25(F) with 55(M)
Before this I really started to think I was falling in love with him. I’ve met his daughters (who are 20–18), his ex-father-in-law & his college best friends. His wife passed away a little over a year ago. He asked me to be his girlfriend after 4 months of us seeing each other & I’m his first girlfriend since his wife, who he met in college. We’ve only been boyfriend & girlfriend for two weeks and met on Hinge.
HOWEVER. Devastatingly, after flying out to see him (as I had done a number of times & him too), I found out through searching on his phone that he was on a SD/SB site talking to other women both before we were boyfriend and girlfriend and after. The most recent time was the same night I met one of his daughters, whilst I slept next to him.
He describes it as 🌽, “entertainment and not cheating”, “never meeting them or wanting to”, “they were up for sale & he was curious about it all” & seemed apologetic. He promised he would stop. I ripped into him. Told him how he was treating me, his family & his friends time as some kind of joke in doing this. He cried profusely. Eventually agreed it was cheating, but that’s he didn’t think that at the time he was doing it. Said he was “ashamed”, “embarrassed”, that it was “a humiliating fantasy” and cried at the thought of “how I view him changing forever” and me and my friends now viewing him as a “perverted old man”.
He said he “felt uncertain about our relationship” and “assumed I (25F), post us becoming boyfriend & girlfriend, was using our most recent meet as a test for myself to see if I was sure”. He said he felt “insecure” and thought I was still on Hinge because of notifications on my phone. I wasn’t, but he never asked me to clarify, so he never actually knew that — he just made an assumption. We were both crying.
I feel incredibly betrayed and exposed because of how vulnerable I’ve been with him. I’m a very slow person when it comes to relationships, and agreeing to have him as my boyfriend was not an easy decision for me. To get to that point with anyone meant I really, truly cared.
I was so shocked by it all. He’s the last person I would have thought to do this.
But I don’t want to be with someone who uses apps for 🌽 whilst I’m asleep next to him. That doesn’t translate to me as having self-control, respect for me, or being satisfied with our relationship. It makes me feel violated.
I’ve told him I need space to think and that it may take me a while. He seems respectful of this so far. But previously, when I told him it may all take me a while, and that even if we were to give it another shot, it would only be possible if he rebuilt that trust, he began worrying about how long that would take & mentioned he still wanted to feel like he had a girlfriend.
I told him he doesn’t get to negate how long I take to recover from what he’s done or the consequences of his actions. If he wanted this to work, the work would be hard because what he did was so detrimental to what we built and to the trust that was awarded to him in our foundation, which he has now destroyed.
He acknowledged this and apologised for selfishly looking at the recovery in terms of how it would affect him rather than me.
It’s hard speaking with my friends about this because they already weren’t fans of the age gap, and this has made them go absolutely ape shit. To the point where one of them wants to message him & push him out of my life. A couple of them have met him and did think he was a solid, good guy despite the age difference, so they were surprised and disgusted by what’s unfolded. They’re super protective of me, and he knows why. I don’t blame them. (It’s worth noting that I get where my friends are coming from with their concerns about their age gap but I’ve always fiercely defended him on this because he was my man & it didn’t matter to me that other people thought it unconventional…but now since he’s done this, I cannot possibly defend him)
I guess I just want to hear the perspective of people who have no bias towards our age gap and can look at the situation for what it is.
I care about him & his kids (in such a short time) but I also care about me, MORE.