I need everyone's help. Please forgive me ahead of time for the long post. This is my first post and I need advice or reassurance. Not really sure.
7 years ago my husband and I met online. We emailed for about 6 weeks back and forth and got to know each other pretty well. He seemed to push the sex talk alot but I just kinda went with it. We met and it was instant fireworks. I knew he was someone I could fall for and I did. For the first few months there were gifts, kind gestures, our intimacy was amazing and he made all the effort to be romantic both in and out of the bedroom. However about 6 weeks after our first date I found evidence that he had a daughter. Not something I minded but something I should have been told. I confronted him and he said yes he had withheld that information because he was afraid it would scare me off. I never knew because we always spent time at my place. After that I forgave him and understood why he lied. He swore he would never do it again. A few weeks later I kept asking him to start hanging out at his place, when I confronted him again he told me he didn't live about 20 minutes away but rather 1 hour away. I didn't understand why he would lie about something so silly, he said he was worried I would think it was too far. I pleaded with him to come clean about anything else and he swore there was nothing else. Then a few weeks later, I found out (on my own) he had not had a job for almost 2 months, since basically we had started seeing each other. I was about to walk out but he swore that was it. He put on the charm and I was already in love with him (3 months in) that I stayed. Hind sight is 20/20
As the next 2-3 months wore on, our intimacy that was AMAZING!! in the beginning started to fade. I kept asking if everything was ok. One day I discovered while using his computer that he was looking at porn and webcams. I am insecure and with the fading intimacy I was upset. I asked that there be no more webcams but reluctantly said ok to some porn as long as it didn't interfere with our relationship. The months wore on and I ended up moving into his house a year after we started dating, the next month he proposed. Our intimacy was not where I would like it but I thought ok things will be fine bc he said he just didn't have a good body image etc. In order to move in with him, I switched a job I love and moved away from my friends. A few months later I discovered pictures of naked women and conversations he was having with these women, even plans to visit them but that was squashed when I found out, though there was some evidence to suggest it has happened already with one. I flipped, and told him no more.I was so devastated. I had moved everything for him. I didn't know what to do. I didn't have my friends near by and I had just started a new teaching position. He begged me not to go and stupidly I stayed. We got married 9 months later. I kept asking him to meet the mother of his child but he said it wasn't the right time. He swore she knew about me and that I would meet her eventually. She was suppossed to pick his daughter up at the wedding venue the night of our wedding. We drove separate cars to the place so I told him I would meet him at home while he waited for her to pick her up. I got home (we only lived 10 minutes away) and waited for him to get home. An hour later he got home. I was pissed, I told him that I knew she idnd't come to get her and that he had never told her about me. He told me that was not the case. She was very late. I dropped it and forgot about it. I got pregnant with my daughter right away. Even though I was pregnant I still wanted intimacy though he was less than thrilled. On a few occassions I caught him getting off at night to it after I had gone to sleep. I have always told him WAKE ME UP! He never did. There were even occassions before we were pregnant where I would ask if he was in the mood, he would say no, and I would wake up to find him doing it at night. Very hurtful.
Fast forward to 4 months after my daughter was born, I still had never met my step-daughter's mother. Though he swore she knew about me and my daughter. Then one night I found out that she had found out about me a week before that and this was after they had been texting sexually and sharing pictures. He lied to me about telling her for over a year, and never told her about our daughter. The pictures/texts etc were cheating in my opinion. I was literally packing a bag. He started our marriage on a lie and was having inappropriate sexual conversations with a woman whose child I was helping raise. I made him go to counseling for his problems, but he didn't stick with it, and just like always I forgave him and set my boundaries up again. I always set my boundaries and he barrels right through. Over the next 4 years, the porn useage and webcams continued, the lying has continued and recently I found out that he is still flirting with those women online. The worst part is that he is viewing webcams again and viewing really violent porn (people forced to do stuff). He also has been trying to flirt sexually with my step-daughter's mom again for over a year at least. she always denies him and ignores the texts.. He is attempting counseling but something like work always comes up and in 5 weeks has only gone twice. I asked at first for him and I to go together and he was adamant that I not go. He has only recently changed his mind but once again doesn't seem to be that invested because work always comes first. He parents think this is all his ADHD, I disagree. I have been to a lawyer and am ready to leave. He knew my limits and has 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on chances.....I don't know what to do. I worry ppl with think I am wrong to leave him but I cannot live like this anymore!
Any advice would be helpful. His parents claim all of this is because of his ADHD... I however don't buy it.
Research
Submitted by Calpurnia on
I suggest ( but don't jump to conclusions) you google Covert and Overt Narcissist and see if he lines up with the description . Some people with add do display some of these characteristics. Perhaps you can go to a counselor or psychologist and ask their opinion and advice pertaining to what your next step should be. Your husband will have to work on your marriage WITH you for there to be any reconciliation. These are extremely serious issues that you describe . It doesn't matter what other people think. You must take care of you. If your sister or best friend were in this position, what advice would you give her? i'm so sorry that this has happened. My heart goes out to you and I'll remember you in prayer.
Maybe this will help
Submitted by Chevron on
It may clarify his pattern of actions, over time, to print off your post and blot everything about you out of it. For the exercise of thinking, only, of course. Mark out your statements of feelings. Erase or blot out your description of your actions (like your move, job change, etc). Blot out...on the page...your hopes, blot out the birth of the baby. It's a pretty awful exercise...
What you'll have left on the page is your description of his actions, over time; his words, over time and how they relate not to you but to what he did about what he said. What's HIS pattern? What is he doing, over time? How do his words fit his actions? What has he been doing? Do you see any direction of change in what he's doing
To me, it doesn't look good. Your take matters so much more than mine, because you're living it and you also know life details that you couldn't put in, because no one can get all the life details in.
My take, reacting only to what you've told us, is that his pattern is to escalate doing what he wants to do. And to repeatedly not only fail to deliver what he promises, but to escalate doing what he promised not to do. What you have left on the page is stuff that people outside your relationship can't see is going on in it...so their opinions about your relationship will NOT be adequately informed
ADHD doesn't = liar who doesn't do what he promises. Ask the people with ADHD in this group.
jlk, much sympathy.