Hello all, I’ve been dealing with an ambivalence of emotions for years now, and I’ve heard some of the best advice can come from someone in  the periphery of it all.  I started dating my  partner when I was 13, I am now 22, he is 25. I had a lot of issues at home , and he was my get away. In the beginning he had a lot of trust issues, I cheated on him and he would cheat on me, he would control what I would wear, demand pictures of what I wore to school to make sure I was not looking “too good”.  Threaten to cheat on me or leave me if I didn’t do what he asked, (during this time I didn’t have love at home, so I was desperate to get it from him) .I had low self esteem and I never left because I didn’t think I could find love any where else. To sum it up, we made each other miserable through high school , since he wanted to be controlling and manipulative of me, I thought I would act the same, although it didn’t really matter because he still did as he pleased ( double standard relationship). I tried leaving but he would threaten to kill himself, and I would tell his mother but I always felt like she failed to put her foot down with him.  When I was a junior in high school  I became close to a guy, we can call him C, whom I had known since middle school.  Call it friends with benefits , but I fell in love with him, he fell for me too. I was determined at this point in my life to leave my boyfriend, but then I found out that I was pregnant by T. I told C , and he said he would still be there for me to help and support me, even if I decided not to keep the baby. C and I ended up getting into a big argument ( he said he was tired of being in “the back seat”, he went away to college, and it would be a little more than a year before I would see him again ( he would occasionally text me but I had decided to keep the baby and stay with T  so I would always keep the conversation short with C ) I always thought I didnt want to be with T because I had grown feelings for C, but even with distance I had trouble being with T. He was like a parasite the first few years of my child’s life. He hardly helped, he was just there, no matter how many fights, or how much nagging I did, nothing changed. The fights got physical, we were both at blame, we are victims of each other. I ended up seeing C again when he came back from college to study local, and we became intimate again. I tried so many times to leave T, but he kept coming back, or at times if the conversation of leaving him came up he would threaten to harm me , our daughter and whomever I was with. Years have passed, and although T has changed tremendously, the damage is done, and I get anxiety when I think of a future with him, because deep down that isn’t what I want. There are times when he still gets jealous from over thinking in his head, he claims that he doesn’t have a problem with me going out without him , but whenever I do he calls me, text me, and lies that our daughter is misbehaving, but in reality she could be sound asleep, it is just his way of getting me to go home. At this point I want to leave, not to be with C but I feel like I am ready to be happy by MYSELF, I have not been by myself since I was 13. I have gained confidence and self love.  I am terrified, what if after all these years he is able to be the man I wanted him to be. He isn’t a drunk, he isn’t a druggie, he has ambition now, he doesn’t beat me, or be little me, he is starting to help more, but the fire in our sex life is almost gone. For years I tried to get him to fix it, and he never wanted to until recently, because I stopped showing interest.  I wish there were some way to get him to stop loving me, I feel it would be easier for him.  I think of my daughter, how I know he will be so immature, and give me a difficult time with her just to get back at me for leaving. I do not even know how to start this conversation with T and avoid total mayhem. Should I come clean, although I feel it would do more harm than good? Should I stay and put effort in my relationship and stop cheating?  Help please!