Dear April:
I am currently engaged to a man, 5 years my junior, who I have been dating on and off for about 8 years. In this 8 years we have gotten together and broken up about 4 times. The first time, I broke up with him when he entered medical school. I had not really fallen in love with him yet and I felt like I needed more time to center and find myself. He ended up leaving medical school for a year to try to win me back, and I decided to finally open my heart. Shortly after, he kissed somebody, and broke up with me and said he needed to find HIMSELF. Later we realised he held a lot of resentment and fear leftover from when I broke up with him and was unfaithful. We got back together again, and broke up due to the stresses of medical school and long-distance. When he came up to my area for residency, he begged me to get back together with him and I moved in with him. It was hellish in his first year of residency, and he told me he couldn’t be in a real relationship and I moved out. I felt like I was finally ready to move on. But then he had a near death experience, and we both began to feel we were meant for each other. He asked me to marry him. It has felt different — we don’t fight much anymore, little drama, and our love is growing. However, I am PLAGUED by the women he was with during our breaks. When I broke up with him (followed by him breaking up with me) he slept around a lot, and particularly after we broke up and I moved out he started dating someone right away in the house we had made together. He quickly realised it wasn’t right for him and he wanted to be with me, but after we had slept together once he slept with some other random person. When we finally got back together legitimately he is always faithful, but these other people feel like betrayals, and I feel sick and enraged and terrified when I think of them. Sometimes I think he is secretly the devil and wants to hurt me. He doesn’t denigrate past people and says they were ‘great’ and many of his ex’s are now his good friends; when we are apart, he kissed most of his female friends (and he mostly has female friends). some might even come to our wedding. But he thinks I am crazy and that it is obvious he is and always has been totally in love with me, and that I should know that. But I can’t relax. I get anxious everywhere he goes. How do I deal?
