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Confused and scared
Hello. My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years. I caught him cheating on me several times before we reached our 3rd year together. And now we are in a long distance relationship, and I just found out now that he is being bullied as chickboy with his friends on their groupchat and i jumped into a conclusion that maybe he had a fling with his classmate (girl) 1 year ago? Should I still be with him? We are already planning for our future and both our families are in good terms already. He is responsible in many ways and I can feel that he loves and cares for me but I can also feel the fear inside me.
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Dear Confused and Sacred,
I can see that you want to make this relationship work. It sounds like you have invested a lot of time and energy into this. However, this relationship seems to be causing you a lot of mental distress.
Long distance relationships are difficult. Most of them do not turn out. If your partner has issues with loyalty, that will make things even harder. Personally, I think that cheating can be worked through in most instances. I do not think it can be worked through long distance. I would break up.
Best of luck,
Little Owl
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Bear with me, because it wont feel I am answering your question, however I will be the long way around to give you some information first that will help make my answe and that of the other advice giver make sense.
Some people are monogamous and some are not. Serial monogamy is one person ending many relationships to go on the next and the next, not cheating but switching to someone new when they get that itch for something different. Some pretend to be monogamous, that they only want to be with their one person but deep inside, their very nature cries for more different experiences. In this type of person, most are cheating because its done without knowledge or permission. Then there is such a thing as a core relationship but both partners have agree to see others on the side, and yes, there are women like that but not many. Also there is polyamory where something like this takes place but in the latter two situations, each partner has knowledge of, maybe has met and approved of the other loves. It is then not the mentality of another partner better but simply different. These kinds of relationships are very rare. I've personally known people who had open marriages or were polyamorous. Of course, these people were okay with and their partners okay with having multiple lovers at the same time or over time. If you are monogamous, you will never be happy with a person who isn't. The fact he had affairs several times while dating you, proves he is not monogamous. He might be monogamous but is just doing the stupid thing because he can. Often however it goes deeper to a core need deep down or how the person is wired.
So why would a a guy who is not monogamous choose to have a monogamous girlfriend, rather than the female who is open to all sorts of other setups?
Because these other types of women are hard to find and it isn't exactly the easiest subject to bring up. I did ask several women who were polyamorous, how they got started with their boyfriends or husbands. In most cases it was husbands with their wife doing this but it was the wife who proposed the idea to their husband. But as you can see in what I just wrote, the two had to talk about the subject. A guy dating a gal, for whatever reason, maybe he likes some of her traits, or is there for consistent sex when he can't find a hot date for a night, does so because he doesn't even want to think about hunting for a gal who is okay with it.
Your womanly instincts are likely what has you on edge, not able to relax, on the alert due to fear. You don't want to live your life this way. Unless you feel you'd be okay having him as your core relationship, the one you set up house with and you also have other lovers on the side, not just him, its best to not go there if you know you can't do that and let him go. But for you to be sure you've done everything you can, just have a talk with him and bring up the subject of monogamy or dating others. Ask him for the truth to make sure you both are on the same page. He won't likely share the truth for fear of losing you. But the fear may not be because he loves you the way you think he does. A man who is unconditionally in love with a woman, won't ever want, desire or sneak off with another woman. I have a second husband who is like that. I laarned along the way that what I thought was love from the first husband was not even the kind of love I just mentioned which is the only one that truly works where a couple is still in love with each other til their last days on earth. My first husband has impossible to meet conditions that he wanted from me, to pretend he loved me. He never did and admitted that to a counselor near the end of the marriage. He was asked if he was in love with me and dodged the question several times trying to point out lots of made up faults of mine along with one or two things I wasn't good at, but not a fault. When pinned down and asked again and again, he finally admitted after 30 years, he'd never been in love with me...only loved a quality or two of mine, like how good a mother I was to the kids. In reading up on what other psychologists had to say about relationships, love is a strong word and often people use it to describe their reaction to a certaion thing, food, place, etc. I love cheescake, I love gardening, I love sunsets, but the difference between that kind of love which is loving some, not all aspects of a mate, is definitely not the unconditional inlove situation. Why? Because if for some reason we can't have that dessert, or any of the other things, including people we say we love, we would be able to go on easily without it, it wouldn't feel like we lost a part of ourselves. Being in love when its about people, because folks arent in love with things, means that they love without conditions, so no matter how much the outside of you changes over the years, you still are in love with who they are on the inside. This kind of love is so strong that it hurts you to see your partner hurt over something that happened to them and its worse if one finds out they have innocently without knowing, hurt their partners feelings. This is a supportive love, where they are also each others best friend and one who knows them better than anyone else. A love where you want to do special things for each other, bring home gifts, little things like their favorite chips or dessert just because you know how pleased they'd be when they were out, and ran some errands. This is the kind of love where either partner, while acknowledging that a person they might see is eye candy and hot looking, you don't want sex with them because they are not the same as the partner you have, on the inside. So although you may think this guy truly loves you, he doesn't. Affairs and being in love are equations that are total opposites. So I can only know that if he loves you, it is for convenience, or he likes some aspects about you but if you died in a car accident tomorrow, he wouldn't mourn your loss at all or for long and find it too easy to move on and find someone new. I have the kind of love where if something happened to one of us, the other would mourn the loss til the day they died.
If the kind of love he has for you is good enough for you, then stay with him but I'd suggest not having kids with him, only with someone who is in love and with that kind of loves comes the commitment you want. Kids shouldnt grow up seeing two parents who are not in love. That messed up my now adult kids and is affecting how they live their lives.
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If someone cheats multiple times and has a long history of it they aren't going to change. If he loved and cared for you he wouldn't be doing this over and over.You have to ask yourself whether or not you want this happening long term to you. I wouldn't be planning a future with him. I would be planning my exit. As far as the bullying gos be aware of it but stay out of that and don't get sucked in. He has to figure out a way to handle it and it appears if you get involved that things become worse. I don't think this guy is a keeper and I believe that's what you are coming to realize.
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