Edited for clarity:
I don't know if she, my partner had really cheated but she had lied about how much contact she has had with a co-worker. I found out the pieces of the lies over three years about their interactions. Then the pandemic hit and we had been able to stay in one place together and had more time to hash out the boundaries. We were not able to live in the same city because of family circumstances and jobs. So we had been, pre-pandemic working really hard during our decade's relationship to get together. There were a couple of times she had invited me to a specific venue and went with the co-worker and his family instead. When she finally made it up to me, I found her texting him during that activity. That was one of the many little highlights of how tight they were. I had snooped her phone before she started getting careful and found no flirty texts, etc so there was no smoking gun. But the texts, meetings were often and texts were sometimes late at night. The patterns of behavior were that she often told me lies about the amount of contact and whether they went out for lunch alone together. In time, I found out how frequent it was and that, even though she kept saying they would NEVER go out to lunch alone together like it was a bad thing, they did a bunch of times.
It went on for a couple of years till I said in clear boundary that I did not want her to socialize with him outside of work. I hated asking that because it was good having friends at work. It was just weird she kept lying about things with him. At one point I thought she wasn't really into me anymore but she kept saying it is not true, I was the only person she wanted. Even after this, they were still texting but I did not stop it just asked her to tell him not to text middle of the night. She said it is hard for her to set that boundary and it gave her anxiety. So one night it woke us up and I pretty much demanded it and asked her to go full NC. That was over a year ago.
I have been working through my feelings on this and it came dribbling out the way she did with the truth. So it is exhausting for both of us when I see something that triggered me and I asked her why she did all that with a person she was not interested in? So recently, I had one of these episodes so she offered me her phone as proof. I looked but I also looked at a social media app she did not expect and she quickly told me that she cyber stalked an ex (the one before me) but she did not contact the person. I asked her why after ruminating on that revelation and she said she didn't know. I said it would have been nice if she would tell me these things instead of telling me if there is an imminent threat of me finding out or that I had found something out.
So we both said, this is not working. I asked if she meant this as a break up she said no but it is not sustainable in this form. It is true. I need someone I can really talk to about this. I am not sure where to find help even though I can probably find a lot of people online. I don't want to someone who doesn't know anything about infidelity because we did have one briefly who did not even take notes and kept forgetting what I was trying to tell her.
So, we talked again after this a bit calmer. She was saying she was surprised I wanted to know her thoughts before she did anything. I said, "I don't need to but you could have told me about it weeks ago after having done it." We are at a precarious place because we are long distance again. And when we meet up it is getting to the point where our obligations at home is getting in our way and when we have fun I have her lies in my head. The thing about the cyber-stalking of the ex recently is another lie by omission and then gaslighting when I confronted. She even said, "Oh do I need to tell you everything, like when I go to the bathroom?" *eyeroll* She later apologized and said she understood why I was upset and what I was asking.
I just don't know how this is going to work.
[This message edited by AllGood at 10:35 PM, Thursday, August 31st]
