Found out 3 weeks ago

I’m going to try and make this make sense - there is so much to it (I’m sure that’s pretty normal!). I’m not sure why I’m posting, other than it helps to write it down for people who understand.

Factual stuff first:

My partner and I have been together 8 years, with a 4 yr old child. We are not married but in a (supposedly) committed relationship.

I found out nearly 3 weeks ago that he’d been having an affair with a colleague for what I initially thought was 18 months. I basically found his Airbnb account with bookings in our local area going back that far, on dates he’d said he was out with colleagues or doing night shifts at work. TT over the next week or so revealed that they’d first had sex over 2 years ago (summer 2020), and first kissed in early 2020. The emotional stuff happened even before then, possibly going back close to 3 years. For me, the emotional stuff is problematic but the kissing is when a line was crossed, and obviously with the sex the line was crossed even further.

She has a partner (supposedly separating) and a child too. I sort of knew her. I’d met her once on one of his work nights out years ago (maybe 2016-17), which I’m certain was prior to the affair. She wasn’t very friendly but I just thought she was in a bad mood. I then met her again in early 2020 when I came back much earlier than planned from a night out and found them on our sofa closely engaged in quite a serious discussion. They seemed awkward and my partner tried to jolly things along between the 3 of us, but she just left quite abruptly and weirdly. I asked him about it and he said she’d been talking to him about some personal stuff and had been upset, and didn’t want to stay once I came home. Now I’m certain they were talking about the emotional inappropriateness between then. I’m not sure whether that was before or after they crossed the physical line.

Anyway, nothing about her really came up for a few years, but my partner became more and more distant and unhappy over the last couple of years. He blamed it on the stress of work (he works in a really emotionally demanding field). Our sex life had never been great but dwindled to non-existent at times - there were periods of 3 or 4 months at a time where we didn’t have any, which upset me a lot. We talked about it several times and he suggested that maybe we just needed to accept that with stressful jobs and a young (probably needier than average) child we should just accept that we were currently just coparents and housemates primarily and that we shouldn’t put pressure on ourselves to have a romantic relationship at that stressful time. My self-esteem was being gradually eroded over this time due to living with someone who was so distant and un-engaged with me. I’ve told him that the damage wasn’t just done when I found out, he’d been damaging me for years through his behaviour.

2 days before d-day, I found some suspect semi-naked selfies on his phone. The next day I asked him for a serious talk and asked him if there was anyone else. I didn’t mention the selfies. He said there wasn’t, and hasn’t been. I was obviously still suspicious so looked at his phone again the next day and found the Airbnb bookings (he’d just got a new phone so I had his old one at home).

I rang him immediately and he told me who it was and said he was so sorry, he’d wanted to tell me so many times but was so scared of the consequences. He said he’d wanted to end it as soon as it began but that she was threatening to tell me and various other people and he was worried it would blow up massively. The way he describes their relationship, she sounds controlling and abusive, but obviously I don’t know if I can trust his version of events.

I’m going to post this now and follow up with another post as I’ve lost one draft already!

12 comments posted: Monday, October 31st, 2022