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I believe with all my heart that I did not marry my soulmate, I married my forevermate. Sounds silly but soulmates being people we grew up with and we feel comfortable with and adore maybe even a little more than friends are great in the good times and a strong companion when your feeling down. Thats great. But a forever life mate is the one who is willing to be there when you need them at your ugliest. They come to you when you need them. They set aside personal needs and desires when your's are more important to them. Obviously as you said no relationship is perfect.

But consider your friend who had the issues. Do you think in his current "not good for you" state he would ever be able to set those addictions and personal desires aside to be better for you? I was raised to believe there is not perfect someone out there just for you. Because relationships take work. They arent all glitter and sunshine all the time. But it sounds like you have a good guy right now who cares about you and is there physically for you.

To wrap up all that I would say my advice would be to adore and cherrish the friendship you have with your long time friend. Help him with his issues and maybe you can be good and supportive of one another when you need it. We all like mates but a friend is something you need. The guy you have is a relationship you have already invested in and he in it as well. I would put more into it and let him know how your feeling.

Its okay to have feelings of attraction towards people you arent dating. Thats natural instinct the modern skill you have is not giving into them and thinking your action through first. ♥

The past few weeks have been the most emotionally crippling of my life.
I believe I'm married to a pathological liar. I heard that it's some sort of survival mechanism for some. Great.

So a thing about me, is that I'm an asexual, he is very heterosexual.
This may seem totally silly to you, but things like my significant other viewing pornography or being attracted to other people in such a way I allowed to mention things like this?) is a big deal breaker for me and makes me doubt myself constantly. I talked to him about this countless times before we got married. Lusting over other people visually, in my line of vision or not is very uncomfortable for me. Now keep in mind that I am asexual, I'll keep saying this if I have to. I do not understand the sexual attraction everyone else feels. I do have a desire to fulfill the needs of my loved one, but I don't have those feelings on my own. So saying this, I have 0 understanding no matter how many times I research sexual attraction. I have an extremely low self esteem because he has lied to me countless times about viewing these things online and in person and I asked him not to in the past, until one day a year ago I accidentally discovered that he had his internet history tab open and completely cleared on his computer. I asked him what this was. I didn't make any hostile moves, but he was getting really angry with me for asking. So when I pushed him, he finally told me he used to watch it. I was incredibly offended because I told him before we got married, he has to learn to be open with me. I felt stupid for letting this go when we were married for so long. So then, things went to crap since. I had to take a break from him and moved to Seattle for a couple weeks to gather myself. Over that period of time, I was sexually harassed by my best friend. I felt so embarrassed, but I went home and planned to tell my husband. A day later, he found out through one of my other friends, who claimed I was the one who came on to this guy. So then, everything was flipped over on me.
And then, I was pregnant. I considered the fact that it couldn't be his, since this was right after the assault. I hung in there, though. I had a baby and she does belong to my husband. But getting back on topic, I was very happy throughout my pregnancy. I didn't feel a single ounce of self doubt until I found something else on his phone. It was just some girls, but me being the way I am, it made me uncomfortable. I didn't point it out, but I did have a long talk to him about trust and how I didn't feel that I could trust him at all anymore.
And here is where it got really rough. I felt like I couldn't talk to him, so much so that I had to make an hours long video committed to his eyes and ears only about how I felt. A lot of the time, when we talk, I never get everything out, I bottle things up for his convenience, and often get interrupted by him in our conversations. I mentioned that I couldn't be with him if I couldn't trust him. I couldn't be married to him if I felt like this.
So then, he started to tell me things that I didn't know. Like, thinking of other people (including my friends, his friends, exes and so on) and I've never felt more uncomfortable in my life.
He still continued to lie, and kept changing his story each time I talked to him about it.
I told him face to face that we don't have a healthy relationship anymore and that I wanted to be with someone who I could understand and could understand me, and I want him to be with someone who understands him. I do understand that we are very different people, and this is why I think this way. I want us both to be happy, even if that means the worst for our relationship.
He was my first boyfriend. I love him deeply and I have never loved anyone like this, other than my child. I love her more than anyone else in the entire world, and that includes him.
I want my daughter to grow up knowing that love can work, but not always with the person you choose. I don't want her to see that you need to force love, or that love is some messed up thing. I want her to have a healthy idea of love. And what I have experienced with this man emotionally is something I fear for her.
Now I'll tell you that I can see that he is working very hard on being honest, but the trust is completely gone. I've worked for a long time to get it back.

But this isn't all. He has been manipulative in the past, like trapping me in a marriage when I didn't have a single clue of who he really was. He used to spend a lot of money on me, but I didn't want the gifts as much as I wanted the reassurance. The objects didn't have any value. He said he bought me all these things that he couldn't afford to make me happy, but it never made me happy because it wasn't what I wanted from him.

He asked, in tears that I've literally never seen anything like this before (he is an emotional person, but this is the worst I've ever seen) if I wanted to get a divorce. On one hand, I think it would be best for me, but on the other, I'm not completely positive and it's not something I want to jump to and regret later. This whole thing made me feel worthless and ugly as a person, and at the same time, my love grows for him more and more each day.

So, I really don't know what to do.

I suppose to start this off, this is about an ex best friend, not an ex romance. To protect identities, be it either of the girls hurt in this situation or him randomly falling across this post, I will use fake names.
I had a best friend, I will call him Jack. In high school we were absolutely inseparable. I went to prom and homecoming with him. We did literally everything together. I was the only one who understood him. He didn’t exactly understand me, but I didn’t need him to. Everything was fine up until we both started college.
By our first summer of college, he had changed into someone I didn’t recognize. He was suddenly sprouting racist jokes, saying homophobic things (I’m gay and non-binary), and he was starting to become sexist. Finally, I confronted him and said none of this was okay. He broke down crying, apologizing for his actions, and saying he’d do better because he couldn’t lose me.
Fast forward about a year and a half, he wants to drop out of college and I’m signing up for the Disney College Program. I encourage him to do the same. I was worried he wouldn’t be able to support himself without a solid career path. I figured the program would be really good for him. We both made it in and in August of this year, we moved to Florida to do our program.
We met a lot of new people. I met his roommates whom I adore, and we randomly ran into two girls, who I will call Susie and Katherine. Instantly, we all connected. It was like fate that we all met each other because we were feeling lost and alone and scared.
I got close to one of Jack’s roommates, who I will call Dexter, and he asked me one day if I knew Jack called me “his lesbian” and only referred to me as such. I was taken aback. It reduced me down to my sexuality and I wasn’t comfortable with that.
And then, I got the texts. Katherine texted a separate group chat and told me that Jack had sexually assaulted her. I was mortified. How could someone I loved have done something like that?
The next week was rocky. I started ignoring his texts to do things, because I knew I couldn’t even look him in the eye, let alone pretend things were okay enough to go to parks and hang out.
Katherine, my roommate, Susie, and I all went to Dexter’s apartment. Jack was supposed to get off of work at midnight, but got released early, around 10. Katherine took him into a separate room and confronted him, saying to never touch her like he had again.
Everyone was saying goodbye about ten minutes later when he assaulted Susie in the exact way he’d assaulted Katherine.
We all went to housing as witnesses and victims. Within two weeks he was fired from working for Disney.
Now, I feel hurt, confused, betrayed, and alone. I have to go through all my pictures and delete any with him in them. I feel guilty because I encouraged him to do this program and if I hadn’t, those two girls wouldn’t have been traumatized by his actions. I feel strange not knowing if he’d ever done this before. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, except to vent.