23rd December - The day my life turned upside down

So I’d been with him for two years, moved in together at the start of the year and the wedding booked for July 2025. It was love like I’d never experienced, effortless and comfortable. I thought we could talk about anything and although we had bad moments we never went to sleep on an argument.

Until September 2024 when I found out he had given a girl live streaming on tiktok over £1000 of our wedding fund. That should have been enough for me to walk. Slowly over the next 2-3 months it transpired that he’d been jealous of my work relationships and was actively pursuing this girl. He gave me access to his phone and we did counselling to try to work through it but the lies kept coming. I mean who needs to lie about how much they ate for tea? Him apparently. But it was always because of me and his fear of me being mad.

So here I was, slowly dragging our relationship forward, feeling alone in fighting for what we had because he was ‘tired’ from work or he had stuff on his mind. But he still did all the things that showed he loved me, flowers at work, picking up my favourite chocolates, running me a bath.

Then came the 23rd December. I’d noticed a few apps on his phone that I didn’t recognise, he always said they were streaming apps he was looking at. I feel like an idiot now. I managed to find my way into his internet search history and there it was, in all its underage glory!

So came the tears, the pleas for help. The begging and begging. I sat on the phone to a helpline for hours across the table from him, apparently this had been going on for a year and these streaming apps were actually for him to search for this sickening ‘addiction’ to underage girls. I opened up a live chat with the local police and within the hour my life had changed and I was now alone.

His family have closed ranks around him. I’m half angry and half relieved. And if I’m honest there’s a small part of my brain that is still looking for a way to make it work. He’s not allowed to contact me. I sent out the cancellation emails to his entire family and told them exactly why the wedding was cancelled. I still feel like I need closure.

I am grieving for a life that was only ever a lie. A future that never was going to be and a person who never truly existed.

Any tips, I’m all ears because I’m hurting and angry and I just wish I’d never met him.

I feel I needed to write all this out because keeping it inside is festering and I so badly want to heal.