I was 19 years old when I started dating Henry, a 28-year-old divorcé with a 3-year-old daughter.
I went into my relationship with Henry with a lot of magical expectations and was quickly disappointed. It wasn’t long before I started cheating on him: mostly emotionally, but also physically.
Henry wasn’t to blame for my transgressions, but sometimes we are with people who bring out the best in us, and other times, the worst. Henry brought out the worst in me.
Many people tell their partners that they cheated on them after the first incident, but I told Henry only once I was ready to leave him.
I was home for the summer between my freshman and sophomore years when I met Henry. Living with my parents (whom I had an awful relationship with) and working at a large retail store, I felt stuck and bored. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew this wasn’t it.
When I learned that Henry had a career and a daughter, I immediately felt like I could step into a ready-made family, which is the kind of change I felt like I needed. I ached to feel like I belonged, that I had a home, and this could be mine.
I returned to college in another state a couple of months later, and we navigated dating long-distance. At first, I handled the distance well, but then the loneliness of being a couple of states away and still not feeling all that connected there started to weigh on me, and I turned to social media.
When I learned that Henry had a career and a daughter, I immediately felt like I could step into a ready-made family, which is the kind of change I felt like I needed.
I started chatting with Nathan, an ex of mine who lived over 1000 miles away. Whenever Henry wasn’t available, at least I now had this other guy to reach out to. I didn’t know I was having an emotional affair, but I definitely was.
When my fall semester was up, I returned home, relieved. Now Henry and I would be together again! He even proposed to me while we were both drunk at a concert, and I happily agreed. I thought, This is it!
I returned to college in January, newly engaged, but still just as miserably alone.
The cracks in my relationship with Henry had started to show while I’d been home. He could be mean and selfish. He demanded I do things in bed I wasn’t comfortable doing and sometimes forced me to anyway. He also had a problem watching porn.
The cracks in my relationship with Henry had started to show while I’d been home.
I started messaging Nathan again with more fervor.
“You need to quit messaging him,” a friend told me.
“Why?”
“It’s cheating.”
“What are you talking about? We’re just friends,” I told her.
“You don’t talk to me like you talk to him,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking at me dead in the eye.
“It’s fine. It’s nothing,” I reiterated, but it was starting to feel more than nothing. I was talking with Nathan twenty times in a day while I might speak to Henry once.
Henry and I started discussing me transferring to a college back home once I finished my sophomore year. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve, but Henry said I could move in with him and that he could help pay for my schooling.
I finished out the spring semester. That same friend told me before I left, “This is a bad idea. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“I’ll go to school there. We’ll get married. It’ll be fine. You’ll be my maid of honor, right?” I told her.
“For your wedding to him? Fuck no.”
I came back home and moved in with Henry. It turned out Henry really couldn’t afford to help me with my schooling. He actually had nearly $50k in credit card debt. “From my ex-wife,” he told me, though that didn’t seem entirely true. I’d need to get a job as well as a student loan.
Further, my “magic” idea of a family was put on hold when it turned out his parenting plan prevented him from seeing his daughter for overnight visits while he was living with someone he wasn’t married to. My parents explicitly stated that they’d never pay for our wedding, so I started researching ways to get married cheaply and quickly.
When Nathan unexpectedly came to town, we arranged to meet at his parents’ house. I told Henry I was going to speak to admissions at the college I was applying to.
Once I was there, it wasn’t long before Nathan cupped my face and kissed me. I couldn’t hold back. His touch felt so warm and comforting that I never wanted his hands off of me, but as soon as his hands drifted down to my breasts, I pushed him off me and fled.
I cut off contact with Nathan and threw myself back into my relationship with Henry. The secret of what had happened ate away at me. It was all I could think about, but I felt like I had to be with Henry and that I absolutely couldn’t tell him about what I’d done. We were living together. We were getting married. It was going to work out if I just focused more on it.
The secret of what had happened ate away at me.
Henry’s sexual issues escalated. He was watching porn more frequently and suggesting we do weirder and weirder things in bed. Because I was trying to make it work, I just kept saying yes. It didn’t matter how much I didn’t like whatever it was, how it might have been uncomfortable or even painful. It felt like the punishment I deserved for what I’d done, so I took it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Nathan, about his body on mine, how he’d kissed me so softly and gently. I booked a small wedding venue for a date a couple of months away, and Henry started looking into how he could break the lease on his apartment so we could get a house together.
I got a job serving. My second week there, the guy who’d trained me my first week kissed me at the end of my shift. I stopped him immediately and then chose not to tell Henry. I knew kissing counted as cheating, but it’d meant nothing to me. If I can forget it, why should I bother him with it? I thought.
I told another co-worker about it, and she said, “Well, of course he’d kiss you. You’re always flirting with him.”
“No, I’m not! I’m just bubbly!” I told her, but I knew she was probably right.
A week later, I got drunk at the restaurant after it had closed with several of my co-workers, and I kissed that guy next to his car. Again, I didn’t tell Henry.
It felt like the punishment I deserved for what I’d done, so I took it.
“You seem unhappy all the time,” one of my high school friends told me. We had reconnected when I’d moved back home, and I was reaching out to her more and more since she lived near Henry and me.
“I’m just stressed,” I told her.
A month before the wedding, Henry told me he wanted to have a threesome with a friend of his named Jake. This was one of Henry’s many sexual ideas I didn’t like, but I sighed and accepted, and we scheduled our rendezvous for that weekend.
The encounter was awkward and I’d had to be really drunk for it, but I’d noticed that Jake seemed kind. He’d actually told Henry not to be so rough with me. I got Jake’s phone number off of Henry’s phone one night and started texting him. We met up once and had sex just the two of us.
I knew my relationship with Henry was not okay. It was unhealthy and very messed up. I didn’t deserve to be sexually mistreated, and I definitely didn’t deserve that from someone who told me he loved me and was planning to be my husband. He also deserved someone who was faithful to him, and I obviously couldn’t be.
When Henry got back from work one day, I told him I’d had sex with Jake again, outside of our threesome, and that I couldn’t stay faithful.
“Get out,” he screamed at me. I hurriedly stuffed all of the important things I could into a suitcase and told him I’d come back for the rest later, but I never did.
Everything about that relationship was a mess. I didn’t handle anything well, including cheating, and I was in a situation I shouldn’t have been in. Henry was never my person, and no amount of delusion could have ever made him that.
The only way to grow after experiencing a relationship like that is to own your actions and decisions. I had to do a lot of work afterward to process why I’d chosen Henry and why I’d chosen to stay with him, along with why I’d been so dishonest and unfaithful.
In future relationships, I had to give up my tendency towards magical thinking and learn how to be honest with myself and that other person. In a loving wholesome relationship, there’s no room for the kind of sickness that was rife in mine. I obviously had to learn the hard way how to make different choices.
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Previously published on psiloveyou
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Photo credit: by Romina Farías on Unsplash