Strap in folks, this one is a doozy.
I dated my ex for 9 months – in a lot of ways it was an incredible relationship. I felt truly loved, cared for and desired. We felt like a perfect fit, and started seeing each other a few times a week, and were working to integrate each other into our lives. I will spare you all of the details of this part of the story because it doesn’t really matter – it was a storybook romance type shit. This person made me feel more loved and valued than I ever have in both words and actions. Important to note here that it truly did not feel love-bombing. It felt like a normal healthy relationship progression.
At around 7 months into us dating, he drops a bomb on me that he has a child who was living with his ex out of state, and that he didn’t know how to tell me and was scared that I would break up with him and that hiding the existence of this kid became a web of denial that he found difficult to untangle. He was essentially forced into telling me about this because his child/ex moved back to our state and he was going to start having his kid in his life again. He was extremely apologetic, expected that this was the end of our relationship and apologized profusely. I decide that I can look past this and that we can work on repairing our relationship with him showing that he can be open and honest and vulnerable and work to dismantle his instinct to lie when things are difficult. We try for 2 months longer, but he is unable to balance having a relationship with me while simultaneously reconnecting with his child and building up that relationship. We break up with the intent to be friends in the future if I feel like I can do that emotionally.
Cut to 2 months later, I reach out to him letting him know that I would be willing to give being friends a shot – this person meant a lot to me, and was a valuable part of my life despite his lie / our breakup. He says yes, that he is so glad to hear from me and we set time to meet up. We spent 4 weeks attempting to be friends, but both feeling like it was more and that our feelings were still there. I said that we either need to set a boundary that this is JUST friends with no ulterior motives, or we need to have a conversation about getting back together. He said he would be honored if I gave him another shot to do things right – he was vulnerable and open about his feelings, and said that he felt like he made the biggest mistake of his life by breaking up with me when what we had was so special. That he fucked up royally by lying in the first place, and then not being able to balance his life enough to keep me in it. We then had HOURS of difficult conversations over the next few weeks about what it would look like to get back together, what he would have to change, follow through on, etc. He also mentions that he did not date anyone while we were broken up and was just thinking about me the entire time. I am sparing the details here but these were difficult conversations that were meaningful and pushing us in the right direction. It truly felt like we were turning a new leaf. Last weekend, we decided that I would start staying at his place during the week to give us extra time together, that he was clearing out space in his closet for me and was planning to make me a key to his place. We officially got back together and slept together for the first time in a few months.
Cut to last night. We go out for drinks, he is visibly anxious, shaking, something is wrong. He tells me that he is really stressed about wanting to do things right this time around and not hurting me. He slams his beer and asks if we can go somewhere else with cozier vibes so that we can keep talking about us (the bar we were in was freezing and bright and at the time I agreed the place sucked, so I agreed to move to a new place). He bolts out of the bar, we have a 15 minute long silent drive where he is clearly stuck in his head about something but he isn’t talking. We make it to the next bar, and his mood improves significantly. We discuss his fears about fucking up our relationship all over again, and how much I mean to him and how important I am to him, and how much he appreciates me giving him a second chance. I reassure him that as long as he follows through on our plans it will all be OK. We end the night will him dropping me off, and making tentative valentines day plans.
This morning, I woke up to a text that said he wanted to be honest (lol) with me and that he was caught cheating on his girlfriend with me last night when we were at that first bar, and that he is cutting all ties with me so that he can repair his relationship with her and that this will be “the end of whatever it is we have going on”. The coldest text I’ve ever received, and it was clear that his girlfriend was there/reading it, because it felt like a weird corporate apology basically painting me as the “other woman”. I was under the impression that I was the ONLY woman so to be painted in this light with no remorse was WILD.
I am honestly in shock – it feels like our entire relationship was a lie and that he is a sociopath or at least a pathological liar? He has always made me feel like I was the only person in the room – I never once felt like it was even a remote possibility that he would cheat on me. This feels different from typical cheating issues that come up in relationships – I have NO idea why he would put in SO much effort and work to get back together with me if he already had a girlfriend. Like what is the point? I would understand if I was making things “easy” for him to have on the side, but I was not. I was having difficult conversations, requiring him to open up and be vulnerable, etc. I didn’t make this easy at all. He purposely made his life difficult by letting me back into it, and I am SO confused why anyone would even bother.
Does anyone have any advice for being totally blindsided like this? Like someone you thought you knew was actually totally unhinged? I don’t see how it’s possible for this person to actually have feelings or empathy. It feels like he was pretending to be a person, but deep down is just an empty selfish pit. I am so scared to date again knowing that there are people like this out there. I don’t want to bring this baggage into my next relationship but I don’t know how I could ever forget that this was done to me.
I already know I will get some comments saying that he showed me what type of person he was when he lied about having a kid – and I agree so feel free to say that anyway lol. I felt like I was being a good person by giving a person that I loved a chance to repair, atone, change. That he wasn’t the sum of his mistake. Turns out the “once a liar, always a liar” is perhaps the safer bet moving forward.
Thanks in advance for reading 🙂