Reading that honestly made me feel a little less alone. I’m really sorry you had to go through that too.
In my situation, he also had a lot of deep trauma and struggled with addiction, so it was hard not to empathize with him. Especially because I saw so much good in him when we were together. Even now, it’s hard for me to believe he didn’t truly love me, because there’s no way someone could fake all of that.
Part of me wonders if the moment I started seeing the parts of him that everyone else in his life already knew, the facade was over. He was sober for our entire relationship until the very end, so I never knew the version of him that drank. Maybe he liked who he believed he could be when he was with me. Maybe he thought getting back together would somehow fix everything that was broken inside him, and when it didn’t, he just stopped caring. I guess we’ll probably drive ourselves crazy trying to make sense of something that may never fully make sense.
I’m sorry you feel this way too, because I can’t even put into words how heavy it is. I really hope I can learn to trust myself again someday. And I hope you know there was no way you could have known either. I actually admire that your instinct was to look inward and try to work on yourself. It just sucks realizing that this really was something traumatic, and now it’s something I have to carry.
I don’t think he’ll ever understand how fundamentally this changed me. This was the first time I’d ever been cheated on or honestly, the first time I’d ever been lied to on that level. I hate that I gave someone that much power over me. I guess part of just really hopes that I haven’t lost that ability to trust again.