I’m 33, pregnant with our first baby, and trying to figure out if I should stay and try to reconcile or not.
Background:
My partner (40, M) and I have been together 9 years. I was 24 when we started dating . He has been with over 100+ partners, and is conventionally good looking. I have only had sex in serious relationships. Anyway, when we started dating, hit it off, and within 3 months launched a business from absolute nothing. Our business was successful and grew fast into two locations with a team of over 20. The stress was insane. I am including this information just for context of understanding the abnormal stressors we were under. Our relationship was jeopardized from the get go.
Our sex life was never good… awkward, infrequent, pressured, mostly lights-off missionary. Think he has intimacy anorexia or struggles with Madonna/whore complex.Anyway.
The betrayal:
4 years ago, during a very dark period when I was struggling badly with alcoholism due to the overwhelming stress of our businesses and our relationship, my partner ran into one of our employees and her friend at a bar. He was extremely drunk and escaping the tension (me) at home. They invited him and his friend over. Eventually, the girls aggressively started making out on top of him, initiating a threesome. He says he pulled away at first, but then participated for about an hour (multiple positions, no protection). He remembers the sex, but not how he got there or conversations. He panicked right after, and called her saying it was a huge mistake not to tell anyone.
Shortly after the threesome he broke up with me. I went to rehab, got sober, and came back better. Been sober since.
While we were broken up he got 3 blowjobs from strippers on a work trip. This is all he’s confessed to, anyway.
He then hid the threesome from me for 3.5 years. Because the girl worked for us, he allowed her to work for 2 more years out of fear (wrongful dismissal, her being "crazy," blowing up the business). He only confessed 7 months ago after a solo hunting trip where he read the Bible, after she had been gone for 1.5 years already. She was an awful worker, stole from us, treated me horribly, slandered us, stole clients, was malicious and awful, had many reasons to be let go, and could have been let go a lot sooner. I never understood why she was protected until he confessed.
He also lied for years about watching porn and going to strippers / getting lap dances with touching, right up until 2025 (last year). I genuinely believed he had no sex drive as he never tried to initiate with me, and I never saw him watching porn, not once. I assumed he was just getting older with less libido.
Now:
After he confessed we went through a period of hysterical bonding. I got pregnant during that phase. I’ve been sober for 4 years. He’s in sex addiction therapy 2x/week, no porn or masturbation for 6+ months now and trying his best to be there for me and "rewire his brain." But he still gets defensive sometimes during my meltdowns.
I have severe betrayal trauma… meltdowns every few days, sexual aversion (I cry during any intimacy now), constant "I’m not enough" spirals, body hatred, and obsessive thoughts about surgery. I never once felt truly sexually desired by him in 9 years. He admitted he masturbated multiple times to the memory of the threesome (years ago). And again, this entire time I literally thought he just had no sex drive!
I’m terrified this trauma will never heal, that I wasted my youth and beauty on someone who never wanted me the way I needed, and that staying is just more damage. But leaving with a newborn while our businesses are still entangled feels overwhelming. We are not married yet but It feels impossible to leave. He has proposed, twice.
Has anyone survived something similar (threesome + employee + long secrecy + additional stripper/porn lies + pregnancy during hysterical bonding + Madonna whore/complex)? How did you decide whether to stay or leave? What actually helped the sexual inadequacy and "I’m not enough" feelings? I can’t help but blame myself because of my alcoholism issue, maybe I need to give him more grace…?
Thank you. This is destroying me.
[This message edited by Canadiangirl4469 at 1:33 PM, Wednesday, May 20th]
