Looking for perspectives from people who have been through something similar.
I have been in a relationship since 2020 with my live in partner (M31). I gave up my own apartment that I could afford on my own to move in with him and build a life together. That decision has always sat with me because it meant giving up my independence and my safety net.
Things had been going through a rough patch intimately. In the last 6 months it was happening maybe once a month and the last 2 to 3 months nothing at all. I was the one trying. Initiating, texting, making attempts only to be met with excuses about work, stress and no energy. He even told me there were other ways to be intimate and implied I needed to be more patient and understanding. I eventually stopped initiating altogether to protect myself from the rejection.
Last weekend we finally reconnected and I genuinely thought we had turned a corner. Four days later everything fell apart.
He started acting strange and changed his number out of nowhere claiming someone was hacking his Facebook. Then his family started receiving texts from someone claiming he had been asking young girls online for explicit pictures. The texts included a personal photo of him that clearly was not from social media. When I pushed him directly he admitted everything. He had been going on anonymous chat sites and Telegram exchanging explicit pictures with strangers multiple times over the past month. He was sextorted, paid money and they still exposed him to his entire family and contacts. He first told me he had been hacked but I said it didn’t look like that and he came clean.
What hurts the most is that I was right there the whole time. I came home every day, made dinner, talked, laid next to him every night, supported him through medical issues and financial stress from navigating a new job market.
Being an open minded person I had actually told him many times that he had an open door to come to me about any feelings of boredom or curiosity about experiencing other people. I knew he didn’t have much dating experience when we got together and I understood that. He always told me he only had eyes for me and never felt that way.
His excuse after admitting everything was that we weren’t having sex and porn wasn’t doing it for him anymore. But he was the one rejecting me for months before that. And we had literally just reconnected the week before this happened. So his excuse doesn’t even fully hold up.
According to him the real reason he didn’t come to me was that he didn’t want me to potentially do the same if we opened the relationship. So instead of having an honest conversation he chose to sneak around for what he called the thrill of talking to someone new. While I was at work every day thinking he was just home talking to his family.
Our finances are entangled and it is not the easiest situation to just walk away from.
He has been remorseful, written letters, told his relatives the truth when I asked him to. But I don’t know if remorse is enough. I don’t know how trust even begins to be rebuilt. And I can’t stop feeling like I was right there every single day and still wasn’t enough.