8 years and still trying

So this is going to be a long post but i feel like i so badly just need to get it all out and have some advice from an outside perspective. My fiance and I have been together for 8 years and have a 6 year old child. Things from the start have never been easy for us. We started dating when we were young, had a baby young, finances have never been easy and then our daughter got chronically ill around her 3rd birthday. I know I have not always been the easiest person to deal with but neither has he. He has always had a weird drinking problem and by weird I mean he doesnt need to drink every day but when he does drink 9 times out of 10 it turns out to be a huge problem. There is just something about him though that I love and could never just forget. I've known him since I was in 9th grade and even then I was drawn to him. He's also not a very thoughtful or affectionate person and I am the complete opposite and I crave that from him. Despite the problems we had I always stuck by him and took care of him. That was until last year. Last year I gave up, i had the weight of my childs illness on my mind every second and I felt emotionally alone and not loved. It seemed all he did was get drunk and hang out with his friends and pass out on the couch while I did all the research and work for our daughters illness. one day I just woke up and didn't give a shit anymore about trying with someone who didn't want to try with me. I told him that I didn't know if I could be in a relationship anymore and that I couldn't commit to him. Then I did the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life.. please dont judge but I had a one night stand. I've hated myself everyday for that. My fiance found out about it but still wanted to work on things.. he said he was willing to move past it. I still wasn't ready. It took me a few months of going out and wasting time before I realized that I really did want to work on things with him. I think part of the reason why it took so long for me to commit back to him was bc for the first time in our relationship he was putting me first. he thought about me and actually tried. We finally ended up establishing that we were back together and working on things. Then in october he proposed AGAIN to me... He lost his job in september and started a new job shortly after.. I would say around october. Around the time that the holidays came around, I started to notice that he was acting distant. He was always on his phone, and he would literally carry it wherever he went, it was always turned away from me. I just had the worst feeling in my gut that something was going on. He always said that he could never cheat on me b/c thats what happened when he was a kid and that he just physically wouldn't be able to. I always believed him, and I tried really hard to but I couldn't shake that uneasy feeling. A few times I snooped through his phone but never found anything incriminating. Just this one girls name that made me feel uneasy. In January, I asked him if I could start planning a wedding since we were engaged again and he turned around and told me he wasn't sure if he was ready to marry me. I am also an anxious person so this really ate away at me. I tried to get him to talk to me but he would never give me anything to work with. all he ever did was go out w ppl from work, or sit at home on his phone. Eventually the tuesday before valentines day i lost it. Out of desperation for some sort of attention from him I started a huge fight. A fight that I immediately regretted b/c that was when he gave up completely. He told me later that night that he wasn't sure if this was what he wanted and that he didn't know if he wanted to try anymore. The following week I got an anonymous letter in the mail claiming that my fiance is having an affair w a girl from work. Same name that I had a bad feeling about. They both claimed it was nothing and i tried really hard to believe him. I always felt his change in feelings had something to do with someone else. Its not like him to just flip a switch like that and want to give up on his family. For the next two weeks I did everything I could think of to regain his affection. Dinner was perfect and ready, house was immaculate, I started painting and redoing crap around the house just to keep myself busy. Nothing helped all he did was go out and I was dying inside. I couldn't eat I couldn't sleep I could hardly parent our daughter. Looking back I am so upset with myself with how I let this affect me, but I was completely heartbroken. It physically hurt and the only person who could fix it wouldn't. by the end of those two weeks I couldnt stay at our house any longer. I felt like I couldn't be there doing everything for him being reminded of everything by being in the house constantly. I thought he would need to experience what life would be like with out me and our child being there. I was hoping that this would be the incentive that he needed to try to work things out with me. So my daughter and I went and stayed with my friends for 2 days. He went out drinking for both those nights. I ended up getting a call at 430 am from our tenant that john never came home and the dog wouldn't stop barking. So i packed up and went home. He didn't come home until 845 in the morning. I had also tried logging into our verizon account to look at the phone records but he had changed the password. I ended up forcing him to give it to me and finally he did. The only person he talked to was her. There were hundreds of text messages picture messages and phone calls each day. Sometimes they would stay on the phone texting until 4am. I then realized he was deleting all his texts from her in his phone. At this point I was done trying to kiss his ass and be miss perfect. I wanted an answer about where we stood and I was done waiting around while he just was off doing his own thing while destroying my heart in the process. I told him that if he wanted to work on things that we could do that. I would stay living and contributing to the house and bills (everything that we own is in his name) or we could stop but I'm also not going to try anymore to pay the bills or cook or clean for him and that once my parents house was ready for us I would be gone and then I would be filing for child support. he came home from work that day to talk about my new findings regarding the cell phone bill and he told me that nothing ever happened between the two of them besides just texting. he also said that he didn't know if he had feelings for her but that she made him laugh and she got his jokes. I still believe more happened than he is leading me to believe but he turned around and said he wanted to try, he texted her in front of me and told her they couldn't be friends anymore and to not text him. he claims they havent spoken since and his phone bill proves that unless hes being really sneaky and using an app. this conversation was two weeks ago. Since then we have been trying. I have been making some serious effort to try and be fun and loving and take care of things. I booked a vacation for us and planned a big birthday celebration and he is just going on as he always had before. I can't shake this pit though in my stomach. the other day I was looking through his photos and he had a picture of a naked girl w out a face on his phone. It was an obvious personal picture. There is a difference between having a picture on your phone that is from porn from one that was obviously personal. The picture was from around christmas time, right when I got that bad feeling. I didn't say anything to him, just deleted it and have tried to get it out of my memory but I can't. I just don't know what to do anymore. Im trying to move forward and I never bring up the past to him anymore. I know I have made my mistakes too. I just want us to try to be in love again and the only way thats going to happen is if we start showing love in action. Not just saying it but proving it to each other. I feel like I am the only one doing that. I don't know how to talk to him about it without putting pressure on him. i don't know if I should be giving him space or paying more attention.. I just have no idea what to do anymore. The two parts that mess w me the most is that I feel like he cared about this girl. I may have done what I did but I never cared about him. the other part is what this did to my self esteem. this whole experience has brought me to my knees more than any other life experience yet. He is the one that I love and the one I want to grow old with. I need him to help me get through all the tough times we have with our daughter. I just don't know what to do... thanks all for listening

Hi Could not agree more with the last post. I think you are beating yourself up over one night thing you had and you are clearly trying to make up for it. Him on the other hand did not show you the manners to be honest. I think it is tome to move on, you could not stay with him after seeing the naked picture etc... Counseling seems to be the best way forward....

How do I move on from someone who has fought for me and worked really hard for our family. I know he's far from perfect, but I do believe he is a good man and I am far from an angel. I think that I would be able to move past everything if I could feel his love for me. I've always felt deep down that we could both grow and learn from our mistakes and become better people.