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BexPurlz
3 160 M Embraced 1
PathStep 1 Compassion hearts39 Forum posts4 Forum upvotes27 Current upvotes27 Age GroupAdult Last activeOctober, 2025 Member sinceSeptember 12, 2024
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Late discovery of early betrayal
Relationship Stress / by BexPurlz
Last post
 October 23rd, 2025
...See more I've been with my partner for 2 years, we live together and I'm step mum to his 10 year old son. We've had a pretty difficult last 6 months since I moved in with him. We haven't found our balance yet, we argue, I do more than my fair share of housework becashe be works late, he doesn't prioritise me, among other things, I haven't been feeling loved. We had decided to have couples counselling to try to work on our issues, but hadn't started yet. Then BOOM! After 2 years together, I checked his phone for the first time. I hated doing it, but something in me just couldn't resist. I found messages from a girl, who had the same name as me, from when we first started dating. Give some context, in our first date, he asked me if I was seeing anybody else, I said no, he so said no, which turned out to be a lie. He told me he only wanted us to see each other and didn't understand how people can date more than one person at a time, and I agreed. Fast forward two years, I find out he was seeing another girl after all. He had been dating her before our first date, continued to text her and arranged another date with her which was supposed to happen 2 days after we slept together for the first time. The date didn't happen because she called it off on the day, but he was checking with her that she was still wanting to meet, sending her messages with kisses and talking to her like he was very interested. He was texting us at the same time, I imagine him sitting there sending one to her then one to me. He was even telling her about our second date, lying about the food he ate and acting like it was with his friends and not me. I feel so betrayed and my brain can't even begin to start rewriting the history of our love story. This has shattered every memory I have and question whether any of it is even real. He bought me flowers and I sent him a picture of the flowers, his reply was 'first of many', but turns out he had just been dumped a few hours before. He replied to her saying right girl wrong time. He is making excuses which I can't even listen to, trying to minimise it, gaslight me by saying we had only been seeing each other a short while, he was winding it down etc. He's lying about it even now. I left and am staying with my mum while I try to work through all of this in my head. It's bad timing as we're currently heaving a new kitchen fitted, so I've left him with no kitchen. I need some help figuring out how to deal with this. Part of me thinks it was so long ago, should I even be that hurt, but I am hurt, I'm so hurt and my reality feels in question.
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Trust and Resentment
35 & Over Community / by BexPurlz
Last post
 October 10th, 2024
...See more Hi there, I'm new here and am hopeful that some of you may be able to give me some comfort in my current situation. I'm 38f in a relationship for a year with a divorced 41m. Everything started great, flowers regularly, spent lots of time together and loved every minute of it. Over the last few months, things have been slowly going downhill. He started taking me for granted, no flowers for 5 months, no effort to show me he cares, never does anything for me, even small things. I would cook for him a few times a week, plus an omelette and coffee every morning he stayed over. I did the typical thing that us women do, I gave more in hopes it would encourage him to do the same, but it did the opposite. Things came to a head 6 weeks ago while we were on holiday in Cyprus with his 9 year old son. He had promised me we would have alone time every day and that he was going to plan a surprise for me, but that didn't happen. We spent 10 minutes alone the whole time we were there, he spent two days treating me like he wished I wasn't there and focused all of his energy on his son. I had paid over the odds for this holiday, I paid half so that he could afford to take his son away, with the understanding that it was my holiday too, but that's not what it felt like. He would forget me, go off for lunch without telling me and get drinks and not bring me anything. I broke down a few days before the end of the holiday, considered ending the relationship and we had a long conversation while his son was asleep, where he promised to start showing me how much he cares. Which he did, but it lasted 2 days and on the way home, he talked to me in an extremely disrespectful way in the airport in front of his son, which I made sure he knew was not acceptable and after I told him to go home and drop me off, he soon changed his tune. We had a busy couple of weeks ahead, back to work, my brothers wedding and my cousins wedding a week apart. Things seemed OK until at my cousin's wedding where he spent the day staring at another woman, a distant relative of mine. At this point I was in total shock, he had never treated me like that before and I was ready to walk away. The next day, after recovering from hangovers, I brought it up and explained what he had done, how he had made me feel and that I didn't trust him anymore. He felt terrible but wasn't fully willing to take accountability for it. Suggested it wasn't as much as I thought. So I told him I didn't want to see him for a week while I got myself through the initial pain of the situation and would decide what I wanted to do when my head was clear. We had several arguments throughout that week, but when we did meet up he took full responsibility, apologised, cried and felt terrible for putting me through it and taking me for granted, promised he would change and start being the person I deserve to be with. It started off OK, not amazing, he did a few small things, but it was just a week later that we was going away with work to ibiza for 3 nights and then flying over to majorca to holiday with his friends for 3 nights. During this time there have been two occasions where he has not kept his word, and these were things that he knew were really important to me. The last conversation we had, he clearly came to the conversation to tell me he had done something he said he wouldn't, he wasn't going to apologise, wasn't going to admit he was wrong and that him telling me absolved him of all guilt and it ended very badly. I told him the next morning that I didn't want to talk to him anymore until he gets home, which is tonight. Since then he has sent me a few nice messages, he misses me etc, which I have not replied to. I'm feeling extremely anxious about his return, we are due to go away on the 4th October for our anniversary for a secluded weekend away. I feel so dispondant about whether he is going to make any effort to change moving forward and I feel like having another conversation with him about it is pointless, as we've already done it and he hasn't listened. During his time away, my mum found out her husband has been cheating on her with multiple young girls and has been using her inheritance money from my grandads passing to pay for their life, and she has almost nothing left. I've been cheated on in several relationships in the past also, so I struggle to trust anyway. I don't know what to do, I don't want to lose the relationship, for the most part it has been really good. I get on well with his family and friends, as does he with mine, he is a good person deep down but I just don't know how to move forward with the resentment and trust issues I feel with him now. On a slightly different note, he has not told me he loves me yet, which is also weighing on my mind. I've brought it up with him once and he has said he's not ready because he's only told his ex wife those words and she treated him really badly at the end, so he has issues surrounding having those feelings. Sorry for the very long message, and I appreciate anybody who even takes the time to read it all 🙏
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