Dear Dee:

You shared that you are in a 4 year relationship. You feel “incredibly alone.. unheard” with him, like you “have no voice”, hopeless, like you have a hole in your heart and that your love is not reciprocated, but you are not sure if your feelings are valid: maybe they are valid and the relationship is bad, but maybe you are “paranoid or over anxious”.

Two years ago you discovered that he was soliciting prostitutes “in chat rooms for poly individuals seeking women and expressing that he was single”. Currently, he is “always on the phone… he literally takes his phone to the restroom, he keeps his phone at all times near him… he swipes or closes his phone quite a lot when I am near him”, and “Sometimes he’s gone for hours no explanation. One time he left at 3 am”.

When you asked for more of this time and attention, and when you asked him to not have inappropriate conversations with other women, and at other times when you express your feelings and concerns to him, he has told you that it is your insecurity that requested his time and attention, that you are trying to change him, that you’ve “been over this before”,  “What More do you want from Me. I’m here all the time”, that all you do is complain about the same thing, and that you are at fault for having “discovered his indiscretions due to (your) snooping”.

You wrote that you needed to vent and that you “just needs to know that someone understands”. What I understand is that he has been cheating on you for years, that he is busy for hours a day looking for sexual interactions with other women, that he feels comfortable doing these things because it doesn’t bother him that you are hurt, hopeless and unheard.

I understand that he does what he feels like doing, not caring how it affects you. He tells you what is convenient for him to say, whatever will get you to stop bothering him. He feels comfortable living with you, he is not afraid to lose you because he thinks that you are a weak woman who will stay with him no matter what he says and does.

Did I understand correctly?

anita