Feeling like I’m the victim to myself

My whole story is this.

I cheated on my loving partner of 5 years to get easy validation from people on the internet.
I had upwards to 9-10 cyber affairs were I requested pictures from multiple women.

I had full blown fantasies that I spent hours indulged in during these chats. I lied about who I truly was irl, telling these girls I was single, made 6 figures, and so many more stupid things to make me more desirable. Because in reality I don’t have any of those things I was flaunting. I just have decent looks.

My affairs went on for 2 weeks starting small and quickly spiraling into me messaging girls in the chat room specifically to let them know my interest in them.

The night I told my partner I told her a complete fallacy that it was just one girl online and she didn’t really care too much. Next day I told her more truthfully, but left out so much.

She came home one day and told me there better not be anything else or that’s it. At the time I was too scared to correct my actions that I kept the secrets going.

One day I say her down to unleash all my wrongdoings I could remember. And even though she was devastated, again she wants us to fix this together. However now she knows I lie from fear of consequences.

A few days later we talked again where a lot of my answers were "I don’t know" as I hadn’t spent the time recollecting and I didn’t want to tell her something that wasn’t true off of instinct.

I answered many questions, and she gave me the benefit of being patient for me to work out all the details. Which I thanked her for in tears.

Since then we’ve been both working hard in therapy and in our relationship to continue caring and loving eachother.

One big thing though is I work out of state ALOT now. My affairs happened when I was unemployed, and I’m not worried about cheating as my body and mind have and are still beating me to what I believe might be the edge of death.

I can barely eat most days, my sleep is constantly disturbed, my anxiety/stress is constantly at peak, and I’m spiraling constantly.

While reflecting I’ve also come to terms that I’m a compulsive liar, I have always lied to be more "interesting" or to protect myself from consequences, and more.

I have taken the step to tell the people in my life that matter and are present in my life of a lot of my terrible lies. And while I’m proud of what I’m making strides to correct, I hate myself for allowing myself to do those things as the lies "don’t hurt anybody".

Back to my terrible choices of infidelity, and my corrections.

I have been spending the past 3 weeks writing a full disclosure as that allows me to remember and jot down whatever it is I’m remembering and flow. However I’m too a point where I’m questioning the legitimacy of what I’ve wrote on a lot of things as my affair evidence is deleted.

Many of the things I remember, and a lot of things are just general rundowns of what happened as they didn’t make enough of an impact to sit in my mind like a physical event would. (I’m not minimizing I swear, just trying to put it in a way that might make sense to readers)

Through triggers I remember more about the affairs, but only bits and pieces. Not what lead up to it, what came after it, so forth and so on.

I’m terrified to hand my girlfriend a disclosure that she accepts, and I have to go back and fix it. I feel like even though I’m working so hard to put it together, it will never be good enough.

I deal with a crazy amount of anxiety that I’ll put everything together and 4 months later ANOTHER DETAIL APPEARS THAT WASNT DISCLOSED. And I prolong my partners hurt.

I truly believe death would be an easier than the guilt and anxiety I’m fighting most days, EVEN THOUGH SHE HAS ONCE AGAIN SHOWED TO BE THE BEST PARTNER I COULD AND WILL EVER HAVE.

She’s amazing, beautiful, funny, talented, hardworking, and truly the light of my fucking life! And I felt that our lack of intimacy gave me the right to go and seek sexual satisfaction online cause it wasn’t "as bad as physical" or "she’ll never know so it’s okay."

I feel like a shitty person, when in reality I’m trying to remind myself I did the actions of a shitty person. I have the desire to be a better person and that should absolve me a bit, however I can’t get those good things to stick because I know how terrible what I did was.

I don’t believe I deserve a second chance, nor do I believe I’m going to be the best partner she has available.

I think about running away all the time, to escape my problems and allow her to move on and heal properly. But I know if I do leave she may never heal.

Overall I just don’t know what tf is going on in my head.

The anxiety and stress are winning, and I don’t know what do at this point while I’m so far away from home for so long.

4 comments posted: Thursday, October 3rd, 2024