I've become the kind of man I despise the most
Kebap menu, not the best one.
Me (29M) and my gf (26F) have been in a long distance relationship for 3 years and, even though we love each other a lot, it has been quite hard on the last months.
We come from different cultures and had very different upbrings but I always bragged about how amazingly well we get along, with similar interests, humour and being very politically aligned.
I feel like most of our recent fights are caused by demands of her that I can not fulfill. My love language is mostly physical (not only sexual) and she claims that she does not feel loved because of the distance and I should find ways to display gestures of love. I am trying to figure this out but I do not understand having to constantly prove my love to her and she does not believe that I am even trying.
On top of that she is becoming less and less tolerant and patient with me what results in angry and rude outbursts from her. I am on my last year of my PhD, my mental health is hanging by a thread, I am suffering with insomnia and skin lesions triggered by anxiety and stress, my memory is useless and I often do not feel that she is being very supportive.
I kept telling myself those are problems that will be gone once we move in together and I just have to endure it for now, specially because she is also going through a lot and I need to be supportive as well, but I am afraid that she is right and I am becoming less capable of empathizing with her.
Last weekend I went to the pride parade where I live, and after it, my friends wanted to go the techno club we like, but it was a sex party night event...
Drunk me didn't think twice. I knew she wouldn't be happy about it but what is the big deal? I am not going to cheat on her, like I never have (I have some serious traumas about it and I am working on it in therapy because it is my biggest insecurity), neither are none of my friends looking for sex. I simply want things like this to not matter in my relationship and have a level of trust that we will not have to forbid each other of doing things.
I proceed to get high in the club and when it hit me how deep in shit I was I had the brilliant idea of contacting her and lying about not knowing that it was a sex party before hand. She completely lost her shit, with reason, but in my mind I was not doing anything wrong because I am not a cheater.
And now here is the kicker: twice before that, similar situations occurred where some of my friends were going to a sex party and I wanted to join them so we argued about it. And, regardless of my obsession with freedom (also working on that), I did come to realization that I should not prioritize that if it means hurting the people I love. So, I did promise her that I would never attend such events without her - but somehow - completely forgot about it and did it anyways.
Now, she is devasted and betrayed. I finally understand that, even though I did not cheat on her physically, I broke a well stablished boundary and cheated on her emotionally.
Why the fuck am I able to, no matter how drunk or high, respect the relationship boundaries that matter to me but not the ones that matter to her? Maybe she is right and I am just like any selfish piece of shit that does not care about their partner feelings.
I told my therapist that I agree to her ''prohibitions'' because I truly believe they are temporary and once we live together and have time to work on our trust these things will change. But gf made me realize that my behavior is no different of those guys that try to force anal sex in their relationship when their partner does not want it. It is a boundary being pushed and disrespected. For the past months, she has been screaming at me that we are incompatible and I am finally starting to believe her.
I am no better than my father, just a different kind of cheater.