I really do not have anyone to talk to regarding the situation that I currently feel myself to be in. I would like to start off by saying that I am a pretty emotional person and have been working on it for some time (therapy, medication) I am also in the process of changing medication, so I do not know if I am just feeling crazy.
I (23F) have been with my boyfriend (35M) for a bit over four years. When we came to know each other, it was through work. I had moved areas within my workplace, and he was one of my managers. Looking back on this, I feel as though this plays into how my emotions are towards him now. After working together for some time, we eventually started pokemoning and getting food together after work. I had viewed our relationship as black and white, considering he was my manager. Eventually, I got the hint that he ‘liked’ me and eventually things got sexual, and we were hanging out a bit more and even at his house before work. I did not truly think someone as intelligent, witty, and handsome as him could like me. I would think to myself, ‘he’s a manager, he is potentially putting his job at risk by wanting to see me. This must mean he really likes me” (I’m stupid) This then led to me being excited to talk to him, hang out with him, I began to like him so much! I took interest in his shows, watched so many of them to be able to talk to him at work about it and connect with him.
We would message, but I felt like I was always waiting on his responses, or we could only hang out / message on his time. One time after work, in his car, I had asked him if he was seeing anybody, and he said no. We had not talked specifically about our relationship (something I was terrified of doing?) so eventually I told him I do not think we should see each other anymore due to not knowing what this was. He asked if I wanted to be a couple and I said yes. This was awhile after the night in the car. It seemed like things would sit on my mind for weeks until I would ask, and even then, I would mess up the things I wanted to say by not being able to think because of feeling too much. We began to hang out more and I met his mom that he lived with. (this is a choice and not necessarily bad)
As time passed in the relationship, I came to find out that he had a girlfriend with two kids (not his) in another state during the same time he started to hang out with me. I came upon this realization because he had gone on a few vacations at work while we were not technically dating but seeing each other. He had told me at the time it was family vacations. However, after being with him for a few months, I realized his only family is his mother. He also had her on Xbox still, so I was able to look her up and found photos on her Instagram that concluded he was in fact on these vacations with her and her kids. At the point that I had realized this, we were already dating and a lot of time had passed since any of that happened. I broke down about it at some point and pointed it out, but he did not correct or deny it. He mentioned that it was over between them and he had needed to collect some of his stuff from her house during that time. I can’t remember the rest of conversation (too emotional?) but I couldn’t get out the rest of what I wanted to say because of couldn’t form it properly so I just left it at that.
Since we worked together, I did a return for him one day and had to look up his phone #, which brought up recent purchase transactions. I seen weird things to be shipped. I later looked them back up and seen that he shipped them to her in another state. It took a while for me to bring that up as well, but he said it was for her kids. That I fully understand and know the connection they probably had. I was then able to express to him that I wanted more clarity on things like that and to be able to communicate, considering how finding out about the beginning of our relationship affected me.
A year or two had passed and I was staying at his house more frequently. Things were going well, but I just had an uneasy feeling about the iPad beside his bed, so I opened it up one day while he was gone. I was worried he was still taking to her still, but instead I found sooooo much porn. He had a gallery with over 5,000+ photos of 18-year-old naked women, vids and pics of his ex-giving him a BJ, and I was mixed in there too. His tabs also had a bunch of porn open on them as well, the times showed that he looked at most of the stuff before I would come over. I waited a week or two before breaking down about it and asked him to delete the pictures of me. He only kept the pictures of me and cleared everything else off. I don’t care about porn, but I was actively wanting to have sex, excited, and then just to see the reason why we don’t have sex much is because of me looking nothing like the photos he has saved. (I’m a b cup and all the girls had huuuuge boobs.) The fact that he still had his ex-saved still gets me, despite it being deleted 2+ years ago!! Like we were two years deep into a relationship, why have that? I also feel a certain way about our sex life, but that would add so much more to an already long post.
These things happened over two years ago in my relationship. I had thought I had got over them; I had gotten on anxiety medication to stop me overthinking so much. But it feels like all of it just came out of the blue again and is circulating in my head full force. I will mention that I work a full-time job and am also a full-time student in a medical related subject. I travel to his house just about every weekend, my pups and I. We cook meals together, shop, travel. He gives me flowers, gifts. ( i’m not materialistic person, but he is thoughtful) He calls me every evening now after work. He always asks when I’m coming over next. When we are talking on the phone, I often times now find myself wanting to hurry up to end the call so I can get started on my school stuff. His jokes that he says or when he interrupts me to say something funny make me start to get angry instead of smile now. But this is everything I wanted in the beginning of the relationship! We have gone on countless vacations together; we have had fun times together in each other’s company. He has been so patient with me that I do not understand why I cannot let these child-like thoughts and feelings go to just move forward in life and be happy. I wanted to move in like two years ago, but he has never said specifically he wanted to live with me until I brought up moving out of my parents’ house with a roommate. If you love someone, you want to be together as much as possible, and after four years I would have thought we would have been living together now. But I can’t see myself moving in feeling the way I am right now. I constantly find myself feeling and thinking, “why couldn’t he love me like I loved him in the beginning?” and then I feel fear that he will do to me what he did to his ex. I cannot shake the feeling from myself that he is a sneaky person. He is so smart, he prides himself on his strength in strategies and has said before that he is an incredibly unique person, which is true. I recently talked to him about how I am feeling like we should break up and we talked a bit but he says it’s just my stress getting to me and stuff and when I start to talk about the things I pointed out above just seems so silly because it was so long ago, but I did not get to say or ask my full part during those times so I think that is why it is bothering me. But even if I do ask or talk about any of that stuff, I do not even know what it will do for me now. I do not know I just feel insane honestly and needed to write this out in some form. Thank you to anybody that has read this and sorry if it doesn’t make a lot of sense I just sortve brain dumped.
Just last night he called me to ask me about dates for our vacation in August and I just felt so overwhelmed on the phone I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. I have my school semester ending in the beginning of august i need to take my certification exam / study for it right after I finish the program. I just feel like there is always so much for me to do, go, I’m on a time schedule 24/7 and I literally feel like I do not want to plan anything at all right now. Every weekend I am at his house there is a task to be completed, laundry, cleaning, going through recipes, tending to some of his things, I used to love helping with all of these, but now I feel resentment sometimes and want to get it over with as soon as possible. I do these same things at my house with very limited time in my schedule, sometimes I do not get to wash my clothes for the week bc of all the running I am doing. I always help him decorate his house with all his decor for each season, which I enjoy! But it takes a long time, he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to do any of it either. So, I always feel like I am doing most of the work with changing stuff out. I’ll even try to get him to help me to it early so we don’t have to worry about it but he’ll just be like lets have a lazy day which I am starting to dislike. I have so much school stuff to focus on and I feel like he doesn’t fully understand this either. We no longer work together but that is all he has, mon-fri work 8-5. I only stay on the weekends mostly and he games during the weeknights when I am not there instead of doing some of these tasks in order for us to spend time together instead of time constantly doing stuff. He tells me how proud he is of me for almost being done with school and how smart I am, but I am beyond stressed. I used to look forward to cooking meals with him on the weekends and now when he makes a list of things to do I start to get stressed because I am unable to focus on my school stuff at his house which is partially my fault for not putting my foot down and being like hey I really need to focus on this. But I always feel like I would be mean for doing that, so I help. I just don’t understand why I can’t go back to how I felt before all of these thoughts were continuously in my head. Everything is prefect now and I should be so happy and appreciative.
TL:DR : I have been with my boyfriend for four years and am still struggling to get past things that occurred in the beginning of our relationship despite everything being healthy and good now. Are these things someone can realistically forget, forgive, and move forward? I do not know why I can’t let it go