I met a guy online a couple of months ago. We were unusually compatible, age, politics, lifestyle, music, food, etc. We'd even gone to the same prestigious university as much older students at the same time. We emailed, we talked, I visited. Spent two long weekends at his place over a three week period. Two weeks after the second time he came to mine for three days. All wonderful. lots of talk, silliness, sex, pot, rock and roll. We live a few hours apart but I am not tied here so we talked about my moving to his city, he even sought out and sent me appropriate jobs postings. This was seriously heading for true love, a miracle at our advanced (both born in early 1950s) age. I wasn't quite as ready as he seemed to be to jump in wholeheartedly, I've been burned, but then so had he. It was scary how comfortable and easy we were together. My insecurities intruded and I pulled back, just a bit. The only red flag I could pinpoint was that his former wife of many years apparently hated him so much that she refused any contact, whereas my exes are still friends. I kept thinking that my growing doubts were just my past history intruding, my fear. After he left my house I discovered that his email was still logged in on my computer. I couldn't resist a little snooping. What a total fucking slut he turned out to be! While I was at his house last time he was sending charming smitten emails to another woman. And there were several others, just over the space of the 6 weeks we knew each other. I am not exaggerating. And here I'd been worrying that if I got serious cold feet I'd be hurting a good man. So I played him, sent him an email telling him I missed him already. His response was to tell me how wonderful I am but that he's not ready for anything serious, but would like to remain friends with benefits. It's a been a week since I last saw him. His email is still logged in. He's been actively charming another woman for the last few days. I'm a professional researcher so it didn't take me long to find her profile on his favorite dating site. Sounds like a good person, wants a serious committed monogamous relationship, bla bla. Does not want anyone who has messaged for "intimate encounters" or whatever bullshit term the site uses. I've read the emails they've exchanged, she's already head over heels. I feel sorry for the poor woman. I'm tempted to email her with copies of the dozen or so ads he's answered in the last week on craigslist, ads from m/f couples looking for a bisexual man to play with telling them he's hot to trot. I am so relieved that I dodged this scumbag bullet unscathed. I have no interest in vengeance of any kind. But what are my responsibilities to his other prey? What he's doing is emotional rape. Of course I should sign out of his email for good, but it's such good material for a story. So, dear readers, what should I do?
You seem to feel that he misled you, however when you talked to him about more serious feelings, he admitted to you honestly that he wasn't looking for a serious relationship. If you object to him looking for other sexual encounters while having a sexual relationship with you, I think your choice is to tell him what you found and say this relationship with him is not your cup of tea. If you read his emails on a regular basis without his knowledge, I think that's bordering on unethical behavior, but as long as you keep your findings to yourself it's probably no biggie. However if you use your knowledge of his private affairs against him in some way, that's starting to look a helluva lot like harassment and possibly invasion of privacy. Unless he's doing something illegal - which, from what you say, he is not - I think you should be very wary of involving yourself in his private business without his knowledge or consent. It was his own fault that he left himself logged in on your computer, of course. I'm wondering if he might have done that on purpose... Anyway you can certainly tell him what happened and what you found, and tell him you think his behavior is unethical. If you do that I think you'd better be prepared to log out of his email and drop any further attempts to pry or interfere.
