My (28M) girlfriend (27F) forgot my birthday, but I just found out its because she drunkenly slept with someone the day before.
Title says it all, but it’s more complicated than that. I need help Reddit. She’s claiming it was nonconsensual and she was black out drunk, that she feels ashamed and was sorting through her feelings, and that’s why she didn’t tell me. I’m inclined to believe that, but there are some issues overall.
Friday night she goes out to a party. I say I’m cool with that, and she comes back later by 1 PM. From what I understand, nothing happened. Saturday night she goes out to another party with friends… I also say I’m ok with this. She doesn’t come home. She didn’t come home until noon the next day. She’s profusely apologetic and tells me it was cause she blacked out and ended up staying the night on a friends couch – a friend I know well enough. I believe her. She’s done this before. We both moved out here for her program, so I don’t have any friends here and she’s new with her PhD cohort. So she goes to a party with them from time to time.
Sunday is rough, cause I’m sad and feel ignored by her from all of this. Monday comes around, which is my birthday. I hear from her a bit, but she never says happy birthday. She doesn’t end up coming home until 10 PM or so and I have to remind her its my birthday. She’s devastated, and again really apologetic. I’m hurt, but I push through it and convince myself it’s just a day. She’s a PhD student. You get busy. I understand.
Then comes today… Wednesday. All Tuesday she was distant. She continues to be distant today. When she comes home we do our normal “love you, how was your day?” thing. She goes to take a shower while I cook dinner. She’s left her phone on the kitchen counter and I see a text…. A text that makes me do something dumb. I check her phone. The text was from a male friend that said “sorry if I made you feel awkward before you left today,” which I thought was odd. I’m suspicious from the weekend.
Scrolling through it, I figure out she ended up sleeping with someone that Saturday night (not the same guy that just texted her, he’s just trying to help her with what you’re about to read). She was really drunk and feels this guy took advantage of her – used her. I feel my gut sink and I’m crushed. She didn’t tell me. Do I believe her? I confront her and she confesses this is true. She says she didn’t tell me because she’s been drinking and coping with it all and trying to figure out what to even feel about it and how to tell me. I want to believe that. Problem is I know from the message that there are two different male names being used when she talks about what happened. She only confessed to one… in my distress I didn’t push it. I feel overwhelmed, crushed, defeated, and confused.
I have a hard time trusting her now, and I at the same time feel terrible for feeling that way if what she says is true. But why not tell me about BOTH men? Why not tell me originally? She told others… but not me. Her partner of 2 years. She’s lied in the past, but never about something like this (when we first started dating she was married but separated, but didn’t tell me for a few months – she’s finalized the divorce by now). Before her lies had to do with her literal past life, rather than something in the present, so this hurts in a different way.
Ever since she started her program we’ve been having trouble being intimate. It’s hard for me to want to initiate with her when she’s always stressed, frustrated, and on edge. I’ve also personally been stressed. So it’s been difficult on that front. But she now claims she’s attracted to other people because I don’t initiate with her anymore – that I don’t try enough (we’ve had sex maybe 5 times since the start of semester, which is admittedly low). She has a very high libido, I do not. This does not mean I don’t enjoy sex. I’m just not a horn dog. This has been an issue in the past. It’s true that it’s been a real issue the last few months. But it broke my heart to hear from her that she was attracted to the culprit, even though she says she incredibly angry with this dude. She also doesn’t want to press charges, says it wasn’t assault, that “it’s not black and white like that.” She’s being honest with me now, I think. But this stance is puzzling to me. Regardles, she now tells me she feels I don’t want her sexually, which makes her attracted to others. She hasn’t acted on this, outside of whatever we want to say happened Saturday. She is insistent that it was nonconsensual, so I’ll believe her, although I admit this is a leap of faith.
This is all hard because I turned down a PhD offer so we could come to the program she wanted to. I’m here being domestic, cooking, cleaning, and helping her ease into the program. I have a small gig teaching to supplement income. I have no friends out here. I gave up a lot to make this work for her. And now that we’re having problems and I see that this happens from it all… just crushes me. If she was assaulted I want to support her, but I don’t know how. I’m devastated something like this could even happen. That she would get that drunk at a party. That someone would take advantage of her. And that she tells me afterwards that she’s attracted to him and considers him a friend!
She says I’m still the one. That she loves me. That I’m the only one she wants. She’s profusely sorry. She wants to work on things. She brought up being “open,” which I strongly oppose. She understands, says she only mentions it because others in her peer cohort have suggested it as a solution. She mentions we could have a veto system. Still, I don’t like that. I want to work on things, she seems to want to too. She’s down and says she doesn’t deserve me.
Here’s my questions for all of you: 1) what should I be feeling here, 2) how do I support her, 3) how should I be talking about this with her, 4) how do we move past this, and 5) am I a fool?
I feel very isolated, like I want to die, and confused as hell. I need help, please. If this means I’m a fool and should leave, it means I have to figure out housing, work, etc. I have no money, basically supplement on welfare, and moved across the damn country for this girl.
TL;DR My partner of 2 years slept with someone when she was black out drunk (two possible culprits?), she originally lied about it, now I know, and I need help figuring this out.
Submitted November 21, 2019 at 02:58AM by thebeardedradical https://ift.tt/334qvJ1
No comments:
Post a Comment