do I Tell Her?

[BigGreen]

This is my first post ever and I'm sorry it's so bloody long. Bless your soul if you're willing and patient enough to read it and comment:

I met someone who was the love of my life about 7 years ago. We're talking a deep, profound connection that led to over a year long honeymoon phase and mutual plans to spend the rest of our lives together. We were young and so so so in love, and we were inseparable. We ended up living together for a few years and had an incredible relationship and life we were building together that was derailed when our first apartment together became horrendously overrun with bugs. With awful coping mechanisms and an immature psychology, I took it all very personally and fell into a very dark, dangerous mental health spiral over the course of over a year. I was very poorly equipped for something like that. Even when it got better and we moved to a better apartment, I was still in a hole. I needed therapy and space, but I wasn't able to get that. When I wasn't working way too often, I was drinking excessively or hanging out with bummy friends from work who paled in comparison to my ex and our love, avoiding home because I was scared of what was happening, scarred by the circumstances, and avoiding the fact that I was allowing my relationships with her and myself to stagnate and rot and had been for a really long time. I was deeply in denial. It got really bad, I lost sight of myself and who I was and what I had with her enough that at its worst, I cheated on her; first with an ex while I was in a different city, and then once even while in the same city where we lived together. Furthermore, I almost died a couple of times while drunk.

Horrified by the disconnect between who I thought I was and how I had cheated on her, but also paralyzed with the thought of losing her, this person who was my best friend and who's love I had built my life around, I couldn't tell her the truth, but nor could I forgive myself. Every bit of research I did about the best course of action recommended was black and white: TELL HER, or DON'T TELL HER AT ALL COSTS and I ended up stuck in the middle and feeling like trash about myself.

Luckily, I woke up to a lot of the other problems and moved away, breaking up with her (one of the hardest things i've ever done), investing in myself and my future again through going back to school and getting my ass in therapy. Sobriety, exercise, etc. It was some of the hardest s*** I've ever done in my life, but I've reclaimed my sense of self, my purpose, capacity for joy, and my direction. I feel like I felt when I met her, youthful and joyous in a world full of possibilities. I now live in Seattle, she's in Portland.  I've since had a couple other small relationships and ultimately arrived at continuing to work on and focus on myself. However, I've always wanted to salvage my relationship with my ex. In the past couple of years, we've talked a handful of times and gradually, at a snail's pace, begun to heal what happened. She says she loves me unconditionally, and I her, but through COVID and some painful miscommunications that I won't get into after having begun to start up a friendship again, we're currently taking space again from each other. I've told her that I want her in my life, as a friend or whatever or however doesn't matter and I mean it, we are those rare people who've fallen deeply in love and come to know each other intimately and I want to be there for her; it's lonely out there and we need all the people who love us we can get, I've always believed exes or not, eventually maturity can allow people to at least still be friends. We've been like family! We might as well have been married. Plus she just lost her cousin to cancer and it has been a hard time for her. I also know that we could end up back 'together' at some point in the future romantically, she's always wanted to move here and I have a lot of family there; I know that she still loves me and has a painful yearning for me in a romantic way, I can tell, and I love her that way as well. I think about her many times a day. But friends, lovers, whatever we end up I'm hiding this warty side of myself that has been there for far too long from when I was at my absolute worst. I'm the douchebag who keeps his distance because he hasn't been honest, whether we're in contact or not.

I feel like I need to pick one of three lanes, but none of them is easy.

ONE: Lay it all out. Tell her. Be honest and face the uncertainty, knowing full well it could cost me someone being in my life who I've basically already pushed so far away, but it also would be like rubbing turd in her wounds, wounds that I caused already when I went crazy, became distant and left her in the first place; plus it could utterly destroy the 'unconditional love' that she says she has for me; the fear of the worst case scenario from this route is that it's like losing a huge part of myself and emotionally destabilizing her even further in the process. However, it would release a lot of pressure and perhaps explain a lot of why I've been the way I've been to her. 

TWO: Keep my secret but continue to engage. Work on my distant tendencies and find a way to ignore them or bury them in myself better than I have been. This has been agony and it needs to be better if it's going to work, but I've made it work so far, and have seen anecdotes of others doing the same. I'm not a dishonest person and this f***ing kills me. The cheating is deeply at odds with who I believed myself to be, and who I have managed to become now.

THREE: Stop connecting with her at all. Go full distant/colloquial. For her sake and for mine, perhaps it's better to just cut it where it is and let the line stay slack. This feels like even worse agony but it's an option. A cold, dark, heartbreaking option but perhaps the one I deserve? I feel like I've been punishing myself already this whole time and if this is the best way to get out of that, perhaps it saves us both more pain.

Her birthday is coming up in just over a month. I have the time to prepare a sweet card or thoughtful present to gently be like, 'hey, I'm still here and I love you and I want to figure things out, whatever that means, if or when you're ready', but I've been flipping over these issues in my head for far too long and I need to, once again, pick a lane. What should I do? Is there a route that I haven't seen? Can any of y'all help me?

Edited June 25, 2020 by babyplants
needed to add that lil intro cause this is a novel

[healing light]

Honestly, if it's eating at your peace of mind and you really think you have a shot with her in the future, I would come clean. I would explain all the ways that this led you into distancing yourself, feeling like crap, self-sabotaging the relationship, etc. and how you have since become sober and sought out therapy. And now that you have yourself sorted, you understand if she wants nothing to do with you but you are laying it on the line because you want to try again and do right by her.

I feel like if you don't tell her and try to reconcile, it will lead to the same distancing and self sabotaging behavior and eat you alive. Plus if it came out down the road, she would never be able to trust you again if you don't start on an honest footing.

But that's my two cents. I'm the type of person that does give second chances and thinks that deep love is rare to find, that not everyone is replaceable.

[IndigoNight]

Talk to her, and be honest, before the two of you even attempt to work on getting back together (if that is a possibility). 

Leave her birthday for happy things only. Don't use it as a way to have a serious talk. Keep it, and a little playful, like a friend would. Funny card, nothing romantic, keep the gift simple, but something you know she would enjoy. 

Until you come to terms with the past, don't tempt her with a future together. It will hurt her more than anything you've done before.

[mark clemson]

Since you're already broken up, IF you start to get back together I think you should tell her about the infidelity. A) you can start with a clean slate (if she accepts you);  B) you clearly feel quite guilty - if you got together, this knowledge would eat at you even more; you'd probably eventually "need" to tell her, and that would cause her even more distress at that time, re-hurting her emotionally and finally C) if she is "romantically pining" for you, then actually getting you will ease that, therefore IMO she's more likely to be willing to disregard the infidelity before you've gotten back together rather than after once her yearning "has" decreased - note that's certainly no guarantee she will accept it or that it won't come back up later if you do get together, just an IMO improved chance.

[colingrant]

Man up. Come clean. 

[BigGreen]

thanks everyone! I'm gonna keep sitting on this, just taking it day by day. I need to remind myself that nothing ever has to happen this instant. Just with COVID and all this time to think it's hard not to get in my head and think everything needs to be fixed ASAP. You may have your own versions of this. I appreciate the advice all around. In the spirit of calm, I've decided to just wait, take Indigo Nights' advice and get her something nice for her birthday, then see what comes of it. 
A close friend who knows what happened mentioned that telling her might mess with her trust a lot, in a general sense, and might actually be really bad for her. So I may have to bite the bullet and take the 'L', but again nothing needs to happen this instant. I'll see how the next few months go 

Thanks again everyone  
I'll update if anything happens, for anyone who cares hahaha. Maybe even just for my own peace of mind. This website is a really cool community ❤️

[HadMeOverABarrel]

Friend, I commend you on all the hard work you've done! That being said, do you think you might have a bit more to do? I was just talking with a friend yesterday about how we think we did all our work in therapy only to discover years later there's more to do after having been triggered by an event. I feel like all your unease means you may have some more work to do within. Have you considered working with a local therapist?

Aside, it seems like you are describing yourself as having an avoidant attachment style. If so, I'm interested in learning more about how it feels for you when your romantic partner tries to get close, how you react, if you experience cycles of wanting closeness/distance, and how you feel throughout that cycle. 

Edited June 27, 2020 by HadMeOverABarrel
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