My Boyfriend (22M) Cheated On Me (19F) Online And I Feel Lost
I (19F) have known my boyfriend (22M) for four years, and we’ve been together for about five-six months. Early on in the relationship, he told me that he engaged in erotic roleplaying with people online. I told him I didn’t feel comfortable with him talking to others in a sexual or romantic way, roleplaying or otherwise. He said he wouldn’t continue to do it, and we moved on.
Fast forward to this past week, and after some suspicious behavior on his end, I decided to check his phone. I have apologized for this and do recognize it was wrong of me to do so. When I checked his phone, I found numerous different girls he was messaging and erotically role playing with. One he had exchanged nudes with prior to us dating, and was continuing to sexually roleplay with and talk to romantically.
When I confronted him about the issue, he broke down and promised to delete it all. At the current moment, I’ve agreed to stay on the condition that he no longer engages in that activity. However, I feel like my trust is completely broken… especially since I had already established the boundary before and he still violated it.
I’m trying not to engage in toxic behaviors like checking his phone (I haven’t done so since that night), or continuously bringing it up. I’m on the fence between wanting to rebuild my trust and make sure he’s not doing it again, and breaking up with him. I’d love advice on how to either work on my trust in him, or break up with him.
TL;DR! My boyfriend (22M) cheated on me online and I (19F) don’t know how to trust him again or if I should just break things off.
4 comments
Checking his phone without his permission is wrong, as you are aware. But he is a cheater trying to regain your trust, so he should be freely letting you check his phone with his knowledge and his consent when you want to. Obviously, don’t abuse this power to pry into something that seems clearly unrelated, but you should talk to him about that. I would also ask why he agreed to be with you, when he was clearly planning to cheat on you. I’d want to understand what he was thinking.
It’s only been a few months and he’s cheated already?
It’s like he didn’t even try to be faithful.
Is that what you want to have in the back of your mind all the time?
You guys were friends before, maybe you should go back to that before you get in too deep.
And of course, don’t snoop. If your gut is telling you something is off, trust it and confront him.
a few months, you’re only 19, only sorry he got caught not sorry he did it.
Why are you wasting your youth on this bullshit?
He cheated after only a few months? Dump him.