Cheated on by trans husband for 7 years
I honestly feel like my entire reality just shattered and I don’t know what to do. my partner(28, FTM) and I(28, F) have been together 9 years.. I found his reddit in OCtober asking to sleep with men, (he is trans but has female genitalia). I was SHOCKED to say the least. He trickle truthed and ended up at 5 partners -- one a year during the summer. He said he did this because he wanted penetration but felt ashamed to ask me for it since he was supposed to be "manly".
Now my partner has been in therapy weekly for almost 4 months and kept framing the cheating as impulsive, shame based, “I don’t know how to resist urges,” whatver BS he could spew that day.
Yesterday I found out the truth was WAY bigger than what I knew.
One person alone lasted 2 years. Unprotected, driving an hour away, meeting at STORAGE UNITS, good s**. At least 10 separate meetups. Ongoing contact through Snapchat and Reddit, which ive asked before if any of them were on his snapchat and it was no. But this guy was able to be on there since my husband would make new reddits often. There were also other men in between. I only found this out because I kept asking specific questions. It was not fully volunteered upfront.
The part that is destroying me is that I gave multiple chances for honesty. I even gave a signed/dated letter months ago basically saying: if there’s more I don’t know and I find out later, I’m done. And still the truth didn't come? Until I had a gut feeling yesterday and asked.
Now I feel like I don’t even know who my partner is anymore.
My partner says there were “zero feelings” and that it was about shame, validation, selfishness, fear, impulses, etc. But I’m struggling because… how ashamed can someone be while repeatedly meeting up with the same person for 2 years and continuing contact? That feels bigger than “urges” to me.
I feel sick constantly. Like an actual knot in my stomach. I’m devastated because I love my partner deeply, but I also feel manipulated because important truths only came out when backed into a corner.
I also realized immediately: absolutely no baby plans anymore. There is no way I can bring a child into this level of instability and broken trust.
I think the hardest part is realizing my partner kept deciding what I was “allowed” to know because they didn’t want me to leave. Which means I wasn’t actually making informed choices about my own relationship/future. I had only ever wanted to get married once, my entire family is this way. Yet, he proposed/married me KNOWING what he was doing.
Has anyone come back from something this severe? Or did you realize the trickle truth itself destroyed the relationship beyond repair?
I KNOW IM YOUNG AND I CAN FIND HAPPINESS ELSEWHERE I'm not looking for that. I just need courage. Advice. Something. I dont know... I am scared. I don't remember a life without him but, what kind of life is this? I think deep down -- finding out it wasn't 5 one off's with random men and there was actually a 2 year affair, has changed something in me. I feel different. More sad. More hopeless.