Quote:
Originally Posted by seekinglogic
Hello all - I'm in one of the worst situations of my life.
I have been with my partner for five years. Preceding this relationship, I was in about 7 years of bad relationships. My trust was broken in all of them - all three cheated on me and were generally unkind people to me. I almost immediately went into this relationship after I separated from my ex and have since struggled. The man I am with now is great. He has his hiccups, but nothing compared to what I have done. I have never fully trusted him for -what seems like- no reason other than that I struggle to trust myself. In recent years I have fallen into a pit of self deprecation and insecurity. I realize this isn't the most unique complaint, but I'm lost and I want to find the way. My partner had/has a hard drive with years of documents on it. He used to keep a large amount of pornography on it, until he deleted it (I think). I thought he stopped watching porn, until I found out on our recent vacation that he hadn't. He said he watched it every few months. I felt so upset. Of course, I am not without fault. I too have made mistakes, and have repeated countless arguments and struggled to move on from hurtful words or actions. On this hard drive, he also had years of documents that he had saved, as well as pictures he has kept of him and his ex having sex, and just every picture he has ever taken of her. He had pictures of him kissing other women. He said it was just a junk drawer that needed cleaning. After finding out about the porn, I was so angry. When he left for work yesterday, I took the hard drive and poured water on it. I wasn't thinking (which is the problem), and now I have done something so unforgivable and harmful to our relationship, I fear that it is irreparable. (I'm not sure if the hard drive can be repaired). He found out it was wet and I tried to deny it, but then I just admitted to it and said that I did it on purpose. He was okay at first and then the frustration and disappointment escalated. He said that I am his attacker, and he can not trust me. He said that I have never been worthy of trust but he took a gamble on me. Of course there are a lot of inner workings I can not type on here, but I'm reaching out to see if anyone can offer my advice. I don't want to leave, but right now, it seems like it's the only logical choice after this. Can you come back from that? I think I am a smart, loving person, but when things like this happen, I doubt everything about myself. The regret I feel is immeasurable. I feel like I don't deserve to be with him anymore. Does anyone have any advice? Writing on this forum is a desperate measure, so I'm open to comments, advice, constructive criticism. Thank you all.
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I'm going to be totally honest, because I know if I was in this situation I would want complete honesty in other people's words.
I don't want to be insensitive. I also don't want to gloss over anything since sometimes it's hard to accept things for what they are. I struggle with that a lot also. I don't know what either of you are like in real life, and of course I don't know every detail of your relationship's history so I'm just going to do my best here.
Yes, you know that going through his things without his knowledge wasn't fair to him; however him saying you weren't ever worthy of his trust is totally disrespectful and overly dramatic. Especially if he genuinely meant it and didn't say that just out of anger. In a sense, the same thing could be said about him. If you didn't find out about it during your vacation, would you ever have known? Would it have come up at a future time?
It was also disrespectful for him to lie about something so great. I'm not talking about the fact that he had the porn but how you said
his ex was also on the drive. Personally, this is not something I would
knowingly tolerate for the sake of my own self respect but that's just personal preference. Yeah most guys do look at porn but watching and reminiscing times with your ex is a completely different, higher level of disrespect. Hearing this tells me that you haven't moved on and have things to work on within yourself. In that case, I don't want to be involved with you. Why should I be with you if your mind is still on when you were with someone else?
Logically think about what could've been done differently. He could've decided not to lie to you about his intentions of clearing the drive. And you could've discussed with him how much it bothered you. I'm sure you've thought of this already though. Don't focus on this too much; you don't want to get too down about.
The point is so you see what can be done in the future in similar situations.
I'm not saying you
have to leave him because of what I told you. I'm not saying you
have to stay with him to go against what's generally expected either. I only wrote this so you could see the situation in a different way. Whether or not you'll ultimately stay with him is
your decision and yours alone. Completely up to you. You have the power here. Don't forget the tired expression: that we're all humans and make mistakes.
All the best to you.
