Movin on slowly's story

Here's my story

I’ve sat at my computer now for ages wondering how to tell my story, how to condense it and not write a million pages. I guess I’ll start by saying that I am now 42 days NC. The pain that I thought would take forever to go away has now started to lift, and while I still have teary days I know that leaving was the best decision.

I met the N just over two years ago. At the time I was still married, though had told my now ex-husband a few years prior that I wasn’t happy. Meeting the N put that thought about leaving onto a fast track and I left 3 months after meeting him (I have many regrets about how I handled this, but its something I must learn to forgive myself for). The N also had a gf at that time. He told me it wasn’t a serious relationship and that she knew he dated other women. The blasé way he talked about her had me thinking that she was more like a “friend” that he saw sometimes. He told me his every move for months – at the gym, going golfing, at work, what he was eating, etc etc. No mention EVER of spending time with the gf, and honestly I thought she was out of the picture and that he was just with me. Had he mentioned her at all during this time I don’t think I would have let myself fall for him like I did. Wasn’t until we had been seeing each other for about 4 months (and I was so in love) that my friends saw the two of them together one day. This is when the relationship began its rollercoaster ride as now I knew that he was obviously not being honest with me and discovered that he did not believe lies of omission are really lies. Thus, if he said “I am having a nap” but did not say “I am having a nap at my gf’s house” he (in his warped head) thought he was telling the truth. If he drove to the movies on his own, but met someone there, he would say that he went to the movies ‘alone’. He is a police officer (a theme I have seen often on this website!) and he is very good at manipulating the truth, at not answering questions, at turning your own words around on you.

At this point I started to become insecure, and doubt everything he said to me. Without providing details, I found his email password, and yes, I looked – I have not been proud of stooping to this level. The first time I looked in his email I felt like I had been sucker punched. Up till then, I’d experienced several hot/cold moments with him, and knew in my gut that something was not quite right but never had the proof of anything. Well. Whilst I obviously knew re the gf, what I discovered was that he had multiple, long-term, overlapping relationships with at least 5 other women in the past 3 years (2008 – 2010) (in addition to other more casual relationships!!). 75 pages of almost 3000 emails. Most of these women no longer lived here, or he had met while they were on vacation here and they then had long-distance relationships interspersed with trips to NY / San Francisco / Miami. Because technology had switched from email to bbm, the emails tapered off after the end of 2010. So now I was in a wait and see pattern to see if any of them resurfaced. And they did. They say that no one does better research than a woman who feels she is being cheated on, and that is so true. I discovered that he went to Las Vegas for New Years with one of these women (told me he was going with fellow police officers); that one of them came here in the summer while I was away on vacation (and I found pictures of them together at the beach / in his house / at the police club); the one that he went to Vegas with came here that October for a week; one is a stewardess that he hooked up with every time she was here, and she came and stayed with him over Christmas! I was given every excuse as to why they were coming and had to stay with him, how he couldn’t tell them not to come (as these plans were miraculously always made during the week or two we would have broken up). I should add that he never willingly told me about these women…..I always came up with a ‘story’ regarding how I found my information so that he wouldn’t know I had accessed his email. (He was always accusing me of having informants who just didn’t want to see us happy!).

After 14 months of this, as well as the fact that he wouldn’t leave his gf, I had had enough. To add here re the gf – they never did anything together. He was with me in public ALL the time. We did everything together, and live in a small place so its not the place to do anything in public that needs to be kept a secret. We went to concerts together, to the movies, out to dinner, he spent complete weekends with me. He told me that he did not love his girlfriend, but didn’t know how to leave. That he’d never felt the way he did for me and didn’t know how to handle it. That he’d never loved anyone before. Lie, lie, lie. I ended things in Feb 2012 and told him I wouldn’t see him again until he no longer had a gf and wasn’t seeing anyone else but me. We didn’t see each other for 5 months. Then last summer he told me that he had broken up with his gf. And stupid me, we got back together. Thus began the worst part of the roller-coaster ride. We broke up literally for two weeks of every month for the latter half of 2012. I still had access to his email and discovered that he was still seeing his ex on and off. I found out about other women. We would get together and he would be so attentive and it was the best thing ever, then he would go quiet and disappear….I’d question him, he’d get mad that I didn’t trust him (hello!), we wouldn’t speak for the next week (probably while he was giving some other supply a shitload of attention) and then he’d show up again. He never would give me the label of a girlfriend through these last several months, even though he supposedly ended things with the ex gf to be with me, and he swore he wasn’t seeing anyone else. His ex gf I have discovered, thought that he was monogamous with her for the length of their 6 year relationship! In January, right before his birthday, I found out that he had arranged to meet up with his ex and saw a pic and video of the two of them (the video taken while they were trying to take the pic……and to make it worse he was wearing the shirt I had given to him for Christmas the week before!!!!! Grrrrr). My final straw. I sent him an email (a cowardly way to break up, I confess) telling him that I was not going through another year of anguish and anxiety, always questioning why I wasn’t good enough, wondering who I would find out about next. Told him I was letting him go, and not fighting for us anymore. He never responded to me, but the very next day he sent messages to his ex begging her to break up with her new bf, and that he was so in love with her and wanted a second chance. I was curious as to whether she would go back so I did look in his mail a few times after that (till he changed his password). He had downloaded all of these books on “how to text your ex back”. His manipulative nature seems to know no bounds. I also saw a message from one of his friends asking “how were his women”. His response was that one had gotten into his mail (that would be me, lol) and so I was now history, and that the other had a new guy, and he had to break that up as he couldn’t have someone else pissing on his tree.

I am a confident, attractive, smart, successful woman. I have never been crazy in a relationship but this man drove me to levels of crazy that I never want to see again. I know now how women psych out and do things like mash up cars with baseball bats! (I never did this!) Every time we ended, I thought I would lose my mind, like a drug addict who was being denied his fix. I passed through much of January in a daze. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t focus at work, I was distracted, I was sad, I was tense and anxious. But I started reading voraciously. I already thought my ex was a N and I read everything I could put my hands on re narcissism, re relationships, etc and it helped me to realize that it was not me, it was him. That he will use every woman that comes across his path in the same way. I know that I need to set boundaries (which I confess I am not very good at). I am always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, or second chances, and now I think that this may not be a good thing. The saying “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” is something that I need to live by. Some people don’t deserve second chances. He sent me a message on Valentines (just a pic of a rose) which I ignored. Then the next evening he sent a long email (the first correspondence since I ended with him in January), wanting to explain what he had been going through, and how his exgf having a new bf had thrown him for a loop and how his emotions were so crazy in January that he even questioned life itself but that he’s dealt with that now, and he is over her. That I am so wonderful – he’s forgiven me for looking in his mail, and he wishes we had met now, now that he’s truly single. Bunch of baloney. I did not respond. But its amazing that one message from him has had me in a tailspin all weekend. I know I don’t want the stress or the drama or the heartache anymore, that the highs were not worth the lows. I'm looking forward to the day when he does not cross my mind even once! I’m movin on slowly…….one day at a time. (apologies that this was so long!)