My [23F] live-in boyfriend [25M] of 2 years has been sexting other girls for at least 2 months. Should I leave him?
My boyfriend "Jake" and I met in college when he was a senior and I was a sophomore. We started dating at the beginning of my senior year and have spent nearly every night together since. When I graduated, we both moved to New York City. I lived with 2 roommates in Manhattan, while he lived in Queens. However, he spent essentially every night at my apartment. We moved in together this past June.
We have had a pretty tumultuous relationship and I will admit that I have my fair share of major flaws, such as my anger and drinking issues. We have always fought, but since moving to New York, we have been fighting constantly about everything and anything and sometimes the fighting escalates to screaming and sometimes even shoving/hitting (on my part). To be honest, I am the instigator of a lot of these fights. I drink and blow up small arguments into screaming death matches. However, at the end of the day, no matter how big the fight, we have always made up and decided we would rather be together despite the relationship being unhealthy at times. I thought I had found my person: someone to ground me when I went unhinged, someone who balanced me out. Though I knew I was young, I thought that he was my one and only.
Since May, I have sensed that Jake has been pulling away from the relationship. He has always had a much higher sex drive than me, and stop trying to have sex with me all together. He said it's due to my constant rejection, which I understand. We probably have had sex less than 10 times since May. Since moving in together, he hasn't even touched me. We stopped talking, but continued fighting about money, house chores, really anything.
A couple of days ago, he was in our office and his cell phone alarm was going off in our bedroom. I thought this was weird because, coincidentally since May, he has been very private with his phone and gets uncomfortable if I ever touched it or, god forbid, used it. In order to turn the alarm off, I had to open his phone and it opened right to Snapchat. I found that he was talking to multiple girls, none of whom I knew. The most recent exchange was the night before, and it was with a girl named "Anna." There was a yellow heart next to her name, meaning that the two were best friends on Snapchat: they both snap each other the most. I checked to see if he had he number, and when I saw that he did, I took a picture of her number with my own phone. I know snooping through his phone was wrong, but I was having suspicions for months.
I immediately confronted him about it and he spewed out a bunch of cliches such as he was unsure of our relationship, that I deserved better, he blatantly disrespected me and he can't deal with that, he was very stressed out in his life, he didn't have a direction, he is fucked and doesn't know what's wrong with himself...I broke down. Thinking he was going to leave me and the life we had been building for the past 2 years, I pathetically went into survival mode and begged him to stay with me and asked how could he have done this to me, especially when he always preached loyalty?
That day, I was livid but also scared. I was working from home, so I went to our desktop computer and his FB was logged in. In his searches, I saw that he had been looking up these girls for months. The part that hurt the most was that he was searching for Anna, and only Anna, at 2 am on multiple nights, while I was sleeping in the next room. I asked him straight up if they were sexting, and he denied it completely and even texted me "I haven't been fucking up for months and I am certainly not sending pictures of my dick to fucking anyone" and "I wish you could trust me when I say that this wasn't going on for months and that the betrayal wasn't as deep ad you think it is." All the while, he told me that he has and will always love me and that I was his best friend. I felt so stupid, pathetic, and disrespected. I questioned if he even loved me at all as his actions said the exact opposite. I asked him to move out, but both of our names are on the lease and neither one of us is willing or able to pay to break the lease.
When he got back from work that night, I was bawling and asking him to just come clean about everything. He told me they were girls he knew before me (he was a huge tinder whore before we started dating) and that they contacted him and it was just harmless flirting. Though I was heartbroken, I was willing to forgive him because I know he has been really stressed out and under a lot of pressure from his work and family. We decided to take a break to figure things out, as breaking up isn't easy when you live together.
The next day, I remember I had Anna's number so, in a fit of rage and desperation, I texted her and explained that I was Jake's girlfriend and that we had been together for 2 years and live together and asked what she was doing snapping him so much? What she said felt like the weight of a mountain of rocks just falling on me: they had matched on Tinder 2 months ago and have been texting/Snapchating/sexting regularly since then and that she had no idea that he had a girlfriend. Anna was actually very nice and I called her and cried to her on the phone.
I sent him a screenshot of what she said, and he panicked and called me at least 50 times and texted me about how he needed to speak with me immediately. I was devastated. How could someone do this, and lie straight to my face about it?
Reddit, what do I do? It's not fair that his mistakes are going to turn my world upside down. I do love him, don't want to move, or get a new roommate, or start from scratch again, but at the same how could I ever trust ANYTHING he says again? I don't even know if there have been other instances that I just don't know about? We have both been staying in the apartment, in separate bedrooms, avoiding and not speaking to each other. I am going away for the weekend, and tomorrow just happens to be my birthday. This is the worst birthday present ever.
TLDR: My [23F] live-in boyfriend [25M] of 2 years has been sexting other girls for at least 2 months. Should I leave him?
Posted Aug 25, 2017, 11:57 AM UTC