Infidelity

I’ve had a lot to say recently, but feel as if I haven’t been able to share it with anyone, mostly because I can’t. It’s not my place to say anything in this situation, and if I did, I would have quite a few angry people become angry with me. I would have to post something anonymously somewhere, and I do not know anything about any of that. I post videos, not blogs, so my face would definitely be attached to whatever drama would end up coming from that.

Now, I guess I have to start at the beginning. My boyfriend (who I am going to call A) and I have been together for over a year now (go us!) and it has been generally pretty smooth sailing. Of course, we get into little arguments as every couple does, especially since we are living together, but we have never been in a fight. I think this is mostly because he will not allow for us to fight. I have a pretty tempered personality and growing up I got into my fair share of screaming matches with my mom and brother, however, A and I have never made it go to that extreme. This is because if it seems like something may start, he finds a way to calm me down or sometimes he just walks away from the situation, and we reconvene when we are both done being upset. For some reason, that works for us. I mention A and I first because that’s where it started.

I also mentioned that we live together, however, when I moved it, it wasn’t just the two of us. His brother (who I will call B) is our other roommate. Now B and I weren’t always close. A and his family are not from this country, so their first language isn’t English and while A chooses English over his other language in many situations, B much prefers and feels more comfortable speaking in their native language. Now I have absolutely no problem with that, I love it and think it is amazing when people can speak more than one language, especially since it is so difficult for me to grasp French, which I have been learning for about ten years now. Because of this language barrier though, we just never really got close, well until we were watching their grandma’s dog while she was on vacation. Another factor that got us hanging out while it was just the two of us at home was PUBG. Now for those of you who don’t know what that game is, it’s basically a more realistic version of Fortnite, but without the building of stuff. We both had this game and played it constantly and that is what really made the two of us bond. Now, even to this day, I love him like a brother.

Him and I are very different though. While I was always just looking for “the one” he seemed to usually just be looking for his next conquest (if you know what I mean 😉). I have absolutely no problem with that, I believe that people can do whatever they want, when they want, with who they want, within reason (obviously without consent is just wrong and I am in no way going to sit here and pretend that it is okay). But he had girls over pretty constantly. Many different types of girls at that too. Of course, every girl that he chose to sleep with was a consenting adult that can make her own choices. Whether I was home or not, I would always know when he had a girl over because A would text me, probably just so I would have to deal with the second-hand awkwardness that comes with knowing exactly what is going on in the room right next to you.

I guess I should kind of mention something that was a little bit before my time of being in the boys' lives. Of course, I do not know everything, but I feel like I know enough from what A has told me. Now B has an ex-girlfriend that from what I can remember he was with for almost a year and within that time he had cheated on her and then the girl that B had slept with told his now ex-girlfriend that they had slept together. I’m not totally sure if that is what ended their relationship, but I know that it was at least one of the contributing factors. I’m a strong believer in that if you aren’t happy in a relationship that you should either talk to your partner and work it out or end it so that you can both start the grieving process. I do not see cheating as an option, I think that that just causes so many more problems in the end. If a person finds out they wonder what is wrong with themselves, which can we really damaging to their self-confidence. This happened before A and I got together so I never met the girl, never saw the dynamics in the relationship, so I don’t know what B was thinking when he decided to go through with that and probably never will.

Anyways, flash forward a bit, A and I are now together, the first night that I spent at their house, B actually had a girl over. This happened many times, generally at least once a week. There was one girl that did seem to make an impact on him though and I’m going to call her M. Now M is absolutely gorgeous, she was the kind of girl that I wish I could look like and it seemed like B had kind of started to fall for her, because he had her over more than one time, which didn’t happen with very many girls. I only really met her once briefly while they were “together” because I wasn’t actually living with the boys at the time. From what I heard they seemed to be happy together. I went home for the holidays and when I came back almost a month later, they weren’t really a thing anymore. Now just like the last situation I have no idea, but from what M has told me and A it seemed like he had asked her to be his girlfriend but she was going out of the city for a couple days or something like that. I’m not exactly sure, but what I do know for a fact is that B had girls over after he had told M that he wanted her to be his girlfriend, but she never knew that up until fairly recently.

Now B continued to have girls over for a while until one day when he was starting to talk to an old friend he had met here, but was from his home country. She (who I will call N) and B had started to develop feelings for each other and actually decided that they were going to try and move her here. Absolutely no problem with that on my end. N and I had talked on the phone a couple of times helping each other with our native languages and she seemed really sweet. This was near the end of the school year in April and lasted into May and June, I remember this because it was exam season when we had talked on the phone a couple of times. It seemed like B was really into this girl, because from mine and A’s knowledge, he didn’t have any contact with any other girls and it didn’t seem like a situation where he had been messing around in any way. There was something about him that was different from the other situations I had seen him in and it felt like he was genuinely in love with N, or at least falling hard for her, and so excited for her to move here.

Now, I went away on vacation in June so I don’t know a lot about what was going on in our house, but I know A was super busy for that whole month, working two jobs to keep himself busy and try and make some extra money while I was gone. But within the time frame of me being away for a month, something had happened between B and N, because before I even knew they were over, I was receiving pictures from A of M once again. A later informed me that N had found another guy or something along those lines, but B had moved on very quickly. I mean I know that everyone deals with breakups in a different way (not that it was actually a breakup, but it kind of was), but getting with other people right after, that is not my poison of choice (I'm more of a drown my sorrows in ice cream kind of person). I guess B and M had another little thing going on for a couple weeks, but it ended shortly after I had gotten back from my vacation. Once again it seemed like B was back to his sleeping with a handful of different girls.

And then something seemed to of happened. B had met a girl (who I will call O), and he was spending a lot of time at her place, A and I were actually starting to get worried because we wouldn’t see him for days at a time and we didn’t even know where he was going all of the time. We assumed that he had met a girl, and well, we were right. She wasn’t from the same country of origin as he was, but they do speak the same language, which I personally believe is one of the reasons I think he was so willing to dive in so deep, so fast with O. A couple weeks after B and her had started seeing her, A and I got to meet her and she ended up spending the night at our place that night. It was a fairly pleasant night meeting her, going for dinner, and walking around the city, but I knew from the beginning that it was going to result in me feeling left out, a lot. Like I said, B likes to speak his language of origin, and she speaks it to, so most of the time, even if I am there, I’m being left out of the conversation.

Anyways, back to B and O. She came over that night and A and I ended up needing to distract her for about 20 minutes while B was fixing his room. You might be asking why he needed to do that if he hadn’t even been home in a couple weeks, and that is because before he had met O and stopped staying in his home, he had a girl over one night who he slept with and happened to be on her period. She had gotten blood on his sheets and he didn’t even change the sheets until two weeks later when O was going to be staying over for the first time. In my opinion that is gross. I totally understand a girl leaking through, believe me, as someone with a heavy flow, it has happened to me on many occasions, but I always wash the sheets or my clothes or whatever it was almost immediately, but he waited until another girl was coming over and left her with A and I to distract her.

Anyways, after that night she started staying over way more, especially since one night I got super drunk with my friends, came home, threw up, told my boyfriend how much I love him, and then proceed to start crying because I thought that B was going to move out, which A happened to record and send to B (that is a recording that I have not, and never want to see). Shorty after she was spending almost every night at our place and not even a month into her and B’s relationship they decided that she was going to move in. On my end, I did not think it was a good idea, but I held my tongue because I didn’t feel like it was really my place to say no. O and I had a kind of similar situation. Originally A and I were talking about me moving in only three months into our relationship because I wasn’t happy with where I was living at the time, but for her, it was the same thing and she ended up moving in because she wanted out of there. For me, I am happy that A and I decided against me moving in at the time. For starters it was way too soon for us and we wanted to make sure that this relationship really was what we were wanting, and by us waiting, we knew that it definitely was what we wanted.

So O ended up moving in and it was okay. I wasn’t the happiest about it but tried to keep my thoughts to myself as much as I could, unloading it onto A, which I know wasn’t fair of me. I’m a pretty passive-aggressive person sometimes as well, so it was very easy for all of them to know that something was up. From there I had doubts about their relationship just because in the pit of my stomach something did not sit right.

One thing that did bother me was the fact that B quit his job. I have absolutely no say on this aspect, but it did make me upset. O doesn’t have a job, but her parents do pay for basically everything, and to me sometimes it does just seem like he uses her for the fact that her parents are willing to help her pay for whatever she needs. I know myself to be a manipulative person sometimes, and that is something I am working on with the help of A (I have talked to him about how I sometimes know how to manipulate situations to go my way so now I have him to call me out on my BS when I try to pull something). So me having my own manipulative tendencies, I can see when someone else is manipulating someone and that is what I feel from B and O’s relationship sometimes.

When it came to him quitting his job, I remember O talking to me about the situation and how he was apparently crying over how he was so stressed because he was having to do work and school. By doing that he was able to get her to agree to help support him if needed as well as quit his job without her being upset with him. A works a much more stressful job than B did, and A continues to manage with it, if anything, lower your hours, but don’t just completely drop the job, well that is my opinion on the situation anyways.

But I had to learn to accept the situation because it was just going to do me more harm than good if I just continued to dwell on it. And things were generally okay. I get left out a lot, but there isn’t much I can do about that. Eventually, however, B and O started arguing, and it was a lot. I mean of course I cannot understand everything that they say, since they speak a different language and everything, but I understand some words within their language and am smart enough to be able to understand what the tone of someone’s voice means. O apparently gets mad at B for a lot of small things sometimes, but of course, I don’t know the whole story, but one thing I do know, is that it takes two tango.

A didn’t believe me at first when I told him that they were arguing because he was never home to hear it, since he works evenings most of the time, and he thought that I was just misunderstanding things because I didn’t know what they were actually saying, but then one night he was home and actually heard it and then finally agreed with and fully believed me when I said that it was happening.

Now let’s go forward to the past week to two weeks and break down what was happening. A and I went on a little date to celebrate that he was finished exams, I wasn't, but I can always use a little distraction, and going out with my boy is one of my favorite things to do. That day I had had an exam and after I was finished that exam I was waiting for a friend so that we could do some studying for the exam I had the next day. While I was waiting, I randomly decided to go through my google photos and just go through and delete a bunch of unnecessary pictures that I didn’t even understand why I still had saved on there. While going through them I found a picture of A and M from one of the nights she came over while I was away on vacation. I thought it was a cute picture of the two of them and A did as well so I sent it to M.

She messaged me back asking if the picture was from the summer and I said yes and this led her to asking me if was a coincidence that B had messaged her just the night before. I thought that was so strange because B is with O and O is living with us as well as she had a guy from over the summer that she had absolutely fallen in love with and B had tried to message her before and she asked him to not do so. I asked her what he had said to her and she asked if B knew we were talking about this. I answered truthfully and told her that I didn’t even think he knew that we talked at all and long story short, she told me how he had messaged her and said that he was in a rough place with O and was saying a lot of nice things about M to her. M has first-hand knowledge of dealing with him in the past and just felt like it was him trying to once again manipulate the situation. He was talking about their past to her and it was just a lot of things that she didn’t want to deal with. M broke down the situation from her point of view saying that B messaged her, said that he was having issues with O, sneakily asked if she had a boyfriend, and tried to bring up their past, which she really didn’t appreciate. She said, in the end, she really didn’t want to talk to him and ended up blocking him, which I agreed with her was probably a smart thing to do. I felt so bad for her because she was being caught in this situation that she didn’t even want to be in, but I really appreciated that she told me.

After her telling me all of this and A hearing about all of it because he was there with me, A mentioned that one of his coworkers who uses Tinder had seen a profile of B. A’s co-worker at the time did not make the connection that A was B’s brother, who she knew had a girlfriend and swiped no because she wasn’t interested. A and I had instantly thought that if only she had swiped yes, we could have known way sooner if something sketchy was going on below the radar. These revelations all came to me super late at night and the next day it was really occupying my brain.

The next day, while at school, I was constantly thinking about what mine and A’s course of action could be because, if it was true, the whole situation was just messed and absolutely not okay. I thought that maybe A and I could ask his co-worker if she remembered what pictures were on his profile, because B is a pretty vain person, very focused on his looks. I knew for certain that if he was still active he would have pictures that he felt he looked good in, and there were a couple that O had taken that I know that B really likes. When I brought up that idea to A he just throughout making a fake tinder account and seeing if he really is active on there.

Now I haven’t had Tinder in a while, and didn’t really remember how it worked, but I found some unknown actress’ pictures from online and made a fake profile. I made the distance a small one and the age range only a couple of years, and the fourth profile to pop up happened to be B’s profile. My heart instantly sank and it felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack. There was no way this could be real. I wanted to look at more pictures but A and I couldn’t remember how, and A ended up accidentally swiping no on B’s profile. This led to me having to redo the whole profile, but luckily when I restarted the whole thing, he was the fifth profile to pop up. We were smart that time and super liked him so that his profile would be there for us to look at. We looked and the pictures that I suspected would be on that profile, happened to be there. I was in disbelief. They had only been together for three maybe four months and he had left his profile up and was using pictures that O had taken of him. I didn’t know what to think and personally, I wasn’t going to do anything more after that, but A wanted to see if he really was active, and so we sent him a message, to which he almost instantly responded to.

It was horrible and I felt incredibly dirty and it made me so much more thankful to have A, because I know that he would never do anything like this to me. We messaged back and forth, him thinking we were this girl named Fiona, and it ended up making me feel so much worse about the entire situation. We asked what he was doing on Tinder and he said meeting people and seeing where it goes. We asked who he lived with and he said just with his brother, not even mentioning me (hurtful). We asked if he wanted to meet up and he asked us where we live. We purposely chose somewhere that we knew was super close to where we actually live. When asking him if he wanted to meet up he said that he was thinking about it. And I fully believe that he was considering going to meet up with this girl that A and I had fabricated.

Finally, he asked us if we had snapchat and A and I quickly made one so that he thought we were real. He added us and then A and I sent him a picture of ourselves and at that point, he knew he had been caught. Over the next few days, he did not talk to A or I at all. I really have never understood how someone can cheat on another. I mean I have no proof that he actually got with any other girls, but the intent was definitely there, which is enough. I don’t understand how he, or anyone for that matter, can go and talk to these girls and then go lay next to someone else at night and tell them that they love them. I haven’t said anything to O because I know it isn’t my place to say anything, but I just feel so guilty every time I hear her talk to his family or every time I hear her say I love you. I also haven’t said anything to B because that would be more of A’s department to say something because I feel like they might just think that I am trying to break their relationship up, which is not what I am trying to do, or what I want them to think that I want to do.

I just wish that I didn’t have to keep this secret or the way I am feeling in because it is hard for me and I do feel that it is kind of starting to hurt me mentally. As for the tinder profile, I don’t know if he is still using it, but he definitely deleted some pictures to make the profile look older, but why not just delete the whole account if you got caught or at least unmatch yourself from the person who caught you. A and I have talked about it, a lot more recently than before because of the events have been unfolding, and we think the rushing of B and O’s relationship may have to do with us. B had seen us happy and in love for nine months at the time that he had met O, and we think maybe he just didn’t want to feel left out in that way. Of course, we cannot say for sure, but that is what it seems like to us. I don’t know where it is going to go from here but at least I have most of my thoughts and feelings are written down now. It does help me a little bit but, it’s definitely not going to completely fix the situation, but right now this seems like this is all I can do.