back on Sunday evening.
It wasn’t just basic details either, there was a whole paragraph about his interests and hobbies which was spot-on so it would have to have been someone who knows him well who did it.
I just don’t know how I can trust him again. There have been trust issues in the past where I found out he was communicating with an ex via facebook and he has been doing a lot of “hunting down old (female) friends” via the internet. I told him at the time I was near to leaving him because of it and he swore it wouldn’t happen again.
I would say 70% of me does think it was him who registered on this “dating” site, but then there’s the 30% of me that thinks – well what if it was someone playing a sick joke, trying to split us up? But who would do something like that? He does have a crazy ex-fiancée but she hasn’t bothered him for years.
Part of me just wants to believe him and to settle back into our life. The other part of me knows I deserve better.
But the fact is – I am scared to leave him. There, I said it. I have been suffering with depression and anxiety very badly for the last year or so and he has been my lifeline. I have lost all my confidence and I no longer know who I am. He (although he finds my moods hard to understand) has supported me all through that and it hasn’t been plain sailing. We have sex very infrequently (maybe once or twice in the last 6 months) and I know he gets frustrated – so maybe it is my fault that he was looking elsewhere (if it was him at all)...
But as he says – why would he want to leave me after everything we have been through together? He says if he wanted someone else or wanted to leave he would just tell me. He swears he loves me and would never cheat on me. And how would he have time to meet anyone else? We both work from home and are together 24/7.
I said it might not be the case he wanted to physically cheat – maybe he just wanted some sexy messages from people for the thrill of it...?
It really is a nightmare – my dad and my brother and his wife know what happened and understandably they are worried about me and although they haven’t said it I know they think I should leave him. I feel that it is expected of me and everyone will think I’m a fool and a walk-over if I stay. I can just imagine how hard it will be in future if my family don’t approve of him. I keep saying about me leaving him, but it would actually be him who would have to leave as I own the house.
His family, on the other hand, are saying to him that I need to stop over-reacting and I need to think about it logically – it obviously couldn’t have been him as we are always together and he wouldn’t have the time to cheat. But they don’t know the full story about our past trust issues.
I really just don’t know what to do. There are so many questions running through my mind. I haven’t slept properly in 2 nights. He says he will prove to me that it wasn’t him and will find out who did it – but I have no idea how he will find that out. We haven’t always been happy in the past, mainly due to my depression – but I appreciate the way he has stood by me and I am worried that if I leave him now I will be ruining a good relationship.
I love our life together. We don’t have any kids but have our little animal family. I have always just seen my future with him in it and he says the same. But then again – I don’t want to be taken for a fool, and if I stay now things might get even worse and it will be even harder to leave further down the line.
I have trouble trusting people in relationships anyway – I just don’t know how we can move on from this. He says I can take his phone with me when I go to bed early and can password-protect his PC so that he only uses it when I’m there – but what sort of life is that to lead?
So I am asking all of you – have you ever been in a similar situation? Have you ever suspected your OH of cheating or found out that they actually have been? How on earth can you move past it, if you decide to forgive them? How can you both start living again?