How to open a can of worms
My fiance and I have been together for 4 years and are due to marry in April. Over the years, he has had issues which I now recognize could be his "acting out" which I never put together as related to each other until this morning.
Three years ago, he dated another woman behind my back for almost 3 months. He realized how wrong the relationship was and decided he wanted to be with me and no one else, so he put an end to it over a month before I found out about it. (Remarkably, he never even had sex with the woman, so it was more of an emotional affair.) We love each other very much and worked hard to repair the damage done but I always felt uneasy as though he was hiding things and couldn't be trusted. Eventually I found out that he was into pornography, and I don't mean your typical Playboy type stuff. He has absolutely denied this every time I have found it and comes up with all kinds of crazy explanations for its existence. I found that he had bookmarked erotica sites and I don't object to that, but still he denies he reads that stuff, too.
He had to move for his job and in the course of moving, I found old love letters from girlfriends long past that it almost seemed he wanted me to see. He kept in contact with an old female friend behind my back until I put an end to it and three weeks after he proposed while out of town on business, he had a one night stand with another woman followed by 2 months of back and forth e-mails between them. When I discovered this, he ended the relationship, gave me all his internet passwords, voicemail passwords, etc. and said he would go to counseling if I wanted and do whatever it took to spend the rest of his life with me. He kept beating himself up and saying he didn't deserve me, that he's a failure, etc. and has promised that he loves only me and only wants to be with me.
I started reading all kinds of books on how to affair-proof your marriage, etc. in an attempt to figure out what went wrong with us and what we can do so that we can trust one another again and really fix whatever is wrong. It was strange but (besides his obvious lies and promiscuity) we don't have any of the problems that experts point to as leading to affairs. We fulfill each other's needs and love each other very much. I was perplexed, but we started discussing finding a church to attend together regularly and finding a trusted counselor so we could spend the next year or two working on us and strengthening our bond.
This morning I was on the phone with my future father-in-law. When my fiance's parents divorced, my FFIL got custody of both my fiance and his sister and finished raising them alone. He harbors no bitterness nor any animosity toward my fiance's mother and just recognizes that her alcoholism and mental/emotional issues spelled the end of their marriage. Anyway...it came out during our conversation that the pornography I saw my fiance had was something his father found him with in his teens. His father thought he outgrew it. ALSO, there was strong suspicion that my fiance was sexually abused by his mother as a child. There was never any physical evidence and when they asked my fiance about it, he just never gave them an answer.
Now, any time my fiance calls his mother to say hi for Christmas or Mother's Day (he hasn't been in the same room with her for almost 5 years), he gets all anxious and nervous and it takes him an hour to get up the nerve to call her. Then he calls and runs upstairs with the phone and talks quietly so I don't hear the conversation. Then after he hangs up, it takes him a long time to decompress.
For the first time ever, I'm seeing that this all seems to add up. He has never directed any anger or anything toward me but has only become self-destructive in terms of our relationship be being dishonest, having affairs, etc. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to let him know that I'll always be here for him, that this is what I'm seeing, and try to encourage him to be open about it and get help. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....
Three years ago, he dated another woman behind my back for almost 3 months. He realized how wrong the relationship was and decided he wanted to be with me and no one else, so he put an end to it over a month before I found out about it. (Remarkably, he never even had sex with the woman, so it was more of an emotional affair.) We love each other very much and worked hard to repair the damage done but I always felt uneasy as though he was hiding things and couldn't be trusted. Eventually I found out that he was into pornography, and I don't mean your typical Playboy type stuff. He has absolutely denied this every time I have found it and comes up with all kinds of crazy explanations for its existence. I found that he had bookmarked erotica sites and I don't object to that, but still he denies he reads that stuff, too.
He had to move for his job and in the course of moving, I found old love letters from girlfriends long past that it almost seemed he wanted me to see. He kept in contact with an old female friend behind my back until I put an end to it and three weeks after he proposed while out of town on business, he had a one night stand with another woman followed by 2 months of back and forth e-mails between them. When I discovered this, he ended the relationship, gave me all his internet passwords, voicemail passwords, etc. and said he would go to counseling if I wanted and do whatever it took to spend the rest of his life with me. He kept beating himself up and saying he didn't deserve me, that he's a failure, etc. and has promised that he loves only me and only wants to be with me.
I started reading all kinds of books on how to affair-proof your marriage, etc. in an attempt to figure out what went wrong with us and what we can do so that we can trust one another again and really fix whatever is wrong. It was strange but (besides his obvious lies and promiscuity) we don't have any of the problems that experts point to as leading to affairs. We fulfill each other's needs and love each other very much. I was perplexed, but we started discussing finding a church to attend together regularly and finding a trusted counselor so we could spend the next year or two working on us and strengthening our bond.
This morning I was on the phone with my future father-in-law. When my fiance's parents divorced, my FFIL got custody of both my fiance and his sister and finished raising them alone. He harbors no bitterness nor any animosity toward my fiance's mother and just recognizes that her alcoholism and mental/emotional issues spelled the end of their marriage. Anyway...it came out during our conversation that the pornography I saw my fiance had was something his father found him with in his teens. His father thought he outgrew it. ALSO, there was strong suspicion that my fiance was sexually abused by his mother as a child. There was never any physical evidence and when they asked my fiance about it, he just never gave them an answer.
Now, any time my fiance calls his mother to say hi for Christmas or Mother's Day (he hasn't been in the same room with her for almost 5 years), he gets all anxious and nervous and it takes him an hour to get up the nerve to call her. Then he calls and runs upstairs with the phone and talks quietly so I don't hear the conversation. Then after he hangs up, it takes him a long time to decompress.
For the first time ever, I'm seeing that this all seems to add up. He has never directed any anger or anything toward me but has only become self-destructive in terms of our relationship be being dishonest, having affairs, etc. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to let him know that I'll always be here for him, that this is what I'm seeing, and try to encourage him to be open about it and get help. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....
