Forgave my (34.5 F) fiance (36) for a short burst of cheating (18F) 2 years ago, but got more details and now wtf do i do with this ;(

The whole long story up front, a one paragraph TL;DR at the bottom

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My (34F) fiance (36M) and I have been together for 10 years. He's in publishing and works as an adjunct teaching intro to history at a uni where we lived (the past event occurred in another state) . I'm a dentist. We live together, have a good time together, make a good team and have a lot of compatible weirdnesses.

We've been together a third of our lives. Early in the relationship it was rocky. we were young, he was emotionally cold and distant, didn't want to commit, wouldn't discuss it, and when I moved cross country for orthodontics training, he said he didn't know if he wanted to join me or if he could ever live with me. I moved. I had a short fling with a guy until one day my now fiance said he wanted to move to be with me, so I broke off the short lived fling, committed to making it work with the man who is my now-fiance. ( I should have not continued to visit and search for commitment, broken it off, and i took full responsibility and came clean with details so he knew about the fling prior to moving, treated me like the shamed woman of babylon for a good few years, got a lot of comments about how a lot of the activities I liked seemed too sexual (partner dancing, like... almost anything really) how men were only interested in me for sex , monitored a lot of what i did, snooped and basically I mea-culpad for years. It was shitty. But it's the past) . But fast forward and we worked a lot out. It wasn't all perfect but we were committed to being together even when things were hard and there was a lot of communication differences due to upbringing. Once committed to each other, I never did anything without his consent (We would hook up with other couples sometimes, we're both fine with that so plenty of opportunity for fully out in the open variety. no secrets allowed. ).

About two years ago a friend of ours ran into a girl (18F) at a regularly scheduled meetup\party for the kink community. Long story short, my friend found out that the girl had come to that party recently with my fiance who wasn't there that night. The girl told my friend that she had been a student my fiance's class the school year before, that she was under the impression he lived with his ex-girlfriend, and that they had broken up. My friend told the girl that wasn't true and the girl asked why he would lie about it, but didn't seem bothered. She then excused herself and went over to a man my friend didn't know with whom she was very affectionate. She didn't seem bothered by the information or upset.

My fiance and I had been having some problems communicating and had been to therapy shortly before this happened. I confronted him. He admitted that he had hooked up with this girl after she left his class, that he had told her about one of the parties, she went, and they hooked up there, then with her after and on and off for a few months after but it had already been broken off and he was very sorry and it was incredibly stupid. He told me that she seemed very mature, that she was 18, that she had a lot of experience and that they just talked about history books and sometimes he talked to her about his life and our relationship.

I was in absolute shock, I didn't feel anything. Just.... baffled. I had really zero clues that there was anything fishy going on. Not even a small nagging feeling. I saw a therapist, I decided not to leave. It was a pretty terrible time for me. Friends suggested I reach out to her, but i felt so small and pathetic asking an 18 year old to give me details about my boyfriend when i'm almost twice her age. I didn't want to snoop because i remember how awful that felt .I didn't want to make ultimatums that's backfired in the past. I just wanted answers. Since then we have moved forward, though I never felt like I got all the details, he insisted he was incredibly stupid, he felt like our lives were on hold and we were spinning our wheels, it didn't mean anything, he just wanted to do it and that was so dumb , it was meaningless and he shouldn't have done it.

Recently, two years later, we have been talking about having a child. I really want to. It has brought back feelings about what happened, hard, even though there have been no other indiscretions and I have had trust since we moved on. But details that were missing started to bother me and timelines didn't make sense. But I forget details when i get emotional so So I admitted I was embarrassed but I needed clarification on the semester she was in his class, because something felt strange and I thought it was me stressing and needed help putting the thought away. I wanted to confirm her age as I'd found her real birthday. I had to know it was legal even if it was disgusting. He told me he couldn't remember, would look it up. Then didn't. I asked like 3 times, and every time "oh i'll have to look. " I didn't push. I wanted him to give me the information. I asked nicely. I asked upset.

Long story short in a therapy session (we still go once a month it's helped us with our very different communication styles a lot) he finally answered my questions . I learned that they hooked up before the party, that they were seeing each other over the course of 6 months (about 15-30 times, he said 30, then 20, then maybe closer to 15, not once a week, maybe once every other?), that he lied about where he was going when he saw her (I never asked for more info than "out with friends" because why would i? we never interrogate, go have fun...) and that he even slept over a handful of times (that one hurt.) Now I feel like I forgave a short stupid ego-boosting midlife crisis fling, but what really happened was a relationship. I guess there's not that much more information, maybe it's not really that different but i feel gutted again. He bristles and says it was NOT a relationship, that it was meaningless ,that the only loves me, that he wasn't thinking about how it would hurt me he was just feeling frustrated with life and did something stupid, that it was nothing and stupid and wrong - he said that was the core truth, and he told me that core truth, even if the details weren't 100% true and that he doesn't want to be litigating this forever, because the core truth was always true. He admitted to being "evasive" and being sorry for it. Of note, when i first found out about her I was upset, cried, asked how he could have discussed our relationship at all with her. 3 months later i found out they still traded e-mails which he said, he wouldn't do if i told him not to but it was just chat about books and there was no more sex. i told him not to, he said he stopped. I asked once to see emails but they were all deleted.

He said that all he wants in the world is to move forward and have a family with me. There have been no new indiscretions (100% believe), Ii know I shouldn't be surprised that he was afraid to tell me the full truth back when I first found out because he said he knew it would upset me. I went digging. He admitted to being evasive out of fear of hurting me. But I feel lied to a second time. We have a therapist who wants to focus on moving forward because we want to and feels like he was feeling a lot of shame which is why he didn't want to admit all details. I feel dumb. I wanted the opportunity to forgive and move forward ,but i forgave something that happened longer than I thought . He still denies it was a relationship. I feel gaslit. And if it didn't mean anything, how is that possible? He also says he doesn't remember who broke it off and it stopped before i foudn out . Now what the hell do I do with this?! It was 2 years ago! The only difference is it lasted longer than I thought and some details were left out.

Our therapist asked if I would have been as upset if she had been 30 and honestly, no. The age difference, even if she "Aggressively pursued" him and seemed "fully formed and had a lot of experience" as he said grosses me out (she did have a lot of experience but a) who cares b) none of my business at all or relevant) , but I was able to put it aside as wildly stupid midlife crisis territory. Tho he's been attractied to women older than me, younger, etc, so it's not a theme. I thought i moved on, have i just wasted 2 years? is this really new information or am i just opening up old wounds?

TL;DR 2 years ago my fiance had a 6 month sexual relationship with an 18F who had been a student in his class (side gig) the semester before and was no longer a student at the time. He was cagey about the details, insisted it was stupid, he wasn't thinking, it was meaningless and he felt like he was spinning his wheels in life and he regretted it deeply. He was evasive about details that I recently got. The relationship was longer than I thought, started differently but otherwise the information was the same. He says he told me the core truths (that it didn't matter to him, wasn't a relationship, no love, etc) even if he was evasive on the details because he didn't want to hurt me more. Now I feel like i'm back to 2 years ago even though we had tried to move past it. Now what the eff.

Submitted August 27, 2020 at 03:03PM by ThrowawayAnonymous78 https://ift.tt/34DFMFl