I moved out after finding out my boyfriend had turned off notifications from his ex-wife. We had argued about her before, but this time I also learned he had been lying about how often they were in touch. About a month later, we are still seeing each other and trying to make the relationship work. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about having sex with another man.
I'm 31, and we have been together for a year. At the beginning, it felt like love at first sight. For months, I was happy in a way that made the relationship seem uncomplicated. I believed what he told me about his life, including where things stood with his ex-wife. I wasn't entering it expecting to have to separate his version of events from the facts.
He said he was fully separated from her. Then I found out the divorce was still in progress. After that came the question of how close they remained. She was moving on and dating other people, but they had stayed close throughout the divorce. He calls her his best friend. I might have been able to accept that friendship more easily if he had been honest about it from the beginning. Instead, every explanation arrived after something I had believed turned out to be untrue.
For seven months, we were long distance. Then I moved 2,000 miles from home to be closer to him, and we lived together. That move is part of why this feels so lonely now. I have my own place in a city where I have no family. The relationship hasn't ended, but the life I came here for no longer looks the way it did when I arrived.
His ex-wife lives in another state. I am not worried that they are secretly meeting for sex. What worries me is the emotional closeness, and how much of it he has kept from me. Turning off her notifications didn't tell me exactly what exists between them. It did leave me wondering how I could trust his account of it after he had concealed their contact.
The part I find hardest to admit is what I want now. I keep fantasizing about sex with other men. Some of that desire feels like wanting to get even. In the fantasy, he doesn't even have to find out. That makes it difficult to pretend this is only about showing him how much he hurt me. Part of me wants something for myself, outside a relationship where I feel I have been kept in the dark.
I know cheating would be wrong, and I don't intend to do it. I keep returning to that fantasy while I continue seeing my boyfriend. I can say we're working on the relationship and mean it. I can also want someone else to touch me. Right now, both are true, and I haven't acted on the second.
