My partner and I have had a really rough couple of years. We lost the home we were desperately wanting to purchase. Lost a beloved pet. A lot of stressful situations and hardship. 

About a year and a half ago things really went sour. We were fighting every day, from small things to big things. It was a constant struggle. 

I recently got diagnosed with ADHD and have been going to behavioral therapy for it. A lot of the things we fought about was the way I treated her. The way I spoke to her. The things I said. The things I promised to do but never followed through. I have a hard time keeping up with overall general life things due to my ADHD, so this doesn’t make it easy for someone who doesn’t particularly struggle with the same things. She is on the spectrum and likes consistency, order, schedule, routine, responsibility, and my disorder is the complete opposite of all of those things. 

For a long time I felt she stopped liking me, loving me, caring about me because of the fights we would have, but now that time has passed and the cheating incident has happened, perspective has set in. 

A year ago we broke up for a while, but still lived in the same house. We attempted to coexist peacefully but my behaviors and actions would not allow that to be achieved. 

She went into a very depressive state, that she is still currently in a long time ago. She lost a lot of things she loved, had to sell things of hers that she didn’t want to get rid of for monetary purposes only, when we lost the house we wanted to buy, things got lost, misplaced or broken. Most of the things being hers. Which just aided in the spiraling of her mental state. 

Late last year I reconnected with someone I knew from high school. I hid what had just been a friendship at that moment from her. Which then later turned into something more. For a long time she suspected that things weren’t right. And she would tell me that I would find someone to confide in, that I would tell this person all about my problems and our problems and that one thing would lead to another and eventually something more would happen. Every time she brought it up, I would fight with her. Telling her that I would never do that. That I would never be disloyal to her. But the fact of the matter is that, I was already being disloyal by hiding this relationship from her when it was just a friendship, and then later on escalating it into something more. Which played out just like she had suspected it would. 

I started flirting with this person on social media, very publicly. I later on asked for this persons number, again, publicly on social media. For a while she was just a sounding board. Then turned into something more because I have a terrible sense of self compassion and self worth. I started sending her inappropriate pictures and she did the same. I was very lost when everything started to happen. For a long time I wasn’t aware that we were even still in a relationship, my partner and I. Looking back now with the perspective I have at this moment, the things that I thought were happening, were not. The feelings I had made myself feel, were just a figment of my imagination and my insecurities playing games in my head. 

In January of this year, my partner came up to me and said that she wanted to put all of our negative things behind us and wanted to try again to make things work. We had sex for a couple of weeks, had some fun and amazing times together, unfortunately from one day to the next our oldest dog got sick and passed away. This put a huge strain on her and on us collectively. She had had the dog for a long time before me. For a total of 15 years all together. She was very depressed. And everything just came rushing back and we started fighting again. Bickering. Arguing. 

She is a person that likes to plan ahead of time and set herself up for success as much as she possibly can. 

Our house and online business was still a mess from the past years. So she sat down and planned and said that we needed to get through everything in the allotted amount of time or she would be done trying because she was too tired to keep fighting. 

I didn’t follow through with my word. I didn’t follow through with my promises. And when she realized that nothing was getting done. Nothing was happening. We stopped speaking for 3 days. We would sit completely afar from each other. Talking sometimes only about what was playing on the television. But nothing else. 

When that happened I really believed in that moment that it was over. That our relationship was done. I sat down with her in the living room and told her I needed space. That I was going to leave for a while. There weren’t very many options for our problems and I believed that space would help us both gain better perspective. Mind you, this is when I still thought we weren’t in a relationship. That we were just working on getting that back. So I decided to take a trip to Florida to see my friend. I live on the west coast, so it was a long drive from here to there. 

We spent all night awake. Going back and forth from arguing and crying. Finally around 5am I packed a bag and said to her before I left that this would help our relationship and help us in getting back to where we both want to be. I put my bag in my car and I left. 

On my way there I talked to the person I had an affair with via text message. She had joked about me stopping by and seeing her since she lives in Louisiana and it’s on the way to Florida. I asked for her address and said in a joking manner that I was “this“ many miles away from her. But in that moment I had no intentions of actually stopping there. Because I felt disgusting. I felt I betrayed myself and the love I have for my partner. All I wanted was to be loved by her and love her without any restrictions. 

I was talking to my friend in Florida, which at this point she had no idea I was on my way to see her. I just said I was going to Florida, which she assumed I was going to go see my family because they live there. She said her sister is in Houston that if I needed to stop that I could stop there. So I did. I showered and then had a very nasty phone call with my partner and I started spouting off at the mouth saying that we weren’t compatible. That we want two different lives that we just weren’t going to work. That I never wanted to have kids, even though we started trying having kids 4 years ago. It was all a lie and I didn’t even know it. 

After a while of being at my friends sister house I decided to go for a drive, but just kept driving to my destination.  2 hours into my drive I made the terrible choice to go and see the person I had an affair with. I arrived there a few hours after that and that is went everything came crumbling down on top of me. I ended up staying at this persons house for a week. My partner and I share our location with each other for safety reasons, but she had been looking at my location because she was desperate and hurt and didn’t know what was happening. Which I don’t blame her for it. 

When I arrived there, this person had friends over and they were all taking Xanax. Which I am not an avid drug user. I never have been. But that night I decided that that was a “wise” choice (sarcasm). I had for a while turned my self destruct mode on and was finally physically manifesting it. We ended up going in her room and making out and we were topless and it was turning into sex. I panicked in the middle of my “high” of xanax and said I couldn’t do it. And walked away from her and went to sleep on the couch. I hadn’t been with anyone sexually other than my partner for 4.5 years. I felt terrible and all I wanted was to go back home and be with her. To continue my string of poor choices I decided to stay at this persons house for a week, sleeping on the couch. Just trying to get myself in a cognitive mental mindset. I didn’t achieve it. 

When I was driving to Louisiana. I lied to my partner about who I was staying with and said it was a friend of my friend. Some older lady. I made up an elaborate story about it and lied to my partner. 

After a week and another terrible phone call with my partner telling her that we weren’t compatible and that I didn’t want the things we had been planning for so long. I packed all of my things and left first thing in the morning back to the west coast. 

I arrived at the house, after a long 24 hour drive without stopping or sleeping. After phone calls with my partner and making her feel guilty about everything and blaming everything on her. In a fit of anger she had packed my things in boxes because she, justifiably, thought I wasn’t coming back. We sat in the living room talking, we fought, we cried. At this point I was so ashamed and disgusted with myself I couldn’t face what I did and decided to pack all of my things in my car and go stay with my friend in Colorado. Before I left, I left her with my most emotionally priced possessions. I left my favorite sweater which I had sprayed with my perfume and said that I still needed spade and time to get myself right. I told her that most likely I would get in my car drive for a while and then turn around. I never turned around. I stayed at a friends house that night and left early morning to Colorado. I left her for 5 weeks. And fought with her. Blamed her. Made her feel guilty, when she knew that I had done something wrong and I was continuing doing something wrong. I kept the “friendship” with the person I had an affair with going. I bought her gifts out of guilt and shame. Made her feel “special” when the energy should’ve have gone to repairing what I so desperately wanted. 

My partner finally figured out what I had done due to how public I was on social media with the affair. When she asked me about it, I lied. When I was backed into a corner I came somewhat clean, but continued to lie. Out of fear, shame and desperation. After weeks had passed after she told me she knew. She said that she didn’t want to talk to me till October. It was April/May at this point in time. 

All of a sudden a wave of negative feelings and realizations came over me and I text her saying that I wanted to come back and talk to her face to face because she deserved the respect of that conversation and honesty. 

She set stipulations for me to come back and move back into our home. She wanted unbridled honesty. Full, scary, rip the band aid off honesty. I agreed to it. Packed my things and drove back home. 

When I got there and we had the conversation she had asked for, I lied. I lied about big details and small ones. I lied about the severity of everything I had done. It’s been 9 weeks since I’ve been back home and I have continued to lie out of guilt, shame and fear. I feel it is a compulsion at this point. But the truth finally came out about everything because she went through the pictures in my phone and found screenshots of conversations and everything. 

She added the person I had an affair with on social media and has been chatting with her to get the answers for the questions she had been asking me but knew she wasn’t getting the honest answers to any of it. 

We had an enormous fight. It lasted two days. 

I finally gave in and fought back against my fears and put my foot down on all of the things I hadn’t done before. One of the things was to join a support group about infidelity. So this is why I am here today.