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Did I cheat? How do I come to terms? How do I let it go?

HomeForumsRelationshipsDid I cheat? How do I come to terms? How do I let it go?

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  • #178087
    Liz
    Participant

    I hadn’t dated anyone in 5 years. I was so depressed and alone but working to better myself. I met him at work and became attracted to someone for the first time in a long time. Life takes so much patience and work. I got it in my head that if I take the right actions we will move in together one day.  I’m learning to love myself and I was happy after so much heartache I found a good healthy relationship. He was innocent in my eyes so innocent never having done drugs except pot and he had slept with one person one time. I wanted to be extra careful with him having more experience and me i went on some of my first real dates after healing from my years of toxicness. I was inspired to go back to school through meeting him. It was something I was planning on doing already but having his support gave me that little extra push. Then I realized my greater potential and have decided to move to a larger city and go to a better school and he took me to tour it.  But I built up in my head despite trying to keep it at bay the thought he would move with me. We are both so ambitious and after being single and working on myself the past handful of years I thought I met my big break. But he decided to move across the world and go into the peace Corp. He told me this in a text message and it triggered being led on in the past. The things I had spent years healing. I started crying and went to his house. We made up the next day. I reacted negatively. But not at first. At first we decided to stay together after discussing the incident. He told me for a week he’s not emotionally invested he is a stock with no return and was angry that I wasn’t happy for him but…the wound ran deep feeling I had been through similar heartaches over and over. We we’re fighting nonstop and for a week and in just a handful of months he would be leaving for the peace corp. I so badly wanted him to be the one. I decided we would stay together until the end I would support our relationship until the day he boarded a plane. The pain in him telling me our relationship was temporary over took me. Especially since I had been dealing with years of lack of social connections and social interaction and past pain..I slept with someone else. Before we hung out I felt he was creepy but I needed to make friends. I was going to go home after an hour and get one drink but I went along with everything. I felt gross I hated all of it and I wanted it to stop and didn’t know what to say feeling when I sleep with a guy I have to let him come even if I want it to stop. I told him to leave immedietly. I called my boyfriend the next morning and he said as long as I’m happy I said I feel disgusting and I guess it means we have to break up. I was numb for a day and the next found him after class after he changed his number and started crying the next day.  He said he cares and him moving out of the country is final. He said I cheated. I called my mom for her unconditional love she told me repeatedly I cheated but at the end of the call told me it’s not about meeting the right person it’s about being the right person. Acting out like this won’t make that happen. So I’m giving him space. He eluded to us talking again. I want to have hope that he would. He more clearly understands what he wants but our careers will take us to the same cities. I want to have hope we will cross paths again, him saying that when we were together it’s possible. The minute he said he was moving out of the country everything changed and it didn’t register to me that it was cheating. He was putting so much pressure on me to support him and if I loved him I’d be extatic for him. But I was deeply hurt. Do you you agree that if I’m the right person he will come back???

    #178143
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Liz:

    I will summarize your thread first and then comment on it.

    You didn’t date for five years. During those five years you worked to better yourself and to love yourself and you went through healing from years of toxicity (italicized are your words). Early on in this relationship you figured that if you take the right action, the two of you will move in together. That was your plan, but you didn’t communicate that to  him.

    You then decided to move to a big city, hoping the two of you will be living there together. He then told you that his plan was to join the Peace Corps and live far, far away from you. That triggered lots of hurt in you, lots of anger. What followed was a lot of fighting, initiated by you.  You then slept with another man.

    My input: mutual plans of course, need to be mutual, that is, discussed and agreed upon. The right action on your part would have been to initiate such discussion, to ask him specific questions about his plans, about his feelings for you. Better not have your individual plan for the two  of you without his consent.

    When he told you of his plans, which were different from yours, you got triggered. All that past hurt felt present and real. Anger came right after the hurt. It is that anger that caused the fighting and it is that anger, I believe, that led you to sleep with another man, anger and helplessness.

    It  is natural for old hurts to get triggered, because old hurts exist in the brain and we don’t shed our brain. It takes a lot  of work and a lot of time during  times  of distress, to undo those old experiences, that is, to undo those connections formed  in the brain. And so, it is now. during this time of distress (more than during the more peaceful five years before) that you have the opportunity to start undoing those connections.

    My suggestion is that you don’t focus on him as the … solution, to not focus on whether or not he will come back to you. But focus instead on you and your life. It is not about whether you are “the right person” for him: his future action will be about what motivates him, what he values. His motivations, his values preceded you. Just as your motivations and values preceded him.

    You asked: “Did  I cheat?”- you were angry, is what I am thinking, angry and impulsive. And this relationship is ending. There may be a long distance relationship to come, but the relationship you had  already ended when you found out that too much of the relationship (the moving in together plan) existed  only in your mind.

    I hope you post again with your thoughts and feelings.

    anita

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