Dear Miss U,
My specific question is should I stay with her?
We were together very lovingly every day for 9 months then LDR started (military). I have seen her twice for a total of a month and a half over the last three months and I paid for the plane tickets both times she flew because she is still broke in school. She had military training herself and while gone to that she drunkenly made out with another man and then slept in his bed. I found out by seeing a conversation on her phone of her ending any possibility with that guy. Normally I would have ceased everything right away, but I found out the morning after I picked her up from the airport. So she stayed for a month because we didn’t have the money to fly her home early.
She just left a couple of days ago and the time we spent here together was great except for that backdrop. The problem is we both love each other and now I won’t see her until Nov. or Dec. She feels horrible and cried a lot while here and I do believe she loves me, but she is so afraid I will break up with her. Plus, she has no plans to follow me in my career (we talked about it heavily).
The thing is we both want to stay a couple but I feel like I let her walk all over me because there was no real consequence for her action.
There was no break up and reunification. She was sorta promiscuous before me only when she got extremely drunk. The scar is still there but we just want it to work. I don’t trust her, should I stay?
~ LDR Trouble to the Max
Dear Max,
It’s a pretty sad state of affairs if you expect some random stranger to decide the fate of your relationship, and I’m not going to do that. The only people who can make those decisions are you and her. What I can say however is that there is no punishments in romantic relationships. You’re her boyfriend, not her dad. You don’t have to break up and get back together for her to know her actions were serious. Breaking up with someone is not the adult relationship version of sitting in the naughty corner. When you break up, it’s because you’re done. You don’t break up to get back together to prove a point. That’s childish, aight?
Now with the cheating, she followed up with him and ended any hope he might have had for something between them, so that’s got to count for something. She might have made a stupid mistake, but at least she’s not the ongoing affair type. Conversely, “I was drunk” is not an excuse for cheating. Or anything other than falling down. I have never been so under the influence of any substance that I forgot for a moment that I’m committed to someone else and I call bullshit on anyone who claims that is the case for them or declares they didn’t know what they were doing. She has admitted to being promiscuous before getting together with you (and good on her, it’s about time women could play like men) and blames alcohol for that as well. What that boils down to is: she’s aware her lowered inhibitions often land her in the bedroom when drunk and yet she still chooses to go drinking anyway. In my opinion she needs to be honest with both herself and you and admit that this is a self-control issue.
Most people will tell you that a relationship can’t survive without trust, and in the long term that is true. But it’s ok to go without it for a little while, giving time and her continued good behaviour a chance to repair that damage. If six months from now you’re no closer to trusting her than you are today though, moving on is your best option. Some people never get over infidelity. If you’re one of those people, and you’re going to hold this against her forever, then there is no point in persisting.
Right now your relationship is still pretty new so I’m not surprised she doesn’t want to commit to following you around in your career. That is a lot to ask of anyone, after all, and she likely has her own career and family dreams that may not lend themselves to that. As your relationship deepens, she may change her mind on this. Or she may not. Right now, it doesn’t hurt either of you to continue a relationship you’re mostly happy with and see how it develops. You can call it quits at any time down the track, but if you do it now and regret it, you’ll only be reinstating an even-more-damaged relationship, so don’t break up until you’re sure it’s over.
Dear Miss U,
I have been with my boyfriend for almost three years now and at first it was great! We used to live in the same city and see each other almost every day and it was perfect! About three months ago I left the city and we decided to still be together and when he finished college we would get back, but I went for a visit about 2 weeks ago and his friend said he was with another girl but nobody else knew about his new relationship. Now I don’t know who I should trust! This week he has sent a lot of text messages but just by the fact that his friend told me that he was cheating makes me doubt. How do I know if he is cheating or not if we are far away?
~ Bella
Dear Bella,
You don’t know. Even when a couple lives in near proximity, you never know if your partner is cheating. You just have to hope your intuition tells you something is amiss, or someone is kind enough to break the bad news to you. You’ve been together long enough that I’m assuming you’re friends with some of his mates, and that is why this friend of his has mentioned him cheating. Because it’s a little strange for a friend to rat out on another guy, if that’s not the reason. Generally speaking the person not in the relationship is afraid that the person being cheated on will think they are lying and they will have betrayed their friend for nothing.
With that said, perhaps his friend is reading more into his friendship with this other girl than is actually there. Does your boyfriend often have female friends? Has he mentioned hanging out with a new friend recently and neglected to mention her gender? Does his friend have any reason to lie to you about this?
Without hiring a private investigator, you’re not going to know for sure. No matter how many times you Google “What are the signs of cheating?” irrefutable proof will not magically appear. All you can do is talk to your boyfriend and see how it goes or write his mate off as a liar and put it out of your mind.
