This is hard to admit, but I am 40m and did something truly disgusting. 

I was having a disagreement with my gf about the covid precautions my ex wife and children should take. It was a fraught situation, but my gf of 3 years insisted I had to either pull my kids from school and tell my ex to leave work as a teacher, or not see the kids, or break up. I told my ex to pull the kids and not go to work. She said she could do the former, but not the later. 

I lied to my gf, and told her that my ex was not going to work. I didn’t want to break up, but not seeing the kids for months also did not seem possible.

That went undiscovered for about a month. When my gf saw on the internet somehow that my ex had gone to work the week after thanksgiving, she confronted me. I played dumb and said I thought the ex had told me she wasn’t going to work, I must have been mistaken. My gf wanted proof that conversation happened.

So I wrote an email to my ex. She didn’t respond, and I got increasingly anxious as I needed a response to show to gf. So I called and asked her to respond to the email. Ex said she would read and respond on the phone. I said please just send me an email, and she wouldn’t without a reason why. I declined to give her one. And she didn’t write the email. She then proceeded to challenge my email and be hurt by the content.

I then did something really bad. I actually can’t write this down. I made a fake email address that looked like my ex’s email, and wrote an email to that address and responding from that address. I used portions of other emails my ex had written so that it wouldn’t be my voice. I tried to capture what she said, but it was a fabrication. I then showed my gf that email exchange.

She questioned it because it was disjointed. I swore on her life and her brothers life that it was real. We had a deep conversation about trust and we rebuilt our connection.

Then she realized the email icon didn’t match. She asked to see my phone and realized it wasn’t my ex’s email address but one that was very close. My gf was incredibly hurt and crying for me to give an explanation that what she thought wasn’t true. I hesitated at first, but then came clean. 

Obviously, this has ruined our relationship. My gf had put up with past lies and taken ownership that her extreme reactions had made the situation worse. She would break up with me repeatedly for very minor issues and did not always handle the truth well. 

But she had grown and tempered reactions over the past few months. And she wanted to build trust. I threw that away. This is so duplicitous. 

I am embarrassed. I am deeply ashamed. I need help. I know she isn’t coming back ever. I am actually heartbroken, not only for losing her but for what I did to her. 

I had been trying to be better about lying, which were always omissions about my family or about her preferences that could not align with reality. I had lied to her extensively at the beginning of the relationship, but had been doing so much work to rebuild that trust. 

And she was hesitant but coming back. And she finally reopened herself to me and I just crushed her. I absolutely crushed her. I can’t bear this guilt anymore. I crushed her.

I thought about just ending it all last night because I couldn’t take the guilt and shame. I was too much of a coward. And I didn’t want to burden her or my kids with that.

I am worried about my soul. It feels irreparable.