'I read my fiancé's journals and now I don't know if I can marry him...'
"I read my fiancé's journals and now I don't know if I can marry him..."
I (43F) am using a throwaway for obvious reasons here. Before I start YES I know I am a huge jerk for snooping in his (56M) email and I definitely found trouble, I accept that. I was working on his computer and his gmail was open and I saw my name so I opened it and it was a Word doc that he journaled.
Curious of course I searched his inbox with my name and saw his entries and read them. Some of what he said has devastated me and shaken me to the core. We have been together almost 3 years, the first year on and off and was rocky. We have been living together since the summer. He is not home and I have not brought this up yet. I think I might faint and need some space.
Should I get some distance and go to a hotel for the weekend? I thought we were in a great place. Over the past 10 months these are some of the things he's written about me: For reference I put **** in place of my name.
"There are moments, in my dark thoughts, where I feel like being with her is a compromise for me, like this somehow diminishes me and that I am settling for her because I have ruined all of my other prospects and I’m too old to find someone else."
"At times, I wish she had stayed out of my life. I wonder if I had stayed on my own if someone better would have come into my orbit. There is so much to deal with, so many bad feelings and darkness. I find that I am thinking about Lauren a lot but who’s to say that she would be any better.
The reality is that I met her on tour and fucked her a day later. What kind of woman is that? I feel like I have pissed my life away and this is all that I am entitled to. I have pissed away all of the good things in my life."
"Someone like **** would never have been able to get to me. When I was younger, I had many opportunities to be with women like her but declined. I am uncertain about whether this is a good thought pattern to have."
"My mind wanders to places, like what it would have been like if someone like Lauren could have been in my life instead of ****. Lauren has the advantage of existing in my mind as an ideal. We never really got the chance to know each other outside of two nights and a week of texting and talking on the phone. I know that she had a drug past but has been sober for over a decade.
I don’t think she was promiscuous; most guys that I know that knew her in the old days indicated that she didn’t have a lot of men in her life. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a lot of darkness in her life. It would have been easier to be with her. There weren’t all of these men in her orbit like ****.
She was never married, so there was no divorce. She’s not as emotionally damaged as ****. In some ways, I feel like being with **** is some sort of karmic thing, like this is what I deserve for being non-committal for most of my life. I have my own damage. Everyone likes to think that they are a good person but there are moments when I am not so sure about myself."
Here's what people had to say to OP:
abow said:
I just have to say, he slept with a woman after knowing her for one day and judges her, and only her, for it? What an absolute tool.
Anita89 said:
I would not want to marry a man that thinks of women this way.
SuluSpeaks said:
Don't marry him, don't sleep with him, don't live with him. He's a jerk.
EnvironmentalLuck515 said:
Yeeeahhhhh, no sis. No. You certainly can not and should not go forward.
siriusly_g said:
I'm really glad you listened to your intuitive hunch and now you are protected from marrying this dolt. Don't be so hard on yourself - you're not a horrible person.
BlueMangoTango said:
I’d dump him. I wouldn’t even tell him why. I think I would just tell him that you think you can do better (and based on what you have said, you can). Maybe let him know you feel he is too old for you. I’m sorry you are going through this and I’m not even going to judge you for snooping.
DesperateToNotDream said:
He sounds like he’s obsessing over his fantasy girl who he met “on tour” and only knew for a week. I would leave someone who said multiple times that they feel like they are settling for me.