My boyfriend (32M) goes out drinking without me, and recently went overboard and made bad decisions. Am I (38M) being gaslit?

I’m a commercial airline pilot, and am away quite a bit. I’ve been with my partner for 5 years. He is the first, and only, long term relationship I have been in since coming out. We’ve lived together for the past 3 yrs, and share 2 cats. I’m away quite a bit, and he works from home. He’s generally a homebody, but between working from home and me being away, I think a combination of cabin fever and loneliness eventually leads to him wanting to go out when I’m working. Initially it’d be with common friends, but then he’d often stay out after either I, and/or they, have gone home. I trusted him, and because of this also didn’t want him to feel kept, especially since we there is an uneven power dynamic given our different incomes. This had occasionally led to some questionable issues in the past. For example, we have a ring camera, which I get alerts on. One time when I was away, I could see he had brought home someone. My alarm led to confusion as I later saw this person step out a few minutes later, and then attempt to re-enter only to find the door was locked, and this person sleeping on the porch before leaving in an uber. He later explained that this person had been at a party a block away and was drunk, and he wanted to let him crash on the couch. This is completely credible because he knows we both have access to the camera, and he has shown the same concern when he sees overserved strangers at the gay bars and tries to either guide them to their friends to take care of them, or put them in ubers home. Ultimately it was a story we laughed about and told our friends. As time has passed, though he has tended to stay out later and later, sometimes until the early morning hours, and after my teasing about noting how late he stays out, on occasion he’s deactivated the cameras so I don’t know what time he’s gotten home. He’ll occasionally pull back from drinking when we talk about how it’s becoming a problem, but then every time we’re out he seems miserable drinking water and eventually the cycle returns.

Recently, after I called it an early night because I needed to work the next day, he decided to stay out with a friend. I woke up the next morning and he wasn’t home. I rationalized this by saying he probably crashed on said friend’s couch. I then checked my phone and saw a Facebook messenger from a bartender friend saying to pick him up. I texted and asked that person if he was crashing on his couch, and he said he meant to pick him up at the bar at the time he texted because he was getting physical with people and they were getting uncomfortable. Then I called the friend who he had stayed out with and he said he had one drink and had gone home an hour later. I had to head to the airport and later saw him get home an hour later. He later said he had awakened, fully clothed, on a strangers couch in a high rise apartment near the Magnificent Mile, and promptly left. He had also lost his cellphone. He seemed distressed and told me he though he was roofied.

Aside from his unhealthy relationship with alcohol, I’m struggling to balance my anger and sense of betrayal with the fact that I believe him when he says this is a sentinel event, a one time moment of excess where bad decisions were made. He is genuinely remorseful and upset. I want to trust him when he says he doesn’t remember his inappropriate behavior with other men, that it wasn’t intentional, and that also nothing happened with the person whose cough he woke up on – that perhaps this was a good samaritan who, like he did before, take care of a stranger at the bar who was alone and vulnerable. But I also have a nagging in the back of my head. In perhaps jealous moments, he has often made joking insinuations that I “must” be hooking up with random men when I am in different cities for work. He also makes jokes when we go out, often commenting that I’m dressing like slut (T-shirt and jeans), and when I go to the gym, also making jokes implying I’m cruising for attention. I have brushed off these jokes, mostly because they’re absurd to me, because I’ve never given him reason to not trust me, and mostly because I know, and believe he knows, that I would never be unfaithful because my integrity means too much to me. In fact, these jokes have made me feel guilty about being away so often. But now I wonder if he’s been gaslighting me and projecting his own actions on to me.

What do you guys think? Am I being gaslit?