You have my commiserations, LazerLordz. Unfortunately, faithfulness itself may not be enough to cut it sometimes. I'll give you an example from personal experience.
A few years ago, I started a relationship with a colleague with whom I'd been working for 4 years. We were welfare workers, running a house of kids who were wards of the state.
Anybody who's worked in welfare will tell you that it's one of the most demanding environments on a person. You see things you don't ever want to know exist, and whatever you do, there will be something or someone working against you. ItÂ’s almost as bad as war.
Anyway, after all this time, I figured that this colleague, who had stuck it out with me through thick and thin, would make a good life partner. Oops.
She's 11 years older than I am, and she had two almost-adult kids living with her at the time. Their father was an abusive SOB who at one point actually chased her around with a chainsaw, and she eventually had the wisdom to leave him. For 16 years after that, she was all they had by way of parents, because anybody else she had dated ignored the kids.
So along comes yours truly. Having been a colleague for 4 years and having visited the household during that time, I developed a great friendship with the kids as well, and at the start, it was great that my colleague finally had a partner who took her and the kids as a package.
The one thing we forgot to account for is that you never, EVER, come between a woman and her kids. Oops.
After a while, my partner felt that I was trying to take on the role of surrogate father, a role that she had held for 16 years. All I was doing was keeping things as normal as possible, relative to the time before we started the relationship. After 2 months, everything fell apart completely.
Some days, it's those things that come completely out of left field and hit you, and there isnÂ’t a damned thing you can do about it.
The bright side of it is that we stayed apart for 3 months, after which I called her to see how she was. Now, 4 years later, weÂ’re still the best of friends. In fact, the first time she met my current girlfriend, she interrogated her just to make sure that I was doing the right thing. Not very politically correct, of course, but from someone whoÂ’s been around the block a few times, it was the biggest sign of caring that she could have mustered.
Anyway, these days, I have a new partner whom IÂ’m absolutely in love with, plus a great friend to boot. However, 4 years ago, things seemed very dark indeed. The lessons I have learned from that point in time are:
1) You may never have all bases covered – learn to live with the fact
2) The worst thing you can do wrong is crawl into your hole and stay there
3) The next worst thing is to beat yourself up about it
4) Don’t EVER become bitter and twisted as a result of your experiences – the only person you hurt that way is yourself
5) You have no choice but to get back up off your duff, and get back into the game – it may not get better, but hell, the alternative can get worse
Give yourself time to get used to the fact of what has happened, then get on with life. All the best!