I spent 4 years falling deeply in love with a man I believed to be the person that stood in front of me. I moved into a house with him and set up a joint bank account. I trusted him whole heartedly and thought I would spend the rest of my life with him.
But one very emotionally dark night alone in our house, after receiving debt collector letters addressed to him to our house, I decided to delve into some bank files I’d set up for him only to find many print offs for local gay dogging sites. He was an overly masculine painter and decorator that would sometimes make minor homophobic comments that I just put down to his work. After trying to contact him over and over that night I received no response and my mind wandered into awful thoughts of what we could have sexually caught. All the times I’d had flu symptoms that could have been signs of HIV. I felt so dirty and confused.
He finally came home and opened up about all these fantasies he’d been having for years and sworn me to secrecy. I felt trapped and incredibly alone with no one to even talk to about my worries or concerns.
Over the next few years he became more and more aggressive. I’d find more gay porn on the computer, print offs all over the house, condoms in his bag that we’d never even used, and even sex contraptions in the shed he’d built.
I agreed to explore things with him thinking it was a way of keeping him happy and away from his fantasies but always worried I was pushing him further towards them. He used toys I agreed to use but deep down wasn’t interested in. When they hurt me or made me bleed he just said to try them again to see if they were actually the cause.
We had 3 kids together and I lost 2 pregnancies. He walked out before the third was born aggressively shouting he never wanted another child, even after the miscarriages I had to go through. He was already looking into other people on tinder while I was worried about another miscarriage in my 7th week.
But then I finally got to open up to close friends. Knowing now that if I did I would never go back to him. I’m so relieved and happy I did. If not I could still have ended up going back to him and repeating my mantra “at least I know what the shit is on my doorstep” over and over to make it feel like I was the lucky one to know what my partner was really up to.
Sadly I don’t think I’d ever go into another relationship and will always question what would come out 4 or more years down the line. I’d rather just keep my children safe from anymore hurt. But I will make sure my children never have to go through the same thing or even think its ok to gaslight someone and manipulate them so they can’t even talk to their family and friends.