Not married but with SO for 10 years. Last year he met new coworker (female). He may have mentioned her in passing but not much more. Come January, find over 1000 text between the two. Ask about it and told they are "Just Friends" and he says look at my texts. There are no texts, he deleted them already and used a lame excuse why. I dropped it in an effort to keep our relationship okay (didn't want to seem paranoid).

Over the next several months texts have doubled to 2000 a month. It still bothered me, but didn't want to mention it for fear of rocking the boat. In the mean time, knew something was up...Conversations between me and SO were becoming shorter and less meaningful. Would go out to dinner and have difficulty mantaining conversation, never much of a problem before. When brought to attention, was told I was reading into it too much and that nothing is wrong.

Come September, we got off on vacation for two weeks. Other than at dinner, it is non-stop texting to his friends and this woman. He has picked up the trait of going to the bathroom more frequently to text. Over 2880 texts in 10 days. Tried to let it go but by the end of vacation was in tears about it. He said he understood and would try harder. Later on found out that he used an excuse to buy me something so he could leave the room and call this woman for 30 minutes.

We get back from vacation...I'm expecting him to make up for the vacation text fiasco, instead he puts his foot down and says he wants to hang out with his friends without me at least 2 twice a week. This freaks me out and we have a few fights about it. He told me that if I have issues that upset me I should bring them up to him so I don't dwell on it. So I say to him that this woman makes me feel insecure. He says there is nothing there, that he isn't attracted to her (even though she is probably attracted to him) and that she can't make him have sex with her. He then proceeded to say that my insecurities were ruining the relationship and that I need to fix my head. Well things escalate in October when I text him and he doesn't respond back, but I find out that he responded to her several times immediately after I texted him...He promised me earlier that if I text him, as long as he isn't busy, he will text me back but over the course of the year, he would ignore me and text his friends and this woman. Two days later he says he can't take it anymore and says he is leaving, so I give him back his engagement ring. Later that day he came back home in order to work on the relationship.

In the course of that time, I make appointments with a couples counselor and I try to be understanding and supportive and address his needs. In return he spends almost every night out with his friends and then one night where he was supposed to spend with me he says he needs to go to this woman cause she is scared about a colonoscopy later that week. He knew that I was really upset about him going to her alone while here husband was at work, but that didn't stop him or bother him. He said we owe it too her since she told him to give me another chance.

Well over the course of another two weeks, he has been cold and calous too me with it culminating to him saying he needs to get out of the house and have some time to get his head on straight cause he is messed up in the head and he is numb towards me but it bothers him to see how much he is hurting me and that it was my fault the relationship didn't work because I didn't try hard enough until the last few weeks (even though I was trying throughout the year). I lash out and tell him it is because he has been having an emotional affair with this woman, but he denies all the way out the door. Says if anything, she was one of the people that told him to work on the relation ship.

Since he has left, I have done more digging and now found out that this woman and her husband are breaking up which coordinated with the the time when my SO was trying to leave me. I am crushed. This is a person that I have trusted and has told me over and over again that he would never leave me for another woman. Even denying it as he walked out the door, and then to see the OW husband's facebook page and the coinciding conflict has me crushed that he lied to me soo much and made so many hurtful comments about how it was my fault about the relationship while he was allowing this [censored] to go on. And that we have nothing in common which has made things difficult.

I'm so hurt. I love him so much that I let him walk all over me and would probably be willing to take him and let him do that some more just because I love him so much and want him back. And I can't understand any of it. Especially since based on what I know of him, her personality is the type that if he has to live with her, would drive him up a wall, but I know that he doesn't see that right now. All he sees is that he can communicate with her so easily and can't with me because he has allowed himself to become disconnected from me so he could become connected with her. I am just so crush and could use some words of advice, cause I'm sure after the bubble bursts he will be come home expecting me to want to be with him again. And everyday just seems to get worse with all of the reminders of a 10 year relationship everywhere I look.

Help

Hurtlost --

Sorry you are here.

Gosh. Its obvious to all of us here that he's having not only an emotional affair, but a physical one as well. I know you don't want to believe that.

First -- get evidence. Put a device on his phone that will capture the text messages. (check out the "operation investigate" forum for ideas). I would also recommend a GPS and a voice activated recorder for his car. He is very likely talking to her while in transit.

Once you have the evidence -- do not confront him.
Just come here, and we will help you plan the exposure.
You will need to tell the other woman's husband. He is very likely clueless about his wife's activities. He will be a great ally to you in busting up this affair.

Also -- since you can view OW's facebook page, make a copy of her friends list. Cut and paste the names into a word document.
You will want to identify close friends and family members that you can expose to.

Can I ask you, after 10 years why haven't you married?
Have you considered that you might be better off ending this relationship? Recovering from an affair takes a huge commitment, and I'm sorry to say dating for 10 years without marriage implies a lack of commitment...

Do you have children with him?

Well he is already gone (moved out), so I can't do much more tracking then I already did. As the days go buy, it is like I am putting together a jigsaw puzzle from the last 10 years and everything is becoming clearer. It just hurts that deep down I always thought that he was a good guy. I was completely wrong. A good guy would never treat someone this way.

As for the OW, based on her husband's facebook page...he already knows. Updated his interest to "Women" and took all references to her off of his page. She in the mean time has closed her facebook page. I have tried to initiate contact but he doesn't seem interested.

Based on his actions, it makes sense that he didn't go to his father to discuss the issues that we have in our relationship (his excuse was he didn't want his family to think ill of me when in really, he didn't want his family to think ill of him), which his sister already does. And it makes sense why he no longer wanted me to go out with his friends with him, he was afraid something would slip.

As for kids, we never had any even though he wanted kids. I have a good job and wanted to get myself established well before considering kids, so I promised myself that I wouldn't consider talking about kids until I turned 35. Regardless, his maturity (or lack there of) would have kept me from making that mistake with him.

As for not getting married, it took him so long to propose, and then within 6 months, we had a fight were he left me for a night and then treated me like [censored] for several weeks (similar to this situation) and looking back it was probably the start of another AE with a different woman. The only difference is that woman when she finally met me, took herself out of the equation (which I got blamed for recently). But anyway, after he left, I hadn't built up the trust to start setting a date. But in August, we agreed on next May, but that is when things started to escalated out of control.

I really should move on because I don't see any way to recover even if he comes back (which he probably will). There has just been too much deception. I may have been able to recover from the deception, but not after he placed all the blame on me for ruining the relationship while he still is denying involvement with this woman. I now realize there was nothing I could have done in the last year that would have made any difference one way or the other and I deserve better than that.

My problem is that the memories just hurt so much.