My fiance and I have been together for three years. When we first began dating, I was 17 and he was in his mid-twenties. I loved him from the beginning, and I think he did, too, but he was scared, because of my age, and because he had never been in a serious relationship before.

5 months after we began dating, he broke up with me, because of something I had done. He started to date another woman 4 days after we broke up. Six weeks into their relationship, a tragic event in his life made him realize he needed me. I was very depressed when we were apart. I lost ten pounds, and could not begin to date until about one month into our breakup, even though I had been asked out a few times earlier than that.

At first he led me to believe that he had ended the relationship with the other woman. We spent the night together that night. The very next night he came back and told me that he lied to me and that he was very sorry. He did not break up with the other woman. I forgave him, and told him that I would always be there for him. I figured that would be it for us for a while.

But the next day he called and asked if I would see him. I said yes, and met him at his parents house for the afternoon. Looking back, I should have said no, but I honestly did not have any intentions of being with him physically. I couldn't stay away from him though- I had such strong feelings for him. We slept together, and began our "affair" that lasted two weeks. At the time, I wasn't thinking of anyone but myself. At the end of the two weeks, he finally broke it off with the other girl (without any prompting from me), but not before he spent the weekend with her one last time.

Now, two and a half years later, there is no sign of infidelity on his part or regret for breaking up with the other woman. Yet I feel as if I were the one who had been cheated on. I'm angrier now than I was when we first got back together. I'm hurt that he did it. Sometimes all the love I feel for him just dries up when I think about it. Sometimes I wonder if we should even get married. He doesn't understand this because I just accepted it at the time, and honestly, I don't understand it either. Maybe I accepted it because I was young and stupid. I definetely would not let anyone treat me like this now. He didn't REALLY cheat on me, did he? Why did he do this? I thought he really loved me at the time. I feel like if he really loved me at the time he would have either A)not asked me to come over knowing how I felt for him or B)ended relationship with OW immediately after realizing he still loved me. Please help.

lorin,
I wonder if this is the right place to post this. First, this board is for married people. You are not married, so most of the principles might not apply to you.
You also left out several information from your post. E.g. you did not say if the two of you are living together.
However, for what it is worth, here are my $0.2. A man that would lead on two women at the same time, have sex with both repeatedly over the course of several weeks, and tell lies to get what he wants, is not worth a dime a dozen. If you still have any modicum of self respect left, I believe you should leave him.
And, as a side note, living together before marriage is ALWAYS a bad idea. Your chances of a divorce are higher than average, according to a recent study.

I think that you can learn from the past. But you do need to find a way of dealing with it. Telling him you forgave him when you didn;t means you lied. I would say that being yound and having these types of feelings in general is the bigger issue. Iheard a saying once that I liked-for what it's worth. "The past is like a rocket fuel tank on the space shuttle..It's good because it got us where we are, but it's not much good anymore.." Good luck, JACK

Thanks for your advice. I took a serious look at what happened, questioned him and let him know how I was feeling, and for a few days considered leaving and starting a new life. (We do live together, and have for the past year and a half, and I work with his mother - she got me my job). I have decided to stay. The truth is, I love him including his faults. He made a mistake - a very serious mistake, he admits it. But I knew about it, he didn't hide it, he's sorry and it isn't like I haven't made any mistakes in my life. I also made a mistake, in knowingly sleeping with another woman's (at the time) boyfriend.

When we talked about this situation, I told him I regretted not making a strong and good decision for myself 3 years ago. (I made the decision to let him do what was good for him and accept it as it was.) I've been having a hard time respecting myself and him for the decisions we made. I am making the decision now to forgive him and myself, and to never let anyone (including myself) put me in that kind of a situation again. I think I am finally facing what happened, and honestly, as I think about it, it's not as bad as I was making it out to be.

You are right, the past is gone, what matters is today. I have a million should haves, but they don't really matter, do they? My fiance loves me. I knew he loved me even when he was his other girlfriend. He even says he loved me, he just didn't let himself realize it until he began to examine his behavior. He has been faithful and honest with me since we decided to be exclusive (he is in a twelve step program, which he works very hard at). He tells me he did think seriously about what he wanted out of our relationship and whether he could be a faithful husband before we got engaged, and he's now sure that he wants to be only with me.

I'm trying hard not to make excuses for him, and if anyone who reads has words of wisdom about this, please post. I appreciate your opinions, as I never talked about this honestly with anyone other than my fiance before.

lorin

First of all Anidea is sadly correct. Sometimes I think OW get more support on these boards. However some really great advice and assistance has come to me from these boards too.

I'm engaged and both my fiance and I are working very hard to build a marriage that will last and be happy. We're going to sign our marriage cert as soon as we can figure out how to not go into foreclosure on our home when we loose our tax deduction (it's a multi family). So breaking up just isn't what we'll do, we've made our vows, but not before the state.

I do understand your mixed feelings about past pain. I imagine the pain you're feeling is knowing at one time this man put another woman ahead of you. Yes, he was honest about it, but he still did it. Yes, you continued to see him, but you felt you were first and yet he let you play second. Makes sense to me that would feel awful. Now he's been honest and faithful but why and how could he have ever done that to you. Maybe you've grown cold because you don't want to trust him again and have him do anything like that to you again.

Also, you were young when you got together. My fiance has done stuff that's hurt me, but we are in our 30's, so we look at everything in comparison to past relationships we've had and left. Neither of us has ever been engaged or married, so those were the relationships we didn't want to commit to for life. That's a perspective you don't have to draw from.

Maybe you could wait till he's been sober for a while to see who emerges. That sober man is the man you'll be married to. He might be the most wonderful man to build your life with or he might be a stranger. Time will tell and you have the time.

But don't waste that time. I'd suggest reading this site. Working the EN questionaires. I think it's great to learn about what makes a marriage happy and fulfilling before you get married. I don't think you should wait for an affair after marriage or even the day after signing a legal document to begin to understand and build a healthy relationship. And if your fiance turns out to be the wrong man, this knowledge will only help you in the future.

One last thing. If you've seriously considered breaking off this engagement or threatened to, you may be entering marriage on a dangerous footing. Oh, I have considered it. But I've never threatened my fiance and when I've had to make a decision, it's ALWAYS leaving is NOT an option. If you live like leaving is an option now, it might carry over into the marriage. For me, knowing no matter how bad it seems, we are both going to work on it, not just deal with it, but work on it, is an amazing feeling. I think that's what marriage is.

WILLING_TO_WORK thanks. Just for the record, he's been in the program almost 5 years (we have been together 3). And like you said, we are new to this relationship stuff. I have had a serious relationship (3 years with someone else- before him) but he has never had a serious relationship (i.e. more than 1 month) before me.

I realize at your age you people may have told you that you need more experience. Well, I'm not one of those people. I don't think you need to be a certain age or have a certain number (shudder) of partners to build a great relationship. I've read about so much pain here at this site caused by partners in life-long relationships that decided to go find out for sure what they really weren't missing only to destroy what they always had.

The only thing my Fiance and I have learned from being in other relationships is that no relationship is perfect out of the box. They all require effort and we are both willing to put in that effort. So why ditch this to find we still have to work on our problems with someone else in another relationship?

Besides, you do have relationship experience, both of you do. You've been in a 3 year relationship together and he's been faithful to you for 2.5 years. It seems to me he did cheat on you. He had one more fling after he found the woman he would marry.

I know you said he's apologized. But maybe you need to hear it again, as the woman he betrayed, not the woman who wasn't cheated on. He's in 12 step. Can you ask him to make amends again for what is past, what he regrets, what he did before he knew better? Not to bring it up again but to put it to rest for both of you? Have you told him you don't want to keep punishing him, but only want closure?

We have talked, cried, fought about it many times since it happened. Mostly, he tells me he screwed up, but that I don't have a right to feel upset about it because I was the one who got what I wanted (meaning the other girl was the one who got cheated on and then dumped, and I was the one who got the guy I wanted). I can't even tell you how mad his frame of mind on the subject makes me.

You're right, I don't want to punish him about it. I think for the first year or so I did, but after that I just wanted to forget and tell myself that he didn't do anything wrong (after all, this was his girlfriend). But that didn't seem to help either, because any small reference made to something as general as the year it happened (1999) and I'm upset. I hate going to his parents house, because I know that's the "crime scene," and if I even hear this girl's name (a common name - I hear it a lot) I shudder.

It makes me feel better that he says he didn't feel psyched about doing it. I know he could just be saying that after the fact, but it still makes me feel better (though I would never tell him that).