Hi everyone. I read on here frequently, but this is my first time posting my own topic. Firstly, thank you for even taking the time to read this.. I know we all lead busy lives and while I can’t promise this will be short I will do my best to stick to the important details. I guess I am just feeling especially… conflicted today. You see.. my romantic relationship has been troubled for some time now. Actually, it has been a bit of an “emotional rollercoaster” since it began over 5 years ago.

When we first met, lets say 6+ years ago, we started out as casual friends. He was in a band that played locally and we had mutual friends.. so we would see each other around.. became Facebook friends etc. I was ending a relationship with my high school sweetheart (we will call him E). E was charming and had a wandering eye, he would break up with me and go out with someone else then get back together with me frequently so that he could have his cake and eat it too. We were young (21 or 22 at the time of the breakup after 7 years).. and I was naive.. and in the end I think I just got tired of the childishness of it and we grew apart. I began developing feelings for my friend B (my current boyfriend) during this time. When E found out, he didn’t handle it well. He was the only person I had ever been with or loved and I don’t think he thought I would ever move on to someone else. In the coming months I fell hard for B. There were many red flags, but I ignored them all.

First of all when we started dating this was a man who at almost thirty seemed to be just trying to get things together in life. He was primarily a local musician and had JUST gotten a job working in a factory, didn’t have reliable transportation and literally lived in his mother’s basement. But I think I thought he was intriguing and cool. He made me laugh and he made me feel special and important (for a time) so I didn’t care about those things. I wanted to be supportive of him. Some things that tipped me off? Well sometimes he would invite me to come over and I would go to his house and he wouldn’t be there? Or he wouldn’t come to the door.. I would leave feeling dejected and embarrassed. The next day he wouldn’t even apologize.. just say he “fell asleep” or something. When I would try and bring it up he would brush me off like it was dumb for me to even be bothered so I would just forget it and move on. He suddenly became very jealous and suspicious of me. You see, I have never been one to just sleep with someone right away.. I have always thought you should date someone romantically and get to know each other and it happens when the time feels right. But I guess he thought.. well if she isn’t sleeping with me, she must be with someone else.. so he started attacking my relationship with a long-time male friend of mine who I had known since childhood. He made me feel so horribly about it I actually started to feel like I had to hide my relationship with my friend.. and unfortunately for me, that is what I stupidly did. All of a sudden B started driving past my house, harassing me via text message etc. He would even message my other friends on facebook and to try and get information about me and about my friend in attempt to like.. take us down or something? It was very strange and that experience traumatized me . I found myself falling in love with a person who had taken on this totally destructive behavior and I was letting him do it. My friend finally got tired of the non sense of being attacked or me not being “allowed” to hang with him without drama and said he just couldn’t deal with it anymore… as did other friend’s I had.. who were frankly probably disturbed by the stories.. and the fact that I was choosing this relationship … essentially over myself. I became totally isolated and alone with this man. I felt so abandoned by my friends. “How could they just leave me?” I thought. But they had. B was all I had now. Almost 6 years later he still is.

I’m not going to play the victim.. I am not proud of it but I think part of me thought.. “How wonderful to have someone feel soo passionately about me!” I had never felt that way before. It could be so flattering at times. But that wore off.. about 6 months into my relationship with B.. my father became ill. He was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. They told us that at the very best, he had a year to live. That was hard news and my life at 23, got really serious really quickly. The “whirlwind” with B died down. I was apprehensive about what the diagnosis would mean for us. I really just wanted to spend as much time with my father and my family as possible. But B needed attention too. A lot of attention. So did everyone else.. and my emotional needs just weren’t a priority. Some nights I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts but B would grow angry with me for that. There was always this emotional tug of war. This continued on until my father passed after only 6 months. I had so many feelings I didn’t know what to do with. Admittedly, I grew increasingly more anxious. I had trouble sleeping. Sometimes I would just lay in bed and cry. Some days I was irritable and grumpy. Other days I just wanted to walk in the park alone. B took all of this personally. He would say “why are you acting this way?” I couldn’t help it. I even tried to break up with him because it was as though he just couldn’t understand that I was grieving.. and I didn’t want to burden him.. or hurt his feelings. He would become angry and I would retract the break up because I simply couldn’t handle the emotional distress that everything was causing me. I just really really needed someone’s support.. and I had none.. all my friends had gone. It was just B and I.

As time went on, I did resent him. When he asked me to get an apartment with him.. I was apprehensive but we moved in together shortly thereafter and thats when things really took a turn for the worse. The loving, passionate person I fell in love with was no longer. We had explosive arguments, nights would end with me sleeping on the living room floor and he in the bedroom. We nit picked each other. We never had sex anymore. He started lying to me about where he had been or what he had been doing. Several times I found his car parked outside of a local bar when he had told me he would be someplace else. Other times he was playing shows with his band and I had to find out about it through a friend (he never told me or invited me to come!). Once I even found out that he had bought a car secretly without telling me… it was all SO strange. It was like.. he just didn’t want to have a life with me anymore.. I didn’t understand why I was being lied to and it really hurt my feelings. When I would try and talk to him about it he would tell me I was “pestering him” and that I was trying to “start a fight for no reason” when I simply just wanted to be let into his life. We continued to fight and I continued to tell him that if things didn’t change for the better I was going to leave. About a year ago it seemed like things were starting to get better. I tried to give him more space and doing so just made me feel better. I tried to let go and trust again. We got a new place and it felt like a fresh start for us. Until I found the emails.

B and I shared a computer and when I went to use it one day he had left his email up. I will admit I did nose through the email but I was not prepared for what I would find. B had been emailing women on Craigslist of all places! I was floored. This was 6 months ago and I am still floored. I still cant believe I am writing these words. My gut reaction was that I needed to get out of this relationship immediately. But I don’t know how he does it.. he always convinces me that I am in the wrong! He swears that he never “followed through” with the meetings and that was just “like porn” to him. It really hurts because I have felt so rejected by him in the last 3 or so years. We rarely have sex and one time i even caught him watching porn in the room next to me. I told him how it made me feel and he just acted like it didn’t matter. I’m not trying to toot my own horn but I take care of myself and I try to look nice for him. I cant remember the last time I received a compliment and rarely does he pay attention to me. I just feel like he’s choosing literally anything over bonding with me. It really hurts and I am so so lonely. Now the trust in our relationship is completely broken and I just don’t know if it can be repaired. I don’t claim to be a perfect person but I have tried to be a good girlfriend. To respect and honor our relationship. We have had our fights and I know I do not act perfectly during them but don’t I deserve honesty? Loyalty? He says he did it because I didn’t initiate sex often enough and that my father’s death had a “negative” impact on our relationship…
So after all of that I decided to try and forgive once again but I do not feel like it is working. He doesn’t even try to reassure me or comfort me about the situation. He has grown tired of dealing with my emotions over the whole thing. I feel embarrassed and ashamed about it and I don’t even feel comfortable speaking about it to the few friends that I do have because I don’t want to be judged… and I don’t want to be abandoned by more friends like I was in the past. It seems like every time I think I have made the decision to leave … something holds me back and I just keep trying. I am so confused. I love him.. but I don’t think he could truly love me if he would do these things.. and I don’t know how to accept that.

And further.. I wonder what my previous relationship and this one have to say about each other if anything? And how much the beginning of the relationship plays a part today? I feel I have grown so much in the last 5 years and I find myself face-palming at many of the things I overlooked back then. I wonder what I am overlooking now? If you are still reading.. you are an absolute angel.. and I am open to your thoughts. Please and thank you.