I'm glad that you find what I write useful. I really appreciate that

So, like I said, what happened with me and my fiance is a little different that your normal cheating. In my mind, it was a huge miscommunication. I also haven't told many people, because a lot of people don't see it the way I do. They see my fiance as some horrible person that doesn't deserve my love or energy, which is truly not the case.

When my fiance and I first started dating, way back in the day (Thanksgiving 2005), we were long distance. We started dating on a complete whim. We went to the same high school and had mutual friends, but we were really only acquaintances with slight flirting. Anyways, we dated and fell in love. But at the time, I was struggling with depression and anxiety. After a little more than a year we broke up. The main issue was that he didn't feel that he could take care of me from so far away, and I think he also didn't want to have such a serious relationship at the time (we were 18, he wanted to have fun in college, I understand that now). At the same time, I was also feeling like I wasn't a number one priority in his life (I didn't want to break up though).

The breakup was hard. Oh my god, was it hard. I hated it. It took months for us to be able to actually stop talking to each other. It took me months to be able to even think about dating someone else. On the flip side, three days after we broke up, some girl at his school came on to him. He was vulnerable and wanted to forget about me, so they dated a couple of months. That hurt me a lot when I found that out. Also because he went further with her sexually than he had ever gone with me. But these are not the troubles I refer to...

So, I finally manage to put some space between us. I started dating someone else (though, that's another story itself... What can I say, he was a marine...). This was probably a good 8-9 months after we broke. One night I get a phone call. There he is, the then ex, drunk dialing me. I get extremely mad. But the next day he calls to apologize. Some how, he wiggles his way back into my life, telling me he needed a friend. I was really reluctant. He had already hurt me once, how did I know he wouldn't do it again? Well, one day he calls me and tells me he wants to fly out to see me for just a day. He'd sleep in the airport, he just had to see me. He had never come to see me before (he felt like he could only go where his parents were willing to buy him plane tickets for; I was not one of these places). He was willing to hide it from his mom. So I demanded to know what was so important he had to come see me. Well, he wanted to tell me he still loved me. I was really worried, I didn't want to get involved with him again, even though I knew I could easily fall back in love. I really, really tried to take things slowly. This was probably all in september.

In October, I left the school I was at. I was mentally unstable, the depression and anxiety were suffocating me. When he came home from school in November, we hung out. I kept trying to sit on different couches from him, not let him touch me, etc etc. Though, of course I wanted him back (even though I was scared) and in the course of the week we were back to cuddling and kissing (only pecks). He'd tell me he loved me and missed me, but I wasn't ready yet. We never officially got back together.

Anyways, come February, he's getting ready to go to a study abroad in Germany. Before he left, I asked if it was okay if he could be exclusive with me, but not me with him. I was still scared he would hurt me, and even though I knew this was a double standard, I felt like I needed it to prove to me he wouldn't hurt me again. He never actually gave me a definite answer.

While he was away, I made out with one guy. That's as far as it went. And I immediately told my (now) fiance what happened. He didn't take it too well. I thought we would be okay because of the conversation we had before he left (miscommunication #1). What's more, I was getting ready to go to a partial hospital day program, and we discussed not changing anything in our relationship until that started (miscommunication #2).

Well, several months go by, and he's about to come home, when he brings up in conversation that he's been working on a blog journal thing. I ask if I can read it, and he says yes. He gives me the password, and, well, I read it.

Turns out, four days after I made out with a guy, he got drunk and let a girl he was friends with go down on him. In the following months when I thought we were fine and back to normal, he also made out with a random girl in a club and fooled around with another girl he was friends with a couple of times. It got to the point where they would fool around even when other people were in the room (hands down pants and such), and that if those people hadn't been there, they would have had sex. This was pretty heart breaking because I believed we were fine. I had gone to my parital day program, I wanted to be with him, I wasn't going to fool around with any one else. We had also never gone as far as he went with those girls (I was very slow on the sexual front, not to mention we didn't get a whole lot of time together and I had wanted to take things slow). But he had been hiding this all from me for months.

He also just kept adding insult to injury when we would talk about it. He compared me and the girl he almost had sex with to characters in a TV show he was hooked on (Dexter). I work in a library, I still get angry or sick to my stomach whenever I see a Dexter DVD or book. Also, when he told me about the girl who went down on him, he lashed out and said "It's not like you're ever going to do it." Little things where he felt like he was on the defensive. But I was so hurt, because I had only made out with one guy one time and told him immediately. Where as he just had to go full out repeatedly and never tell me. And even though I was still really, really hurting (and really upset because all I could see was that he had hurt me again), I still knew I wanted to stay with him. Eventually I would realize that I had hurt him, and he was coping the only way he knew how (which was exactly what he did when we broke up.. found comfort with someone else).

So we decided that we would stay together. We even said from here on out, it would be just us. Only us. We promised each other that there would be no one else. He also said he wouldn't get drunk anymore since he was usually wasted when these things happened.

And then he came home. His sister's wedding was in a few days. We were working on getting past our issues, when one night, I asked if he had been with anyone else. He said "I wanted to wait until after the wedding to tell you, and I don't know exactly how to tell you, but two nights before I came home, I was with someone else. I was really, really drunk, and I don't remember exactly what we did." So even after our promises, and our "just us", he went and fooled around with someone else. He doesn't even know how far they went, but in my mind it's the worst possible case. This completely pulled the rug out from under me, the ultimate hurt. Whatever I had done to put all those other girls behind me was undone. It just became this massive lump of pain, the how could you do this to me, the I only made out with one person, you fool around with four, more than once, you said you wouldn't drink, etc. etc. etc...

Anyways, I don't really know how the healing began... I had wanted to break up with him at the end of summer. I was going to a new school and wanted to just put all this behind me. The reason I was willing to stay together over the summer was because the night I told him about the other guy, I had promised that when he got home I would be here for him, just him. When I tried to break up at the end of the summer, he told me I had been leading him on. So, for whatever the reason, we decided to make it work.

It was such a long, long road to get where we are now.

But honestly, after writing all that, I'm a little spent. I was shaking during parts and my stomach was getting upset. Maybe later or tomorrow or something I can post how we started getting back on track. But right now, I can't post anymore.

I hope this helps...