Dear Miss U,
I am from India. Me and my other half have been dating for over five years, things were always good between us until we had to start a long distance relationship.
When, recently, I checked one of his social networks, I found that he had been chatting with random stranger girls until 3 AM. He would ask them for their numbers, would ask them if they were single, call them names that were meant to be only for me(well that’s what he said that he only used them for me, and it really meant a lot to me).
HE would tell those girls that he thinks his relation is going to be over, although he came down 72 miles to meet me and celebrate our 5th anniversary in May this year.
I don’t know what to make out of it, it’s not like he does not care about me. . . but when I asked him yesterday whether he wanted to be in a relationship with me anymore, he said that he needed time, What am I supposed to understand from that? Since it was him who was almost cheating over me, how can he ask for time????
I need your advice really to tell me if I am over reacting(like he said) or was he really on the process of cheating; Should I trust him with my heart??
Because lately, I can’t concentrate anywhere, and I need someone to tell me, show me what could be the solution for this blasphemy.
Help me Please.
Suffering
Dear Suffering,
You’re not over-reacting, and any guy who will betray you and then turn it around to try and make you look bad is not someone worth wasting your time on.
He might care about you, yes. He might realise that you’re a great girl and worth hanging onto. But he doesn’t respect you enough to be honest with you, and without respect the relationship is not worth having. It’s entirely possible that he cares about you, but not enough to be faithful. Usually I’m all about forgiveness, but this is multiple offenses. This is him deliberately misleading other women (and us women need to be sticking together and protecting each other from men like this!) This is premeditated – deliberate – groundwork for greater betrayals to come. If you forgive this, if you buy into the idea that you have done something wrong and he needs time and your consideration, then you show him that you are a fool and that it’s alright for him to treat you and other women like play things.
I would urge you to take a stand and move on. I know that will be incredibly hard and painful after five dedicated years, but he isn’t worthy of another breath of your precious life.
Dear Miss U,
I have lived in England the majority of my childhood until I moved to Australia last year when i was 15. It was a huge move and was extremely hard and my boyfriend has been there for me through it all. I have been with the same guy for two years and the majority of our relationship has been long distance as i moved here after 7 months together (May 2014).
We booked his flights to come over here about 7 months ago (Feb 2015). He is supposed to be coming here for christmas and new year for 2 weeks, which is still 3 months away and i haven’t seen him for 8 months. He is so good to me and he has done nothing wrong, I just don’t know what I want anymore because it is getting to the point where I’m bored of waiting and nothing exciting is happening and I have seen myself lose so much interest in our relationship. I don’t put in effort anymore and the worst bit is, I think I have found somebody else who I have started to develop feelings for. I don’t know whether it is because he is physically there to kiss, hug etc but there is something there.
All I ask is, is there any point in trying to invest in this new relationship and finish things after two years of great memories? Should I tell my boyfriend I have cheated on him and that there is someone new? or would it be stupid to leave him and upset him, his family and my family as they are all pretty close? If it doesn’t work out with this new guy, is there any point in ruining a perfectly good relationship by telling him?
Emma
Dear Emma,
Cheating is wrong. You owe your boyfriend better, and you owe this new guy better too. If you’re going to have successful adult relationships you need to be 100% committed to making them work.
In the beginning of a relationship love is amazing. Some perfect blend of chemistry and hormones and magic that doesn’t last (How exhausting would it be if it did though?) During that first rush of love you discover all the reasons you are perfect for each other, and you store up a lot of wonderful memories that you will fall back on to get you through the hard times. Then when you come back down off that high and remember you are not only a person in love but an individual too, your partner stops being the main focus of your world and becomes instead a solid part of your life. A strong pillar beside you, rather than a bright all-consuming flame in front of you. And when that happens it can and does get boring. There comes a time in every relationship where love becomes a choice rather than a crazy chemical magic. (The magic still flares up from time to time, don’t despair, but it doesn’t sustain the relationship long term.)
With that said then, you have two choices. You can choose to love now, which would mean putting in the effort and focus to make your relationship with your boyfriend the best it can be; including cutting this other guy out of your life (because that’s often what it takes to save a relationship. You remove yourself from temptation. You cut out from your life those things that threaten your relationship.) Or you can break up with your boyfriend and date this new guy and in a couple of years you can face this choice again – to choose to love, or to keep looking for someone you want to make that choice for.
I can’t tell you which one to go for, but I can tell you that long term happiness in a relationship is largely dependent on what you yourself bring to the table. It is work, don’t think for a moment that it isn’t.
When it comes to choosing, I’d make lists for both guys. Write down the pros and cons. Think both short term and long term, and go with the logical choice. Following your heart makes for beautiful movies, but I don’t rate it for real life seeming inevitably you will have to choose to love someone at some point or you’ll have an endless succession of short relationships.
As to whether you should tell your boyfriend that you’ve been cheating on him, I’m going to go with no. If you break up with him, tell him you’re bored and that you can’t handle the slow-paced progression that is common in LDRs; even go as far to tell him that you want to start dating other people. But don’t release him back into the wild dating world damaged by the knowledge that you cheated on him, because all that does is ruin his self-esteem and give him insecurities that his next girlfriend will have to deal with. It does him no good to know you were unfaithful, all it does is make you feel less of the burden that you deserve to carry in its entirety.
If you don’t break up with him, I still would recommend either not telling him, or waiting a very long time to do so. Long enough that you’ve already proven 100 times over that you’ve changed, that you are trustworthy and that this guy is a figure of your past only, not a current threat. If you stay with your boyfriend use your guilt as a motivator to treat him like a king. Take this horrible thing and turn it into something positive for your relationship. I wouldn’t recommend further damaging the relationship just to make yourself feel better, especially not at a time when you would be trying your hardest to salvage it.
