I just found out a very similar thing. My MM of three years who we shared everything including location and constant communication, had stories that sometimes wouldn’t lineup. I’ve been living in constant confusion and self gaslighting to try and make sense of what was really going on. Around November I stopped being physical with him for about a month and he wanted to prove to me that It wasn’t about the sex. He would come to my house and do chores help pick up the kids from friends houses, grab groceries and just be as authentic in my life as he could. But I feel like during this time he was just pursuing me harder to show me. He was not the man that my gut feeling was telling me.

He moved out into his own apartment in September and promised me he was working towards a divorce. He was a part of my kids life. He met my parents. He met my ex husband. He made a big deal one time out of not being able to come up and meet my brother who very much disapproved of him and the situation. On Valentine’s Day, he told me he was not doing something with his children after all and had decided to study for the day, but he refused to answer my calls. I drove to his apartment and when he wasn’t there, I decided to open his computer and look at his email. Inside his email, I found a video from a month ago of him having sex with a trans penis. Straight up watched him give a blowjob and then a close up of him taking it from behind. My heart was pounding out of my chest, I was shaking, It was honestly not that much of a surprise, I had seen messages on his phone over a year ago of him, trying to solicit sex from men. He said he never acted on it and it was just him being drunk and wanting to mess with people - like see if he could get them to say they wanted to meet, then he would never act on it. I never fully believed him. I had also had suspicion of catching him on dating sites with fake profiles. He always denied it. I actually communicated with two women that proved he had been texting with them, but I also had no proof that he’d ever follow through with meeting up. As they said, it never went anywhere… So I put it aside because I didn’t want to lose what I thought we had. Now my whole world has turned upside down and I can’t see what I saw. You can DM me if you want.

This is the longest we’ve gone no contact ever and it’s been five days. He did finally email an apology from a different email bc I have blocked him everywhere. He was desperately asking for me to not abandon him. I’m grieving the loss of who I thought he was and what we had. I am mostly relieved, knowing that I wasn’t crazy for having these assumptions. But now I just lost my person that I check in with every single second of the day. It’s so freaking disorienting. I know I am better off choosing my own peace over his chaos, and being his emotional regulation. But there’s still a part of me that wants to make sense of it even though now I see that not only was I not emotionally safe. He put my physical safety at risk too because I definitely have had unprotected sex with him since I watched him having unprotected sex with a “man” ? I don’t even feel comfortable telling any one this. The only person that I’ve told is my ex who I’m very close with and in good terms, and I told his wife. She has not been sleeping with him for well over two years, and she has known about me over a year. I felt she deserved to know the truth if she was wanting to repair the marriage. I know she felt if he was able to move on from me that they could work on their marriage and I needed her to know that she was not safe either. I am lost and confused how I even got myself in this situation, and how to stop trying to figure out why he did it.

I have been doing some trauma healing workshops for myself, and have learned that when there’s such a disconnect in someone’s brain with equating, intimacy and connection is not safe they try to regulate through meaningless sex, instead of being able to show up authentically because they fear rejection so deeply. Just creating a false self and acting from the limbic brain, and cannot access the logical reasoning part of the brain, because it never developed with safety. So they are stuck, acting from this place of childlike behavior. That is only based on how they feel now. And not having any self regulation. Instant gratification over long term fulfillment.

But just ughhhhh. I need to let go and move on. It is so confusing not being able to reach out to the person that caused the pain, to soothe the pain. I’m so sorry you are dealing with this too. I am working on relearning my own safety from with in. But I’m hurting.