Namaste,

I warmly welcome your thoughts on what would be my best course of action. Please forgive me for the length of this correspondence.

~

We are from the same hometown. We attended the same high school. We never crossed paths until a common friend introduced us, at his request.

He was an officer in the military for twenty plus years, consistently serving in active combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. He recently completed his final deployment in June of this year. I am currently in Southeast Asia employed in equities and am returning stateside in November. 

We dated for three months when we were both in the country and became an exclusive couple before he deployed. I feel I have won the genetics lottery in that I am half Scottish and half Indian. Previously, I was a model and have not been one to lack male attention. While I was being pursued by him, I was also being pursued by a number of other gentlemen.

Our relationship seemed to naturally evolve from strength to strength. As the months passed, he insisted on an exclusive relationship and he broached the idea of marriage, children, and all the rest. He was consistently patient, devoted and emotionally present until recently.

During the first week of April, he began withdrawing from the relationship. I was initiating conversations when it was he who had consistently been the one. He was distant and seemed occupied. On a few occasions, he accidentally deleted correspondences from me. I asked him if all was well and he assured me all was well with him.

We would share conversations on Facebook and during this time the length between responses was unreasonably long and I became cross and I asked him if he was speaking with someone else. He always said no and I always said that my time was as valuable as his and I was feeling like an afterthought. 

He apologized profusely each time and reassured me all would be well after the end of deployment. He indicated the last two months of deployment are the most difficult because of the preparation required as they transition from active combat roles to civilian roles and he was deeply apologetic he could not be more present, since he simply did not possess the time he had previously. 

I asked him if he was happy. He said he was. He however did not ask me if I was happy and I wish I would have said I was not. I proposed since we both did not have time to commit to our relationship, perhaps we should press pause. He was vehemently opposed to this and promised to make a more concerted effort in tending to us and our relationship. And he did for a short while.

During the first week in May, I learned colleagues in his unit and their significant others who possessed FB accounts were being compromised. He asked me my thoughts about removing our names from FB as a couple in a relationship. I said he should do whatever he felt would offer us the most security. He didn’t change our FB relationship status. 

During the second week in May, he asked me not to tag him in FB for purposes of his account being compromised. I asked him why he hadn’t removed our names if there was a security breach. He didn’t respond and I didn’t press him because of the stress he was experiencing.

During the third week in May, he mentioned a childhood friend was coming in August to visit him at his home with her two children, since she wanted to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail. He also casually mentioned that his childhood friend may tag him in photographs and I should not be concerned. I found this curious, but said nothing.

During the course of this conversation, I asked him once more why he hadn’t revised our relationship status if there was still a security breach on his end. While skyping, he removed it and reassured me that once he was stateside he would reinstate our relationship status and all would once more we well with us.

During the month of May, he was conveying properties for me to consider, and cabin layouts, since we planned to break ground next spring. Also during this month, I observed him employing more emoticons in our exchanges and less English. Additionally, he was on FB 24/7. Sometimes when I logged on, he logged off. He explained that he needed to be on call since deployment day was coming and his superiors needed him at all hours.

During the fourth week in May, he broached the subject of our relationship and that he was unhappy and had been for some time. I asked him why he hadn’t respond honestly when I asked him a couple months ago. He said he didn’t want to hurt me. I said he had been hurting me for the past months by not being present. He said he did not know how he felt about me and how he felt about our relationship and he proposed a break. 

The terms and conditions of the break were:

-He would initiate contact.

-After he initiated contact, I could respond.

-After he arrived at a decision about me, him, and our relationship, he would apprise me between now and November; however, his decision could come earlier or after I arrived home in November.

He repeated throughout the conversation without me prompting that he needed to center himself a la Oprah and was by no means seeking anyone else. I was positively livid by this point, but remained calm and I simply asked him if there was someone else. Without missing a moment, he indicated there was no one and there would be no one.

I asked him about how I could be accommodated in this arrangement he proposed. He seemed surprised. I indicated I may wish to date while he was deciding whether he loved me and whether he wanted to be with me. Curiously, he said he would be more comfortable if I dated a woman, but if I had to date a man, he hoped I would not be intimate with him.

This may I add was the lengthiest conversation we shared in the past two months, not to mention the saddest. He proposed once more we place our relationship on pause. I asked him why now when I had proposed this earlier. He said he didn’t know.

I said that if after a year should a man does not know whether he loves a woman and wants to be with a woman, he never will and moreover, any man who doesn’t want me is a man I don’t want. He was all over the map emotionally. He said he loved me. He said he wanted to be with me. He simply needed some time to center himself post active combat.

He was shocked and stunned. I suspect he was disappointed that I did not plead, bargain, or weep. He pressed me for a break instead of a break-up. I said absolutely not. I was breaking it off completely with him and I could not be moved. The conversation ended with each of us wishing each other well. 

I decided to cyber sleuth to learn more about this man who I had fallen deeply in love and I learned that while he was in an exclusive relationship with me he was also in a relationship with another woman from our hometown whom we attended high school. I suspected as much there was a woman; however, I hadn’t the evidence until now.

After learning about this development, I conveyed a correspondence to him requesting he respectfully cease all contact with me. I unfriended him. 

Later in the day, I learned a friend of mine who was FB friends with him was unfriended by him. It seems my friend is also friends with his childhood friend and he presumed my friend had said something to me.

My friend didn’t and she didn’t need to do so, since all the evidence I needed was on his childhood friend’s FB page. He had sent her flowers. He had sent her gifts. Most of all, he chose to spend his time with her and not time with me. I learned she collected him from the airport after he came home during the first week of June and they went on a week long holiday. I was crushed by what I can only call a clusterf***.

A few days ago, his mother conveyed a correspondence alluding to her son possessing deep feelings for me and all the rest. I have met his mother and father. They are good and decent people and they are also really fond of me. I was FB friends with his mother.

Considering he lied once, I commenced cross-checking each and every detail about him personally because one lie means there are more. And Lord have mercy, there were many, many more. The day after I conveyed my Goodbye & God Bless correspondence to him, he subscribed to ten sex sites where men and women meet for casual encounters. Five of these were in our state. The rest were in his state. 

I was bewildered. If he had chosen to be with his childhood friend, who incidentally lives in our state an hour from my home, why was he also choosing to subscribe to sex sites. His childhood friend is ten years our senior. Reading the descriptions of what he wanted with his casual encounters was absolutely gutting. I didn’t know who I was with for the last nine months. Whoever he was though, he was overlooked for the Oscars.

We have been in no contact for two weeks and I possess no plan to initiate contact. To be blunt, I broke-up with him to observe how badly he wanted to be with me and by all accounts he didn’t seem bothered. As I understand, he possesses photographs of he and his childhood friend together on holiday all over his FB page.

I am cross with him for his infidelity. I am cross with her for coming in between me and him. Based on his financials and based on her being financially established it became clear to me why he wanted a break. His financial house I came to learn was not in order. It seemed to me that he wanted be with her until November, continue having sex with younger women on the side, and after I returned stateside resume our relationship.

That is however not what I want. There are days however, it is head vs. heart. Some days the head wins. Some days the heart wins. At the core of this all, I have to wonder whether I was with a con-man and not having a basis of comparison, I cannot be certain. From my experience however karma is ever present and what happened to me may well happen to her.

I warmly welcome your thoughts of the aforementioned. Please once more accept my apologies for the length of this correspondence.