A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:I've been in a relationship with my fiance for 3 years now and we have a 14 month old child together. When we met he'd not long come out of a relationship and told me he'd been with the girl for a couple of years and she'd manipulated him into moving in together by giving up her job to move to where he lived (they lived a couple of hours apart). He said he'd been lonely when they first met and had felt trapped when she'd moved and the end was inevitable. We had a long conversation about it because I was worried he may be on the rebound and I didn't want to get caught up in anything that wasn't properly finished in his head.The relationship to begin with was wonderful. He was forever telling me how he'd never thought he'd meet someone like me, he'd never been in love before etc etc and he proposed quite quickly and I accepted. I was pretty much swept off my feet and he seemed everything I had ever looked for. We got on so well and we just 'clicked' in ever way. We decided to throw caution to the wind in terms of contraception because we were planning on marriage and neither of us were getting any younger and I fell pregnant straight away but since I've had our daughter everything has fallen apart.He had a phone call from his ex girlfriend a month after I gave birth. I saw it ring and him cancel it and when I checked his phone he'd deleted her number and the call list. I found a copy of his phone list on his computer and called her and she told me she was returning a missed call from him. He promised me faithfully that he hadn't contacted her but why would she lie? Being post natal and all over the place emotionally I had all sorts flying through my head and decided (I know I shouldn't and I so wish I hadn't) to reassure myself in any way I could that he was over her and wasn't going behind my back trying to contact her.He left his emails logged in one day accidentally when he was at work and I found email after email from him to her telling her how much he loved her and couldn't bear to be apart from her. All the things he said to me about missing me stupidly when he was at work and that he'd never missed anyone in his life, he'd said it all to her for the THREE AND A HALF YEARS they were together. There are emails with him arranging romantic weekends away, telling his friends about their amazing holidays and the fantastic sex (he said their relationship was platonic, and I stupidly believed him, I never thought he'd have any reason to lie). The worst email was sent a couple of months before I met him when he wrote pages of email telling how amazing she was and how much he cared about her and would love her always and forever and was struggling to come to terms with her decision to end things - in his version to me, and he'd laughed when I'd asked him, he couldn't be on the rebound because he'd ended it with her.All the emails were before I met him so none of them were 'unfaithful' but they have all completely destroyed this perfect relationship and the feelings that he made me think we were feeling for the first time together. I've had relationships before but I've never met anyone that I've been interested enough in. I've always been the one to end things and I've never felt content until I met him.I confronted him and he told me it was all false because she was mentally delicate and he'd sent the 'worst' email because she was threatening to kill herself if he didn't come back to her. I've wanted so much to believe him, I'd put my whole life and every bit of emotion into us and our daughter and so I've tried for months to rationalise it but it's completely destroying me. I cry myself to sleep at night, I've lost all my self esteem and my relationship is in tatters. Every time he tells me he loves me or that I look beautiful or tries to be sexual, all I can hear in my head is his words in all those emails. I've completely lost contact with all of my friends because I don't know how to explain this change in me to them. All I really really want is for none of it to be true but on days like today I know that it all is and that he's lied to me and that I don't know how I can ever trust him to be honest about how he felt, or about anything at all.I've spoken to him over and over again about it and he starts off being understanding but ends up angry and telling me I'm jealous and he can't live explaining his past over and over. I've begged him not to tell me what I want to hear and to be honest about me but he keeps telling me he has. I want to believe him that all of it isn't true but I'm a logical person with black and white evidence in front of me screaming at me that it isn't (he's deleted everything since so I can't re-read any of it but it's indelibly stuck in my mind)I don't know how to forget all those things and I don't know if I should forget. He tells me that even if it were all true, it's in his past but that doesn't help. I rushed into the engagement and the baby because it felt so right and he told me I was as special to him as he was to me but now I just feel like an idiot for ever believing he could feel like that about me. How will I ever know if he's been on the rebound the whole time or cope with knowing the details of everything he said and did with her? I wish I'd never looked at the emails. Please help. I've got no-one to talk to :(
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (18 November 2012): Sometimes people can advise all they want but if you have to ask something to get it out of your system, then u just have to. I really hope you find the answer you are looking for or at least one that will calm you and one you can work on from together. You sound like a nice person and you deserve happiness. I posted earlier along the thread. Good luck tonight and please let us know how it went! Just remember no matter what happens you need to love you most of all. You came into the world alone so you really dont need anyone to make you. You just need someone to pass the time with and have a few nice memories. But realise no ones ever truly yours. Take care
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (17 November 2012): I don't think asking him to tell you the truth will do any good either, in fact, I think it may well make things worse.
Firstly, a bottle of wine won't help.
I know you say you want to hear the truth, but I don't think you will like it if that's what you get. I think it will only make things worse. Moreover, you haven't got anything to gain from hearing even more details about this past relationship. I suspect the truth will simply make you feel even more badly about the situation than you already do. If you are hoping he is going to say that he didn't really love her, etc, I really doubt that is what is going to happen.
I think your bf will also be unhappy about being made to tell you the truth about his past relationship. To be honest, it hasn't got anything to do with you and you don't have any right to interrogate him about it. If you want to end the relationship based on the emails then do so. But hearing more isn't going to make things better. You bf is well within his rights to refuse to tell you any more. Where will that leave you?
I think that you know enough now to end the relationship if that's what you want. I don't see how hearing more will make that choice any easier. Even if he does agree to tell you more, how do you REALLY know if it's the truth? With all the doubts you have at the moment do you really think you have it in you to believe what he says and then leave it at that and forget all the doubts?
Why do you think hearing more will help?
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A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (17 November 2012): I really can't see any good coming out of talking it through with him again.What are you hoping to achieve?If he says that yes, he loved her deeply, that they were soul mates. That he was devastated when she left him and he tried to win her back. That you were a rebound but over time he's come to care about you too. That he has been in contact with her behind your back, what then? Are you going to feel better for knowing this, will it make your relationship stronger?If he sticks to his original story, then you're allways going to doubt him. You've read the emails, you know that they had a relationship and that they loved each other. What's the point in asking him to confirm that?Either decide yourself to leave the past in the past, or walk away. Stop bringing it up and wanting to discuss in cringeing detail what their relationship was like.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (17 November 2012): Thank you so much to everyone who commented on here. Your answers have been a lovely mix of what I needed to hear - some of you have been every so understanding and others have told me what I already know about the destructiveness of what I'm doing to myself and to him. I had a long night thinking about it last night. I don't want to be without him and I know somewhere under all the insecurity that he doesn't want that either but this has to have a lid put on it and if I can't do that then I can't put the both of us through this doubting that's taking over every minute we're together.I'm going to talk to him and ask him if he'll tell me the no-holds-barred truth. Okay, it might not be any of my business, but rightly or wrongly it's become a massive part of our relationship and I need to be able to put it down. How can I do that if I've read one thing and he's saying the polar opposite? Have decided to tackle it tonight... bottle of wine... calm and understandingly ask him to explain all the things that are flying around my head and then I have to believe in him and us, or accept that I can't... I just hope on everything that he'll be honest with me. I really do think I can deal with pretty much anything, I'm not normally such an emotional mess, I just can't deal with the doubt and mistrust and if I can get rid of that... keep your fingers crossed for me tonight and thank you all very very much, I've never posted on anything like this before and I never expected it to be so much help to get it out there and see what other people thought xx
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (17 November 2012): Just want to say that Mystiquek is totally right! About all of it. What great advice. I went through something similar and lost a lot of confidence and self esteem. Being honest theres times even now i find myself slipping back into that frame of mind but u have to think its you hes with. Its you he wants to spend his life with. Its you he calls when something happens or when hes in need.In my situation it was the opposite, my boyfriend told his ex before he met me how amazing she was and how he loved her. Yet with me he took ages to say it. Now thats hurtful too! After much talking it emerged that he felt he had changed after being hurt in previous relationships and perhaps became a harder man and emotionally redundant. I had to accept this if i wanted to be with him. And i have. He has now told me he loves me but not as frequent or gushing as perhaps id like (as you can guess im quite a needy emotional person) but i realise too people grow up(when you're younger maybe loves more gushing as well) and in doing that you and your personality changes. His past with her contributed to the man you love now so you would never want to take that away. Someone once said words are cheap. Its how he treats you and your baby is important so do tell him you want honesty and openness if you are to have a proper life together. The past... forget about it and leave it there. Look to the future- yer future as a happy family.
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A
female
reader, mystiquek  + ♥, writes (16 November 2012):
 Hi original poster. You asked if there was anything I did to help with my feelings. You see for me..I felt very insecure because his ex wife was just like him..a doctor, very intelligent and very aggressive, and she was also the same race as him (Japanese) as whereas I am a blue eyed blonde. I was none of those things that his wife was... and I kept comparing myself to her and it just made me feel sick inside. I had to force myself to stop thinking about her, thinking about them together and every time doubt would creep into my mind I would say "ok, he's not with her..he's with me. He must be with me for a reason". I just kept telling myself that over and over.It sounds ridiculous because I'm not a young girl, but I had NEVER in my life loved a man the way that I love my guy. I wanted him to be ALL MINE! I had to wake up and realize that no matter how much I loved him, he had to want to be with me willingly and me being jealous wasn't going to help AT ALL. After awhile, I started believing it. Its not easy to get over being jealous of an ex, but keep in mind that an ex is an ex for a reason. If you don't trust your guy...TALK to him....get it out in the open. But you have got to find your security on your own. You've got to believe in yourself. Whatever the reason for their break up are..he is with you now and you have a family. Work on what you HAVE..not what once was. I wish you all the best!
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (16 November 2012): I kind of know how you feel because when I first met my boyfriend I thought he had split with ex months before meeting me but I found out it was only a few weeks, and my instant reaction was, was I a rebound You knew he was with her a long time and they were intimate and he must had some sort of love for her as he's human and he spent 3 years with her. I don't understand why you'd want to torture yourself by reading romantic emails between them, It really hurt my boyfriend when I asked him if I was a rebound, it's not nice of you to trash your 3 and a half year relationship with him because he at the time loved his ex, she existed, accept it, everyone has a pastMove on, tell him you're sorry because you must be hurting him by doubting his love for you because of his past, look past your own feelings and just be happy, be a happy family: life is too short.
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A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (16 November 2012): I can see why you feel the way you do and can sympathise. When you met your partner, one of your concerns was that you were a rebound. You asked him about his ex and were told that she'd lied to get them living together, that they hadn't had sex, that he never cared for her and that he'd dumped her. Then you find that none of that was true. That just two months before you got together, he was trying to get her back.I'm really suspicious of someone who deletes their call history, certainly if they've just had a call from their ex! When you ask him about the call he denies phoning her. When you ask about the emails, he says he only sent them because she'd threatened to kill herself.To me, it just doesn't add up. Your choice now is either to walk away or try to fix things. If you try to fix things then you are going to have to put the past behind you, as is he. No more ex, but no more snooping either. It sounds like you both care about each other, but only you know how you feel.Good luck with whatever you decide.
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A
female
reader, ImmortalPrincess +, writes (16 November 2012):
 Most women want to believe that their boyfriend's exes are all broom riding, snaggled toothed witches - so that's what they're told. He was telling you what he thought you wanted to hear. As unrealistic and naive as it is, people find comfort in the belief that their partner was NEVER in love with any of his or her previous relationships.I am the opposite. I take comfort in knowing that when my husband told his ex girlfriend that she was beautiful and he loved her, he meant it. Otherwise, I would have cause to worry about whether or not he means the things he says to me.Be weary of any man who says he has never meant any of the "words of love" he has whispered into the ears of his ex girlfriends.
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A
female
reader, oldbag +, writes (16 November 2012):
 Hi
You have created this problem by snooping into his emails. You didn't think he was cheating and you trusted him,so why do it?
I wouldn't like to think anyone would do it to me, we all have a past, I have told more than one man I loved them.But I wouldn't tell my current partner this, there would be no need, he knows I have had children with a partner and you don't do that without love.
You really have to put her the emails and any thoughts of 'them' out of your mind. Its the only way your current relationship will work and you have a child now too.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (16 November 2012): Thank you Mystiquek, it's good to know that someone's been through the same feelings and come out the other side :)
I've thought a lot along the lines of what you said. I love this guy, I love everything about him and I guess the problem is that he's my first love and I'll never be his. I know that's not his fault but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with I guess. I've never told a guy I loved them before, despite being in long term relationships. I've cared about people and I've enjoyed their company but I've never met anyone that I fell in love with, just that I ended up being good friends with. It's very hard to think that he looked at her and felt for her what I feel for him but you're right, if I don't deal with this, one of us will crack and it will be over.
Did you do anything particular that helped you deal with your feelings or was it just a moment of epiphany? If I had a pill I could take to make the past year disappear and for me to be ignorant again, I would take it in a flash :s
Thank you again :)
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (16 November 2012): I disagree with some advice on here. I think the reason you are upset is not that he has a past, but that he lied to you. The thing is, we all like to create versions of events that make it easier to live with ourselves. Once he's told you the version of events that goes, he finished with her, he is in control, it's going to be hard to get him to change it by backing him into a corner. You feel betrayed but if you try and sympathise you can probably see why he created the story to look more favourable on him, as he didm the point is, you fell in love with him. Do you love him? If you can forgive him, you are more likely to have a more honest
relationship. Noone is perfect. Try and help each other through this and let your relationship grow into something really strong and good.
Good luck
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A
female
reader, mystiquek + ♥, writes (16 November 2012):
When you really love someone, you want to think that you were their first love, but the reality is that most of us have partners that had been with others before us. Its just the way that life is unless you manage to marry your childhood sweetheart and there was never anyone else in the picture.
You don't want to believe that your partner kissed hugged said "I love you" and had sex with someone else..but the odds are they did.
I love my guy more than anything in the world, we've been together for 12 years now. He tells me he loves me more than anything, and I believe he does. BUT...he has an ex wife. When we first started dating, I was soooo jealous of her and wanted to know everything about her, and I would agonize over picturing them together, ect...It just killed me inside, even though I too had been married before. I wanted to be his first everything..I loved him that much. He was kind and patient at first, and then one day I asked a question and he said "WHY do you keep asking about her? That was 7 years ago..she's dead to me"... and I realized I had to stop. I was hurting our relationship worrying about someone that he no longer cared about. He couldn't change his past and I had to let go or I was going to push him away.
You have got to let go of his past. He has it, he can't change it. What did he do wrong? He loved someone before you. He didn't know you! He had a life before you (didn't you have one too before him??) People say things, write things, do things when they are in love..thinking the relationship is going to last forever. Its natural..normal. My guy told me if he could change things he would, but how can I be angry at him because he had a life? I hope you see where I'm going here.
You have to forget about what you read. Like the expression goes.."sometimes its better now to know". You read things that were not meant to be read by you..and now you're hurt. You either have to accept his past, trust that he loves you, move on..or let go of him. If you can't come to terms with everything, the odds are he'll get tired of it all you'll lose him.
Can't you believe that he loves you and you are his present/future? If not, then you need to get out. Good luck finding someone without a past though...most of us have one!
I wish you all the best, I truly do understand what you feel, but you've got to accept what is and move on.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (16 November 2012): Thank you, You Wish for your response, it's nice to have someone to talk to because I've been bottling this all up for over a year now and it's not doing me any good. I know what you're saying and I completely agree with the fact that I brought a lot of this on myself. If I could undo looking at the emails I would in a flash, but what I feel most betrayed about is how completely he lied to me when I asked for his honesty right back at the start.
I asked him whether I needed to be worried about his only recently being single when he told me he loved me on date four and five and I instantly panicked in my head as the speed was a bit alarming. We'd had amazing, long, dates from the very first, talking for hours and hours and I was definitely falling for him pretty badly but I didn't want to end up being hurt and I wanted to make sure he was ready but how can somebody go from being in love with someone for three and a half years and desperately wanting someone back in April to being in love with someone else by June? Is that even possible? How can he have had time to get over her? I'm really not the kind of girl to cause such a monumental u-turn.
I told him right back at the start that if he wasn't sure then we could be friends and relax the pace a while but that I didn't want to go full pelt into disaster and that was when he told me he'd never been in love with her, that he'd ended it and laughed at the idea he was on the rebound.
I'm hurt and I'm confused and I wish he'd been honest with me. I don't want to feel like all of this we've got together is because he wasn't over her. How can I trust him to tell me the truth? I could spend my whole life never really knowing if he's staying with me for our daughter and if the whole thing was a rebound mistake :(
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (16 November 2012): Hi there sweetie,
I'm not gonna judge you reading his past emails, because if I had been in your position I woulda probably done the same thing...
First of you need to calm yourself down, take time out if you need to.. If you have family or friend near by, go to to them for a weekend take the baby, it's not a break its just you needing time away to think things through without the constant ( reading between the lines here) fighting and bickering.. As that not good for you or baby..
I can understand you feel that everything he said was a lie, he told you he broke up with her, when reality she broke up with him and he begged her to rethink it, am I right ?
So lets look at that okey . He lied, most men would, they want to seem macho and strong so therefore he pretended that he did the breaking up.. Here the thing though, that doesn't mean he doesn't love you, it just makes him a jackass for not trusting you at the begin to say..
So when your ready sit down and clear that up, tell him he was a jackass, if it makes you feel better and that you don't want anymore lies in the future... He been found out once don't make it twice..
Now I can feel the love and hurt you have for him, it kinda pours out...
I do think even though he didn't tell the truth before I don't think he meant to hurt you.. I agree with you wish to some degree, this is the past, and you need to leave that there.. I don't think though that what your doing is your fault.. His actions got a reaction, mainly you going nuts and sweetie If I was there I'd give you a cuddle and let you talk.. But you need to let that part slide he did not mean to hurt you there..
My only issue if I was you, would be him calling her after you had the Baby this is very important... You need to find out why that was? What possible reason could he have?
He has no reason to be in contact with his ex and I think this is what is heightening your emotions, am I right?
Take a deep breath and talk to him about it when your ready and without the baby being there, you might get emotional and don't be afraid to.. What he did here is very mistrusting and unless he has a very good answer I would be in two minds to stay with him..
But for the sake of the relationship, and your daughter, hear him out.. Let him tell you why he called her..
You haven't done anything wrong here, his actions got a reaction, him calling her.. And then being shady and deleting all calls .. That's another thing . Let him know that due to this you will have access to his call log logs from now on..
Take care sweetie and chin up walk tall, your the innocent party here ..
Hugs Lou
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A
female
reader, YouWish +, writes (16 November 2012):
 You are destroying your relationship if you haven't done irreparable damage already by what you've done. You shuffled through his emails, read his past love letters, and now you're trashing your relationship. He hasn't done anything wrong by having had an entire relationship before he met you.
Your jealousy could possibly estrange your daughter's relationship with her father as well. You've been together for a long time, and this has to stop with the past and you obsessing on it.
Now you have to cope with reading what you shouldn't have. Your snooping has destroyed things between you, and with the exception of his taking a call from his ex, you have failed to control your own emotions on this.
He is allowed to have had a past, and promises made to her in the past have nothing to do with today. When relationships go sour, all of the sweet stuff said and done in a relationship go away. All you need to know is he isn't with her, and he IS with you.
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