This mess called infidelity

My fiancee and I have been together for 7 years and have been engaged for 4. We are only 25. Everyone comments that we are a beautiful couple and go great together. I cheated on my fiancee back in 2011 with an old high school crush and decided to come clean to him a couple of weeks ago, when I recently found out that he was seeing another woman for about a year.*


When I cheated on my fiancee, I was at such a dark place in my life. I felt like I had failed myself in life after college and wouldn't talk to anyone. I was so sure of my life then and new what I wanted. Life took a turn and I crumbled. Didn't know how to pick myself up. I wasn't entirely sure where we as a couple were headed in the future and panicked. Felt like I was going through a mid life crisis at 22. My fiancee was fully focused on me at the beginning of our relationship and dropped out of college after his second year. I felt like he was taking us too serious from the beginning. I felt like he was so dependent on me and I started to lose attraction for him. I needed him to be a strong man and not need me so much for emotional stability. I moved away from home to go to school and he stayed to go to a local college. We had met on myspace, lived a town apart, talked for several months and met for the first time my graduation night. We fell in love through conversations and seeing each other sealed the deal. He asked me to date him the day I left for college.


My fiancee was my only sexual experience and so I thought I was his first as well, considering he told me so. I was very sheltered growing up.*I grew up in a single parent home and never saw my mother love a man or any other couple really love one another. I soon*became addicted to porn my senior year in college out of boredom and anxiety. I was curious, and more so about*my high school crush. I talked to him on and off from the time my fiancee and I got together. He knew about the crush before we started actually dated and how I had felt about him then along with my fiancee and I talking about his ex girlfriend. I dealt with my fiancee talking to many other woman (so called old friends and some exes) online and on the phone throughout the first few years of our relationship. It got to the point that I would just sit on the phone with him and one of these friends on threeway. I would complain about it constantly and he just wouldn't stop.*


So I started keeping contact with the crush because I wanted to get back at my fiancee for what he was doing to me. He did the hypocritical thing; didn't want me talking to any guys at all while he talked to whatever girl. I got caught up. I didn't really have any feelings for this guy anymore, but he seemed sincere in telling me how beautiful I was and how he made a mistake letting me walk away in high school. I ate it all up. He was playing me for a fool and I fell for it. Felt good to get the attention that I didn't feel my fiancee was giving me. Never felt like my fiancee was ever fully committed to me. I soon started to care about him. I knew that I would never consider dating him. He wasn't a very decent guy. I was really attracted to his body. Says a lot about myself, right? We would meet up at parks whenever he would return from the military just to hang out. Things just spiraled out of control afterwards. Every visit was more intimate and I started video chatting with him. Provocatively.


The last two years have been extremely difficult for us. We lost interest in each other, mentally and sexually. My fiancee mentioned to me that he was not physically attracted to me for a while when we first got together because I did not have the features he really desired. He said that he learned to love me as a whole and accepted my body because it was me.


I*wouldn't talk about what was wrong with me, was rather boring and set in my ways, and both of us gained alot of weight. He would try to make*conversation and I just wasn't interested. I felt like whatever I had to say wasn't intelligent compared to him. I was like that with my family too. Just pushed everyone away. I pretty much hated myself and told negative things to myself constantly before and after the cheating. I don't know how I got that low. Many different things from earlier in my life affected me and I had a hard time letting go. Kept telling myself how worthless I was. I only slept with the guy once. I had stopped talking to him and started ignoring him since December 2012. I realized that I really wanted to make things work with my fiancee. I really cheated. It was bad. Completely disgraced and disrespected myself with how it was done.*I feel like our relationship was just so bad at that point that we went outside to find comfort instead of with each other. The feel from cheating was addicting. It was this secret that I was addicted to.


Now that everything is out in the open, we are trying to reconstruct our relationship. We've both cut out contacts with the other people. I know how hard it is for my fiancee having to deal with his woman stepping out on him.*I see it everyday. Was beaten down with words about what he felt about me. He says that he doesn't believe in love anymore. But that he really cares about me but isn't in love with me anymore. He says he doesn't have any emotion. He is willing for us to work things out, as long as we change. I see him struggle with it every day. All his doubts about if we will make it or not. He makes me feel so horrible, like my cheating was the worst. Constantly telling me that he is fighting himself because I am no longer wife material and that I'm tainted. That I'm too weak.


When I found out about him cheating on me two months ago, he would not tell me the whole truth. He cheated on me with her later in 2012. Said that he felt I was different and had wanted to leave me the entire year. I later found out that he lied to me about sleeping with her. Finally told the truth after two months of lying to me. She was a virgin too. Completely destroyed me. Also found out that he cared about her. She loved him and he said that he wanted me to give him that kind of love. He talked to her several times while we have been dealing with this and has finally called communication with her off after two months. She has no way to talk to him but through email since he has deleted his social networks and changed phone numbers. But he will not change his email and she will email him every once in a while.*


He also confessed to me that there was another girl before her at his old job that he was attracted to back in early 2012. This girl was known at work for doing sexual favors and he started talking to her. She fell for him and they would kiss and he would grab her butt at work or in private. He also told me that there was a girl he was attracted to in college that was after him during our second year together. He keeps saying that we took a break at one point and he made out with her. I swear I don't remember ever taking a break from him. And if we did it would have been for maybe a day with intentions of getting back together.


He keeps saying that he cheated with those two woman because I was different and because he didn't feel like I loved him anymore. A part of me feels like I did lose attraction for him. It's like he really wasn't doing much with himself. Just working a job instead of building a career. He wouldnt leave the house. Would just sit on the sofa and play games or watch tv. And I was dealing with personal things myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. The set path that I had made for myself wasn't going to happen and I didn't know what to do. Along with the guilt of cheating that made me downgrade myself.


He's recently told me that he lied about being a virgin. That he had slept with three girls (the "friends" I wanted him to stop talking too the majority of our relationship). Had slept with then multiple times within the year before we started dating. I was crushed. How could he lie about something like that and for 7 years! That was very important to me. He keeps saying that he wished I was his first and that he made himself believe I was. That if he knew I would come along in his life he wouldn't have done any og that. But still. And then to break another girl's virginity while with me. I feel like our entire relationship was a lie. It started off as one apparently.


This was the first time I have ever cheated on anyone. I couldn't believe it myself that I did that. I felt so guilty after but I couldn't go on without telling him. I love my fiancee. I can't believe that I strayed. Every time I would talk*to that guy, I knew it was wrong. Told myself to stop so many times. But I couldn't. The addiction and curiosity got a hold of me. All because I was unhappy with us for a time and myself for even longer and was too stubborn to talk to him about it.*


My in-laws are extremely upset with me. More so his mother. Completely dumbfounded everyone. She held me at such high regard and was so proud to call me her daughter-in-law and I let her down. I have no clue how to fix this with her. My fiancee still brings things up. Wanting to know details and comparisons constantly. We still live together so its really hard. I felt so weak back then at the time this happened, but I have grown up so much since then. Changed the way I think and became stronger. I know I still have growing to do. I know that I will never do something like that to anyone ever again.*


He keeps saying that I was his queen. The only girl that made him believe in marriage. He thought so highly of me. It's always a constant comment from him that a strong woman would have never done that. I wasn't a woman back then. Didn't really know how to be. Didn't know how to take care of my man. I was very childish at that point.*


I guess I'm just not sure what to do now. He's so mean to me some days and some days things are great. He's so caught up in that I cheated on him but he cheated on me three times with three different women. Feels like all the blame is being put on me constantly. He's been really sincere with me about his feelings and he seems to want to work things out as do I. But some of the things he says are just so hurtful. As if he would say it with intentions to hurt me.


I'm starting to question if this is even worth it anymore? I don't want to give up but I can't take the mental abuse. I have been trying to come to terms with what he did while trying to forgive myself for what I did.