Crisis moment for me - not sure what to do.

[Meconvierto]

It's really hard to summarize what feels like could fill volumes into something succinct enough for a forum post.  I'm on the verge of deciding whether or not to end my relationship (we're not married, but might as well be) to my partner and mother of our 3yo child.  I'm at the point where I feel still trapped right at the dead center of moving in either direction (to either just end it and move on, or throw myself in headfirst one last time to try and salvage it), and I can no longer think through this on my own without getting outside advice.  

Both options seem awful.  On the one hand I leave and am free to pursue a new life, but part of me dies inside knowing I won't get to see my amazing daughter each and every day.  Not to mention yet to be understood sufferings of being a single parent to a still very small child.  On the other hand, it seems like it may be possible for me to make an extraordinary effort to saving the relationship, but my feeling is that if I stayed in it, I'd be sacrificing a fairly sizable chunk of my happiness and mental well-being.  There's major guilt, like, wouldn't I do anything for my child??  To think about the idea of my child suddenly realizing one parent is always gone, being so young, and asking in her little innocent voice "where's daddy?" or "I want mommy", and to try and explain it to her little mind which won't understand....this crushes me.  I go into the bathroom and cry when that thought hits me.  I feel like I'd be such a failure as a parent.  That I'd selfishly let her down and deprive her of having two parents around to raise her...just so I can relieve myself of my own suffering.  I feel like I should do anything to prevent that.  But then I wonder if it's even realistic for me to say to myself that I'm willing to suffer so much for the sake of giving that type of stability to my child.

The SO and I have several confounding factors on both sides working against us.  We have both contributed immensely to the damage done on our partnership.  You reach a point where the concept of blame seems silly.  We spend so much time on that as couples when we fight, and you might as well be talking to the wall when you get in those modes.  

First - her.  When we started out almost 10 years ago, she was an alcoholic.  Not the kind of obvious alcoholic that drinks every single day to get through the day, but instead would go on very serious periodic binges that would last for days on a frequency of about a few times a month.  Back then, I liked to party too, but not like that.  I guess I assumed it was something she'd grow out of.  When she'd get into these dark places, she would never open up to me about what all was wrong.  Like, never.  Kept it all bottled up.  Occasionally she would lie to me and tell me she just loved me so much, she wanted more commitment from me and it upset her, so that's why she drank.  This wasn't the reason.  She even told me once in one of these spells that she loved me and wanted a kid with me badly.  I somehow interpreted this as being really romantic and, wanting kids also, we started trying to have kids and eventually did have the one.  Turns out the pattern of alcoholism can be traced back to having really crappy parents, and other childhood issues I won't get into.  It all came to a head a few years ago when she got so drunk when I was out of town on work that she put our child in serious danger, and to her credit she has been sober and in recovery ever since.  This, however, while being a great step, if you happen to be familiar with recovery, you know that it can be a long process of re-discovering who you are, and a lot of that is not pretty.  In my case, it also means that she projects this hole she has inside that her s***ty dad left her onto me, and manifests itself in riding my ass constantly for every little thing (for lack of a better way to put it), being incredibly passive aggressive nearly constantly.  With my own neuroticism being such that I realized I have a complex where I never feel like I'm good enough, it's a perfect combination where I'm just constantly trying to justify myself against her attacks when I know I didn't do anything wrong.  

Now for me.  I am no saint either.  I come from a good supportive family and have a good job.  I'm a very hard worker.  I believe myself to be emotionally intelligent and have been told by many that I'm a great listener.  When I met her, I really did fall in love.  I think we both did.  We're both artistic, creative people, and we complemented each other in an awesome way.  Now, for the fairly brief period between this relationship and one just prior, I was single for a time.  And in that time I discovered the world of online hookups (mainly Craigslist, or other apps that have similar function).  Going from someone who has a high sex drive and a fairly high amount of sex partners up until that point in time, it was quite exciting and I had a lot of fun with these random, brief encounters.  Before this point, I really never had many one night stands at all - I always met sex partners in a pretty organic way.   I met women through friends or at parties and we'd at least have a date or two before having sex.  My point is that this new way of getting sex was quite astounding to me.   But when I finally met my partner (online also as it were), we hit it off so well that we both went exclusive pretty quickly.  We were having tons of sex, like the most I ever had in my life, which lasted for about 1.5 years.  Then, I started doing something I never ever did before in a relationship:  I felt a little bored so I went back to the sites "just to see" at first.  I had had some fun hooking up with transexual girls since my discovery, and eventually I found myself actually meeting them again for quick hookups.  Initially, I justified that they were not biological girls, so it's not the same thing, plus my partner always has had a pass to hook up with girls as she's bi, but she didnt' cash in on it very often.  Well, I started secretly cashing in on this pattern a lot.  It didn't stop there though.  For whatever reason, this excitement exponentially grabbed my focus, progressively.  Slowly I kept increasing the types and frequency of hookups.  It moved to finding regular women for quick one-off hookups, to having a collection of girls who would host me at their homes, to seeing prostitutes every single week, massage parlors, local sex clubs, gang bangs.  I literally wanted to explore it all.  It really got a hold of me to where I realized I had a problem.  Obviously I'm doing all this in secret and lying to my partner which is bad enough, but basically I was totally addicted and my thoughts taken over.  This year, I decided to challenge myself to stopping all these activities.  I was too hooked to try and stop "forever", so I did several series' of 30 day fasts.  It was incredibly helpful.  The extra bandwidth my mind now had to think other thoughts made me realize just how much of a shell of a person I'd become.  Right around this time, my partner started suspecting something (I was actually already caught once by her) and started logging my car miles.  Even though I had majorly backed off the former activities, I wasn't totally stopped.  I still do have a high sex drive, and me and her almost never have sex and haven't for years.  Part of the reason for that is because she rejected my touch so many times that I just stopped trying.  And of course all the aforementioned constant fighting.   The other part is that I also feel so much fear of her manipulative emotional abuse, that the thought of intimacy with her is frightening to me.  I still feel she's physically attractive but I have like zero interest.  

So, here we are.  Not having sex and she's tracking my whereabouts.  She thinks I'm lying to her about where I'm going and she's right part of the time.  But, I know I can't tell her the truth, as that would for sure be the end.  So that's why I view the one option (the one where I stay with her) is that I need to totally stop my side activities and figure out how to be intimate with her again.  Which almost seems impossible.  Not to mention I don't know if I believe that she has the capacity to stop abusing me, even if I were to change my tune 100% and throw all my energy at fixing things.  I tried advocating for an open relationship so that I could transition into some kind of openness with her, but she rejected it.  

I know I've been so bad and so wrong for my part in this, but that doesn't help me decide what to do.  I feel like I have this big hang-up about sex now, and that maybe I'm someone that just needs some variety to feel happy.  It's so shameful.  I wish I hadn't discovered this while in the relationship in which I've had a child.  We are in such a cycle of negative communication now that we are stalemated pretty severely whenever we have talks.  And by the way, we have gone through a few couples therapists, went to many many sessions over a period of years.  My feeling is that they don't really help.  My partner just used it as a complaints department against me.  

So here I am  - feeling stuck, trapped, angry, ashamed, and desperate.  I feel at the crossroads of the biggest decision of my life, and it seems there is no happy ending...

[Wiseman2]

Sorry to hear that . You're not stuck or trapped at all.

It's just that her alcoholism recovery ("dry drunk") in this case and your sexual proclivities allow each other to carry on your own self destruction, because each of you are wrapped up in your private hell.

It's not about your child. You can easily petition for full custody. You just don't want to let go because her pathology facilitates yours.

 

[Meconvierto]

Thanks.  This is a helpful observation.  We’re two people separately going through our own issues and trying to patch together a relationship in the midst of it.  If at least one of us were solid, maybe we’d have a chance at overcoming.  
 

11 hours ago, Wiseman2 said:

You just don't want to let go because her pathology facilitates yours

In my head I imagine a future relationship where my partner knows about all my past issues openly, and has the empathy and understanding to meet my needs.  Unfortunately, doing this in reverse is a different animal.  
 

11 hours ago, Wiseman2 said:

You can easily petition for full custody

From what I’ve been reading, as the father id be lucky to get a 50/50 if we went before a judge.  Also, for the child’s sake, I probably wouldn’t want to deprive her of her mother, since studies have shown 50/50 has the best outcomes for the child.  If she was still drinking like before, then yes, I would try and get full custody 

[mark clemson]

I find this too much to process and give you solid advice. I would, however, note that:

13 hours ago, Meconvierto said:

  In my case, it also means that she projects this hole she has inside that her s***ty dad left her onto me, and manifests itself in riding my ass constantly for every little thing (for lack of a better way to put it), being incredibly passive aggressive nearly constantly.  With my own neuroticism being such that I realized I have a complex where I never feel like I'm good enough, it's a perfect combination where I'm just constantly trying to justify myself against her attacks when I know I didn't do anything wrong.  

 Even though I had majorly backed off the former activities, I wasn't totally stopped.  I still do have a high sex drive, and me and her almost never have sex and haven't for years.  Part of the reason for that is because she rejected my touch so many times that I just stopped trying.  And of course all the aforementioned constant fighting.   The other part is that I also feel so much fear of her manipulative emotional abuse, that the thought of intimacy with her is frightening to me. 

You are apparently co-dependent in addition to the (apparent) sex addiction. I think sex addiction is rarely a thing, but when I read your story, well... Possibly an individual counselor could help you with both those things. Get a VERY experienced one who doesn't have an agenda of their own (shouldn't be too hard, but watch out for some of them).

 

A few other thoughts:

Having a kid changes things. You should consider whether in your case being together would ACTUALLY be an improved environment for the child over co-parenting. It's not clear to me.

Possibly a marriage counselor could help you with your clearly major relationship issues. It's important IMO that BOTH your needs be met to a reasonable extent in a LTR. Obviously you've been getting SOME of your needs elsewhere in a significant way.  IF you really can't be an emotionally safe partner (ie, you're going to continue cheating), then it's not really fair to her to ask her to stay with you (sex or no). Of course, if she refuses sex and you find that distressing, it's not fair to you to stay, especially if she is emotionally abusive on top of it.

 

IF I may ask for my own edification:

You mention trans women. Do they still have penises? I ask because I'm wondering if you are bi/pan, just enjoy WIDE variety, or are one of those rare-but-out-there men who are hetero but are turned on by/have a fetish for trans women with penises.  DON'T feel like you have to answer this unless you're comfortable with it, I'm asking mostly out of curiousity.

Edited November 27, 2020 by mark clemson

[Ruby Slippers]

With such a young child, I'd try marriage counseling. Once you become a parent, the child's needs take priority over your own. Kids don't do well in broken homes at any age, but the younger they are when a divorce/split happens, the more damage is generally caused. I'd try steady couples counseling for a few months and see if that helps you make any progress.

[Libby1]

On 11/27/2020 at 7:00 AM, Meconvierto said:

So, here we are.  Not having sex and she's tracking my whereabouts.  She thinks I'm lying to her about where I'm going and she's right part of the time.  But, I know I can't tell her the truth, as that would for sure be the end.  So that's why I view the one option (the one where I stay with her) is that I need to totally stop my side activities and figure out how to be intimate with her again.  Which almost seems impossible.  Not to mention I don't know if I believe that she has the capacity to stop abusing me, even if I were to change my tune 100% and throw all my energy at fixing things.  I tried advocating for an open relationship so that I could transition into some kind of openness with her, but she rejected it.  

I know I've been so bad and so wrong for my part in this, but that doesn't help me decide what to do.  I feel like I have this big hang-up about sex now, and that maybe I'm someone that just needs some variety to feel happy.  It's so shameful.  I wish I hadn't discovered this while in the relationship in which I've had a child.  We are in such a cycle of negative communication now that we are stalemated pretty severely whenever we have talks.  And by the way, we have gone through a few couples therapists, went to many many sessions over a period of years.  My feeling is that they don't really help.  My partner just used it as a complaints department against me.  

So here I am  - feeling stuck, trapped, angry, ashamed, and desperate.  I feel at the crossroads of the biggest decision of my life, and it seems there is no happy ending...

I wonder if in some ways you might have to try separate your pattern of sexual behaviour from the relationship with your partner.  I know that would be pretty much impossible to completely accomplish, but I think there's always going to be a risk of you justifying it on the basis of "I'm not happy with my partner."  You can be not happy with a partner, and still pursuing an addictive pattern of behaviour that stems from something other than the relationship.

You mentioned that previously you would have hook ups after a few dates with people you met at parties (or maybe through friends)...which was, until relatively recently, the norm.  I know you're only talking about 10 years or so ago, which was a time when internet dating was already being widely used...but back before then, there was a real stigma about the whole "classified ads" approach to meeting people.  While I realise a lot of people out there have met great partners via the internet, there used to be a bit of a stigma to that sort of thing precisely because of the likelihood that some people would use it not to meet people for relationships but just to hook up with an endless variety of strangers.  

When we do things compulsively or from a place of addiction, basically it means we're doing them to a point where those behaviours take up huge amounts of our time (and in some cases money), wreck relationships and result in a great deal of selfish behaviour that hurts those around us.  Your partner has been through that, in terms of her alcoholism - and while she's successfully gone through a recovery process, perhaps whereas before she would perhaps try to drink her pain away - now she's employing other less passive methods of dealing with it.  

And while you had a very different childhood from her, and it sounds as though things were pretty normal and happy for you in your earlier years, once you got into online dating, seeing prostitutes etc, you developed a pattern of addiction yourself.  People who are addicted to other things can attend programmes, get counselling etc which will involve them agreeing that they are going to completely stop the addictive behaviour.  So for your partner, that means that hopefully she will never have a drink again.  But it's not realistic of fair to expect anybody to say "I will never have sex again."  So sex based addictions (whether it's spending vast amounts of time watching porn, spending huge sums of money on prostitutes or putting yourself and loved ones at risk by being promiscuous with promiscuous strangers you meet on Craigslist) are perhaps more complex.

Am I right in thinking that although she knows you've cheated on her, your partner has no idea of the degree to which you've cheated on her...or the number of people (many of them almost certainly also highly promiscuous) you have cheated on her with?

Edited November 28, 2020 by Libby1

[Meconvierto]

@mark clemson - a lot of what you said resonates, thank you.  I actually was looking into and have selected a therapist to try out who specializes in sex addition.  Even though I have this voice inside that just keeps telling me "you've changed now.  You've learned that your sexual needs are more complicated than they were previously.  You'll never be able to handle having sex with this one person for the rest of your life."  I hope through the therapist I can at least discover perhaps deeper roots of my behavior, and maybe that perspective will align my thoughts and intentions towards a different path.  It wouldn't be the first time in my life I've realigned my goals and made major changes.  

I guess I'm in a spot where I need to really learn enough about my own feelings to make the next set of decisions with open eyes.   Either way has life-changing consequences for me (and my family), so I need to really really feel confident in the direction in which I move.  

To your last question about the trans women:  it started off as the pure curiosity combined with them being much more readily available for a super quick hook up vs. bio women.  So, the pure logistical availability plus my own flexibility I suppose.  But I also live in a populous enough area that the trans women that can be found are 100% passable (except naked of course when you see their genitals), but otherwise you wouldn't even know.  In fact, with all the plastic surgeries, hormones, etc., they can be almost more feminine than your average bio women, which I find appealing.  I can also find post-op trans women which are much rarer and preferred but not a deal-breaker if they're not post-op.  

@Libby1 - thank you.  I think you've gotten into the real subtleties of the situation well.  I agree with you firstly on attempting to separate if possible the patterns of indulging my addiction with the actual relationship.  I mention above here that I did decide to at least work through things with a sex-addition specializing therapist.  My hopes are that at least I'll understand these patterns in myself a little bit more.  

You're right about this new way of finding partners almost being too good or easy.  It's as if you've went out to a bar to meet people only now you can do it sitting on the toilet at work.  This has probably skewed many many peoples' perspectives on deciding what it will mean to finally "settle" with someone.  I can't help but feel that, at least in some way, I've only awakened something that was only dormant for most of my life.  Now I'm torn between this calling of further exploration/try to find an actual partner who is more compatible with my proclivities and the calling of just simply wanting to be a good father to my child.  I sometimes almost feel sorry for myself but at the same time I know it's at least partially a very selfish decision if I "choose myself" in a sense.  

To your last question, no she does not know about all the behavior, only the one time.  But she suspects what I'm up to constantly and is always trying to catch me.  She wants me to use technology to track me but I've refused.  I don't think putting your partner on lockdown is something that could work long term anyway, even if the guy wasn't up to anything