I feel like an idiot
I (25F) joined this page about a month ago when my whole world was turned upside down. I found out my boyfriend of 8 years (27M) had been cheating on me with a girl he met on Reddit. getting to the bottom of it was HARD, as his story changed multiple times over the first few days (first - he had never cheated, then - once 2 years ago with a girl about 40 min away, THEN - maybe 4x with one girl but she actually lives 1 hour away in opposite direction of previously mentioned city) talk about a whirlwind of emotions! I found all this out by coming across YEARS of Reddit message threads (I was able to scroll back to 2024) on his unlocked phone one morning while getting ready for work. at first, he denied ever meeting up with anyone on Reddit. Then it later came out (my therapist and friend recommended I push for the truth a little more), as messages suggested, he had slept with the girl mentioned above. Other reddit threads (we’re talking at least 25) were him trying to get with married couples and other individuals, though none of them referenced him missing their “perfect body”, meeting up again, or specific things like that. So I had no reason to push that further… until today. I thought, oh it took some time for him to tell the truth but he did. What a relief, agreed to try to work on things. He started therapy and asked to attend this church I recently started going to. Things felt okay.
So prior to today, we had done the typical things (several phone checks, location on, me asking questions as they arise) when I was searching his phone again after a night out (noticed PH tab was under favorites in Safari while at the last bar, he said “it’s from a long time ago”) so we get home, I look. I see that, though he’s assured me he hasn’t watched porn since the initial incident, I see he’s watched it 3x over the past 4 days (amount is not concerning for me personally, it’s the premise/deception). I also looked through other apps a little more in depth than I had a month ago. Today I noticed a text message convo from December where he was texting a married man coordinating meeting up with him and his wife that same day and two follow up texts from Feb and March trying to make new plans (no response from the guy). Keep in mind, he had previously assured me, despite messaging couples in the past, he never hooked up with anyone but the one girl.
Queue my entire world being disrupted again. I tried to talk with him about it as he was half asleep in bed (wish I had more self control with the timing of bringing these things up but I felt clarity was needed ASAP). He accused me of holding this over his head and not being willing to let this go, even though he’s trying SO hard to. He began yelling, said he’s done, meanwhile I’m mentally SO checked out. I saw hope initially bc I figured for 6 years he was faithful and I wanted to hear him out. Meanwhile he can’t even give me the full truth. Makes me wonder what else he’s hiding that I’ll never know about. Ugh