I'm new to this site (just joined today). You can see my initial post in the "introduction" forum.
I need to know what people think about a rather dramatic scenario. Here's the (rather lengthy) story:
My boyfriend and I have been together for 10 years. We met when I was 16 and he was 26. This is, to date, the only truly monogamous relationship I've ever had. But, in the early years of our relationship, we had a few nasty fights that left me feeling insecure. My response to the insecurity was to flirt with other people over the internet. Three times in the course of 5 years or so, I posted personal ads on dating sites. He found out every time, we fought, I apologized, and we moved on.
In 2003, we broke up for 6 months. During our breakup, he began dating, aided by the use of a phone dating service (which is, coincidentally, how I met him). When we got back together, he continued to use this chatline, unbeknown to me, even after we'd decided we loved each other and wanted to be exclusive again. He went as far as to exchanged emails and phonecalls with a particular girl.
Feeling that something was off between us, I rummaged through his email, specifically looking for conversations with other women. I found his correspondence with this other girl. Before I found the emails, he had already told this girl he'd found someone special and never talked to her again. Nevertheless, I was pretty upset by it. I waited for a few hours for him to come home. When he did, I confronted him about it rather civilly, asking for an explanation.
His response was to get enraged that I had read his emails. I apologized repeatedly for that, and I've never looked at his emails again. He told me that he had been trying to replace me before he broke up with me, but changed his mind. That broke my heart. He never apologized, not for 5 years. Every time I brought it up, he refused to admit that trying to replace me was even *as bad* as reading his emails. Never apologized.
Now, 2008 has been a rather trying time in our relationship. There have been many trials and a lot of stress and fighting. The details are too much to explain.
This past week, we had a fight that lasted 5 days. Two of those days (consecutively) we didn't even talk, though I tried to get in touch with him (he just didn't call me back). On Thursday, the last day of the fight, I was angry, frustrated, and insecure. So . . . I went and looked at some lesbian personal ads. I did not post an ad. I did not sign up on any personals sites. I did not send anyone a message. I spent about 15 minutes looking at ads, then stopped because I felt bad about what I was doing. It wasn't right of me, but I did it.
The next day, he went through my computer's history and found out what I'd done. He called me while I was at school, frantic, and asked me to come home and talk to him. I left as soon as I could, which was about 30 minutes after we talked.
In those 30 minutes, he left me several incoherent messages in which he was crying and saying a lot of horrible things to me, the worst of which was him telling me he hated me and that I was no longer a part of his life.
When I got home, he was not there, but he had pretty much trashed my apartment. He had thrown an ashtray into the wall, spilling cigarette butts on my couch and leaving an impressive dent in the wall. He had thrown away some dried roses I had saved since he gave them to me 3 or 4 years ago. He had thrown my glass bong outside, leaving broken glass EVERYWHERE, where any of my neighbors could see, or any child or animal could walk on and hurt themselves. He knocked over and broke a side table, knocking over everything on it and breaking some of it.
In one of the messages he left, he said his life was over and he wanted to die. That along with his violent reaction to me looking at personal ads, made me rather worried about him. So, when he wasn't at my place, I drove to his place to find him. When he wasn't there, I drove to his parent's house, as another message had told me he would be going there. He wasn't there, but his mom called him and he came over. There's no time to get into THAT dramatic confrontation.
I apologized profusely and repeatedly for what I'd done, and asked humbly for his forgiveness. He eventually settled down, and we began to patch things up.
Now, he has not apologized for destroying my property and damaging my belongings. He does not feel he was wrong to do that, and he feels the reaction was warranted. He says I "deserved to be punished."
I am of the mind that it is NEVER okay to damage someone's property, for ANY reason. And being that when he was talking to a real person, admittedly trying to replace me, I did not break his stuff, but instead talked to him about it civilly . . . I really wonder why he thinks what he did was okay.
He refuses to apologize. He refuses to come clean up the mess he made. I cleaned up the broken glass myself, but I haven't touched the disaster inside. He believes he was right to react that way because I have a "history" of this type of behavior. Really, though, I think 4 times of looking at ads over 10 years is pretty good, seeing as though I met him when I was 16 and immature (oh, and the fact that I never *actually* cheated on him, not once).
I need some objective opinions from non-biased 3rd parties on this issue. I assure you I have presented this story completely honestly and as impartially as I am capable, and I don't believe I've left out anything that matters.
So . . . what do you think? Was he right to destroy my possessions? Is an apology in order?
Thanks for reading this long mess of a post, and thank you in advance for your responses.
~ Devi