Dear Suzie,
I am 47 and have been living with my boyfriend since June of last year. We have known each other since March 2002 but he always drifted in and out of the relationship and would disappear for months on end.
Yesterday I found photos of anther woman he was bonking in December 2002. I alsp found photos of him on holiday with his ex girlfriend in July 2003. I have now also found that he has put his profile on a dating website sinec living with me. I left him in October because of emails I had found that he had sent ot his so called ex girlfrined in Feb 2005…also photos of them when they were in New York in “002 when he said he had to go over to Chicago for an operation….I know its all in the past, but the photos I found of some woman he was bonking when with me, were pornographic to say the least. He has tons of porno videos….He downloads the stuff and has saved a lot of it on zipped files. He even looks at it while I’m in the house and then clickes off it when I go into the room. He also continually sucks his thumb and picks his elbows….all day long….PLease help
“I know it’s all in the past…” That’s not you speaking, that’s him, isn’t it? And the issue is not that he dated other women while you and he were no longer together but that you suspect he was having sex with them or at least using his store of photos and access to pornographic internet sites to fantasizing about it while you were together. And if did that before, he can do it again. He could be doing it this very moment…
You don’t trust him and trust is so important in a relationship. Frankly, he sounds about as trustworthy as your average ferret in a chicken pen. And the clincher to me is this stuff you write about him sucking his thumb and picking his elbows. The fact that this makes me squirm and not wish to share a train carriage let alone a home with him isn’t the point. The point is that it makes it very clear you’ve got to the position of not wanting to share time and a home let alone a bed or a life with him.
I suspect you put up with him because you’re scared of being on your own and on the shelf at 47. But while he sits there, watching his porn, picking his elbows and sucking his thumb, he effectively blocks off all your options and possibilities to meet anyone else.
And let’s face it, would being alone with only a cat to come home to be any worse? Cats may lick their backsides but they’re very clean and don’t humiliate you by watching porn. Think of all the things you could do without him. Then think of the advantages to staying with him. Then consider all the ways his being there makes you feel depressed, demeaned, rejected. Sounds to me that if you wrote a few lists, keeping up this relationship comes down firmly on the negative side while ditching it comes up trumps.
If I were you….if I was living with him, I’d make very quick arrangements to leave. If he were living with me, I’d tell him to be out by the end of the month. And then I’d call my friends for a night out to celebrate freedom, go to a gym to get into shape, make an appointment with a new hairdresser to create a whole new look and begin 2007 the way I mean to go on – feeling fantastic. Oh – and if i didn’t have any friends and didn’t belong to a gym I’d go out and make some and find one pronto. Good luck!