Ok so here goes. I’ve never written a reddit before but here goes. I’m at a loss. I (38F) have been with my boyfriend (39M) for just over 2 years. We live together and have 3 kids together (2 mine 1 his). He came from a very broken relationship and from what I understand his parents haven’t had the best relationship. I love this man more than anything and have done everything for him.
Why do men never take accountability or responsibility for their actions. I get blames for alot of things bc of how I react when in reality it’s me reacting to him.
For most of the relationship when he moved in he has accused me of cheating, which I never has as I don’t believe in it and I think its morally wrong. I used to have male friends but I had to cut them all out of my life (including friends husbands). I found out that he did cheat on his ex and did cheat on me in the past. He says he wants to be a better person and he is for a little while.
We do fight often bc he still accuses me especially if we are around males (ie my brother in law and his friends when at my sisters) . He has gone so far as accuse me of cheating with random strangers when I go to the bathroom in public places or a change room.
He has been in councelling (or was I should say, as he quit). I am not 100% innocent in our fights as I do name call and I get heated as I am exhausted from having to prove to him I’m loyal. And by prove I mean him going through phone records and having full access to my phone. I know it’s excessive but I’ve always been an open book for him.
I believe in being open and honest with your partner and sharing every aspect of your life with them. He went over a year before telling his family about me and I’ve never met any of his friends.
Am I crazy to still be with this man I love when he clearly doesn’t love me (even though he says he does). I just feel so stuck. He has taken me for all my money and no I rely on his help to pay rent bc of the debt I am in now. I know it’s also my fault bc I let it happen. I just need some reassurance I guess that if I did just let him go things will turn around. I don’t know. Is this just one big gas light and now that he’s made me broke he needs a new woman with money to take care of him? (he doesn’t have a normal job he sells online only). Just looking for opinions I guess.
Tl/Dr boyfriend constantly accuses me of cheating and starts fight but I stay with him hoping hell change.
4 comments
Nobody can tell you things will get better if you do the right thing and leave.
Sometimes things get a lot worse before they get better.
But what we can tell you is, it’s better for things to get worse when you’re on your own than when you’re with somebody who is an emotional, financial, and social parasite.
Let him go.
You’re not crazy for trying to love him, but if he’s been this way for your entire 2-year relationship, he is not. going. to. change. There’s not even a realistic chance of him going to therapy and learning to not be a controlling, jealous, abusive mess, because he already quit one therapist abruptly without seeking out another one. No amount of reassurance, appeasement, or attempts at logical reasoning are ever going to get him to see that his behavior is insane and that he is emotionally abusing you by constantly accusing you of cheating in the most ridiculous ways imaginable (cheating in a fucking public changing room with a stranger while he’s at the store with you? Seriously?!) And to top it off, he cheated on you and his previous partners too! This man is a dumpster fire. Of **course** he’s projecting all of that bullshit onto you and accusing you of doing the thing that he himself does. Cheaters frequently exhibit that pattern.
You just need to ask yourself if you’re prepared to live in this awful, walking-on-eggshells hell for the rest of your life, and how far you’re willing to let it go before you say enough is enough. When his behavior escalates—and it will—are you gonna stick around? You’ve never given him a single reason to suspect you of infidelity and have gone to extraordinary lengths to prove your loyalty, including allowing him to impose a regime of control and surveillance on you. What’s going to happen when he decides he has more solid “evidence” of you cheating than he’s had before, and has a meltdown about it? Are you ready for when he flies off the handle and beats you, or worse?
“Am I crazy to still be with this man I love when he clearly doesn’t love me” Yes, plus you have self worth issues and are buying into “sunk-cost fallacy”. Added to that you have the delusion all abused people share, that if you could just somehow do everything he’s asking and be “perfect” in the way he wants then things will “get better”/go back to the way they were in the beginning. But getting better & going back to how it was in the beginning is a mirage. Abusers/cheaters/liars know there’s very few people who will tolerate their behaviour right from day one. So they have to lie and mask their true selves until their victim is hooked emotionally and worn down enough in their self esteem to accept the abuse that the abuser feels is their right to dish out.
“For most of the relationship when he moved in he has accused me of cheating” Because he is a cheater. There’s a quote *Every accusation is a confession*. He accuses you because that’s what he knows he would be doing (or at least trying to do) when put in the same situation. People tend to assume everyone is like them, so good people assume others are good and terrible people assume others are terrible.
“I just need some reassurance I guess that if I did just let him go things will turn around” Turn around how? I mean you won’t be responsible for a cheating, projecting, gaslighting asshole. So I would consider that a positive.
And yeah, he likely will move on to a new woman to suck dry and make miserable. But why would that matter to you? He’s going to repeat the cycle with someone new because that’s what this type does. Staying with him is just you sacrificing yourself and your happiness in the hope this will somehow magically “fix” him when it doesn’t seem like he has any desire to change.
Girl. GIRL. Why are you subjecting YOUR CHILD to this shitshow?