Dear Jasmine,
I have been with my boyfriend for six years. We have a 5-year-old son together. I have been married and divorce before I met him. He lived a sheltered life and I was one of his first sexual partners. On my birthday this past year I found out from him that he cheated on me 3 years ago with someone I knew and she knew me.
He had sex with her 3 times. He says he did it because he was pressured into not being with just one girl. It only last a month.
He felt guilty and called it off. He held this information from me for 3 years and it is coming out now because I felt like our relationship was failing and asked him what I was doing wrong.He looked very devastated to tell me, but I cannot stop thinking about how he betrayed me when it happened and all these years ago. I know he loves me and I feel the same. I just don’t know what to do. He has not done anything since. I know this because 3 years ago, I suspected but never confronted him.
I want to be with him, but I don’t know how to overcome these feelings of sadness. When I am with him, I feel okay. When I am not with him, I can’t stop thinking about what happened and that the man I thought I knew isn’t him. I feel like everything he says and does might not be true.
He has a tendency to do and say things to me that he thinks I want to hear. He tells me that he is done with all the lying and covering up. He is relived that it is out, but sad because I am so hurt. I want our relationship to move forward, but I don’t know how. I feel lost.
Amy
Kenosha, WI
Dear Amy,
He was devastated to tell you? Who cares? How do you feel? He should feel worse then devastated. Did he think that cheating on you was okay? He knew it was wrong yet he did it. There is absolutely no justification for what he did and no excuse for why he kept it from you for so long. If he felt like he needed more then one sexual partner in his life, he shouldn’t have stayed with you. How unfair is this to you? If he wanted more sexual partners, here is an idea, break up! He has a choice and he chose to lie to you and betray you instead of telling you the truth.
I know you are hurt now, but to know the truth is better then being in the dark all these years. It is really hard to trust someone who has cheated on you and lied to you for so many years. It would be a different story if he didn’t lie to you for so long about it. I don’t know how you can trust someone who has lied to you all these years or how you can choose to believe it was just that one girl. If he wanted to be with someone else, he should have told you and broken up with you.
But instead he subjected you to not only the lies, but also the chance or sexually transmitted infections. How selfish is that? Because he wanted to be with more then one women in his life, he gave you the chance to possibly get some sexually transmitted infection. How can someone who loves you, do that to you? The answer is that person does not love you. That person loves themselves and not you despite what they say or try to justify by displaying affection to you.
I don’t see how this relationship can move forward. I don’t see why you would want it to move forward after all the deceit. This wasn’t a secret that was kept from you for a day, a month, or a year. It was kept from you for years. You have been in this relationship that may have very well ended or perhaps improved at the time if you only knew the truth. But he did not give you the chance to learn the truth. He kept it from you and wasted all these years of your life.
How different would your life be if you knew the truth? He cheated you out of those years in your life where you could’ve grown from this or found someone who can be honest with you. The question is, how many more years are you willing to waste?
Always here,
Jasmine
