When I first met my husband I used to cut pix of sexy women out of Rolling Stone magazine because I couldn't stand the thought of him lusting after them. He cancelled his subscription.
I worried about him lusting after high school girls when his job took him around them. He wrote me a letter and said he was doing it for his job, and if anything, he found teenage girls to be annoying.
Whenever there's a pretty woman in view and I take a quick look to see what he's doing, he is quickly glancing away. In other words, if he sees an attractive woman, he looks away really quickly instead of indulging in a little eye candy.
I checked his PC for 7 and a half years and never found one single porn photo, one single objectionable post, nothing.
I began to trust him explicitly.
Then he was laid off and started beating himself up (losing too much money gambling, feeling depressed, etc.). Then I think he figured out it felt a whole lot easier to him if he beat ME up instead.
He broke up with me, but stayed with me. We'd start getting along well and he'd throw up a wall between us and pick a fight to distance us again. He played push me-pull me for about 9 months.
He got a job, and suddenly felt much better. He invited me to try again -- get a new start in a new location. He moved there while I stayed home and got ready for the move. Four days after he left, a coffee shop barista (19 years old and pretty -- we're in our 50s...) tells me that she and my husband are good friends and she had asked him if I was moving with him and he said no. She said she'd known him a long time and he never mentioned a wife. He said she was crazy and talking nonsense, and I should know that since he'd never given me any reason to doubt him.
He flew back to our old home to help with the move and avoided that coffee shop like it carried the plague. I wanted to know where these people got the idea that we were split up and insisted on going there. It led to a different (teenage girl) insulting me to my face and telling my husband that he should divorce this crazy lady.
My husband said nothing in my defense. This is the man who once quit his job after I had been fired because he couldn't bear to work there without me. He wrote me at the time, "If someone messes with one of us, they mess with both of us. We are a team and we'll get through this."
Turns out he and the barista WERE good friends. When we were having problems, he took to sitting there talking to her until another customer pulled up. He talked about the problems he was having in our relationship. Um hmm.
Ironically, he wrote an email to the owner of the company that fired me and said that I cared so much for the kids we worked with, how could the company fire someone like that? The irony is that this barista was one of the kids he used to be proud of me for caring about. And she told all her friends about our problems -- which covers the rest of the kids he once was proud of me for caring about.
During the six weeks he was gone, this girl and her co-workers poked sticks at me -- "Where is your husband? Hasn't he come back for you yet? I thought you said you were going with him?" Blah, blah.
He wouldn't apologize. I became insanely jealous. I felt like it was them against me, when it used to me and my husband against the world.
I am detoxing off cymbalta and in week 4. It's rough. I got put in a mental facility overnight for observation. He did nothing to help me -- we're back to the hostile environment again. So much for my new start.
When I got home I checked his computer to see what he'd been up to. First time in a looong time. What he'd been up to was pulling up photos of a pretty girl and masturbating to them.
What do I do now? I know I'm insanely jealous, but he accommodated me for 8 years. I KNEW when he refused to apologize for friending the teenage girl and blabbing about our business that he would start doing a bunch of destructive things to PROVE he didn't think it was wrong.
What do I do? My problem? His problem? Our problem? I hate therapy, been in it all my life and it never helps. He refuses to go.