I also posted this in relationship advice but I really need the extra encouragement and perspective if anyone’s been through a similar experience.
My (21F) boyfriend (24M) cheated on me and lied to me in the beginning, but is now amazing to me. How do I forgive him and move past it?
I, 21f, met my boyfriend, 24m, almost a year ago today due to a shared hobby. We hit it off instantly, and I honestly remember feeling like I had a ‘love-at-first-sight’ moment (corny, I know). Unfortunately, we met while I was just wrapping up my summer break and were only able to talk for a couple weeks before I had to go back to school about two hours away from my hometown. During those couple weeks, we started talking to each other and seeing each other every single day. I don’t know how else to explain it but our personalities just compliment each other really well, and we have a lot of similar interests, so the connection we formed was pretty much instant. We honestly moved fairly quickly, which is something I kind of regret now. Before going back to school. I had asked him if we were exclusive, and offered that if he wanted to be ‘open’/see other people while I was at school then I totally understood. He told me point-blank that he very much wanted to be exclusive with me and I happily agreed. Also, as a side-note, I had met his parents before leaving, so it definitely felt like we were becoming a bit serious, if the hanging out with each other every day wasn’t enough evidence of that. We’d also been intimate with each other at this point.
While I was at school, we continued to text every day and call each other fairly often. We also ended up seeing each other every couple weeks. Eventually, he told me that he loved me, and we were calling each other things like ‘babe,’ ‘baby,’ etc. at this point. He initiated these things, and I became super attached to him very quickly. This is where things started to become a bit rocky. I have borderline personality disorder, which I actually didn’t know at the time, and when I get attached to somebody it can be really rough because I need constant reassurance and ‘small’ things and changes can make me really upset really fast. In short, we had our up’s and down’s, but we loved each other and he gave me constant reassurance and affection every time I felt insecure or upset about something. Fast forward to December break, and we’re hanging out every day again and are super happy to see each other. However, KEEP IN MIND: at this point, he never formally asked me to be his girlfriend, but we were quite literally doing absolutely everything that people in relationships do together. He introduced me to his extended family as ‘his girl,’ so I never questioned my assumption that we were in a relationship. I met a lot of his extended family over the holidays at his family gatherings and parties as well. A small side note is also that he once offhandedly called me his girlfriend when we were joking around about something unrelated, but never mentioned it again after that.
So, as I mentioned before, I have BPD, which tends to heighten my anxieties and insecurities around my relationships, and I also have some lingering trust issues from previous partners. There were times when I would offhandedly ask him if he’s talking to anybody else and he, of course, reassured me that he wasn’t. However, there was this one time where he said something and I got this HORRIBLE nagging feeling that he was lying to me. It was so weird, and way beyond my usual anxieties. I had never checked his phone before this instance, or really felt the need to, even though we’d been together for around 5 or 6 months now, but when he went to bed that night I checked it. I was literally in shock when I found that he’d been texting a girl he knew from highschool for the past month or so and was blatantly flirting with her, and was even about to take her out on a date. I’ll save the details of my emotional distress, but that moment was and still is genuinely traumatizing for me, as you can imagine if you’ve been cheated on. Long story short, he convinced me to give him a second chance. He blocked the girl, and we both figured out things we wanted to work on (namely, he had trauma from his ex cheating on him). That night, I’d texted the girl to let her know what was going on, and around a week or so later she ended up responding to me… and let me know that he unblocked her, said his instagram got hacked, and got her number and they’d been texting the entire time he had me FULLY convinced we were going to try our relationship again. Yes, I understand I am extremely dumb for staying after that. Basically, he lied to the girl and said that we weren’t exclusive, that I loved him more than he loved me (which I was specifically insecure about, so he literally stole that line from me…) and all this other BS. He blamed me for being constantly insecure about things like him liking other girls’ nude pictures, said that we were never actually in a relationship because we never had the boyfriend-girlfriend label, and also somehow blamed his ex for the trauma he gave him since she cheated on him multiple times. Let’s just say it was a huge mess. After that, I went back to school and broke up with him for a little over a month. I saw other people, but there was no way I could emotionally commit to somebody after what had happened so those connections fizzled out. I came home on my spring break and we hit it off again. We talked on and off, and in April we were fully attached to each other again. I still love him so deeply and, despite the shitshow, have never connected with somebody as deeply as I connect with him.
This brings us to the present day. We talked about what went wrong last time, he admitted blame and said he began working through his issues, and wanted to properly try us again. He officially asked me to be his girlfriend, and now posts me on his social media as such, introduces me to his family as such, and our relationship is drastically different in a good way. We both are putting in more effort and are so much better at communicating. The only problem is that I still don’t fully trust him, despite the fact that I love him so much and our relationship feels otherwise perfect. He lets me check his phone whenever I ask and I haven’t found anything to show he’s been disloyal since that moment 6-ish months ago. I still have horrible nightmares about him getting with other girls (although it was never physical, just emotional). I think so much about what would’ve happened and if he would’ve kept lying to me if I didn’t catch him. I keep convincing myself that somehow he’s hiding something more in his phone that I haven’t seen, even though I’ve checked every single app and every single message possible. I’m just constantly waiting for it to happen again because of the fact that he lied to me not once, but TWICE. I feel like I’m never going to forget or be able to move on. We argue at times now because he feels that I haven’t fully forgiven him for what happened, and says that I can’t just check his phone forever. This bothers me even though I know that some part of it is correct. The problem is that I honestly don’t think I have forgiven him fully, because how does one forgive that sort of thing? He lied to me so much during that whole situation and it feels like everything he ever said to me was fake (even though he tells me it wasn’t) and I can’t believe him when he tells me he would never do that to me again. I love him too much to imagine my life without him at this point, and he’s so wonderful to me NOW, but I am so terrified that I’m never going to find a way to move past what happened.
Will I ever be able to forgive him? Does anybody have tips on how to move past cheating/infidelity in this scenario?
TL;DR – My boyfriend was horrible to me a couple months into our relationship (cheated,lied,betrayed my trust). We broke up and found each other again. He’s definitely changed for the better but I still have horrible trust issues, nightmares, anxiety, etc. from his past actions even though I love him deeply and want to forgive him. Is there any way to trust him and salvage the relationship, or should I just give up now?
4 comments
The biggest problem with getting past infidelity is that you need time. You need to rebuild trust, and that takes time.
How much time? Who knows? He’s right that you can’t keep checking his phone indefinitely, but you can’t also definitively say how long it’ll be before you’ll feel comfortable not checking either.
The other issue here though, and one that I feel might make it hard to really commit to him, is that he argues with you about trusting him. He’s the one that messed up here, he’s the one who caused these trust issues. So if he wants to be with you, he needs to be willing to deal with whatever time and energy and actions it’ll take to make you trust him and feel comfortable being with him again. Making you feel pressured about ‘getting over it’ is only going to make you want to try to get things back to ‘normal’ because *he* wants them to, not because of you.
And that leads back to the important part. You’re not going to be able to ‘fake ‘ trust. Even if you ‘act’ the part, there’s going to be that nagging feeling, whether you want to feel it or not. And it’ll itch at you until you can’t stand it anymore and things blow up anyways.
So the best thing to do is confront them head on and try to work past them. But that requires that he’s willing to continue working on earning that trust, no matter how hard it’ll be and how long it’ll take. If he’s not willing to invest that tiny and energy then, as hard as it might be, it’ll be better to move on.
The reason you can’t get over it is because he lied right to your face after causing you to trust him and rely on him. If he truly wanted this to work he wouldn’t say a damn thing about you looking at his phone or feeling insecure. He would patiently wait until he had actually earned your trust back.
Having BPD doesn’t mean that your feelings aren’t normal or reasonable. Anyone would lose their trust after something like that.
If you cant get that trust back this relationship will not work. However, you are right to be wary of him – your mistrust is not out of nowhere. The fact is, you dont know that more didn’t happen and you never will, because he will not tell you.
I personally dont think that you need to get past it or forgive it. He showed you how he is. If you can’t get over it, that is understandable. You may love him a lot, but he ruined it. That was his choice.
“(namely, he had trauma from his ex cheating on him)”
Sure she did.
“He blamed me for being constantly insecure about things like him liking other girls’ nude pictures”
Yeah most women wouldn’t be ok with that. I wonder what other bullsht he fed you.
You don’t trust him because there’s no reason to trust him. No wonder the other connections fizzled out – all this time you’ve been hanging on to hope that he will change and come to you for forgiveness and all will be well.
And now just few months later he’s already annoyed that you don’t trust him.
How is your self esteem? Self respect? What do you really want from a relationship? Is this it?
Anyway as long as you keep convincing yourself that he’s amazing and you’ll never meet anyone who will be so good to you, you won’t be able to find someone who is *actually* good and trustworthy. You’re only 21, on logical level you must know that you’ll meet plenty of men that you’ll click with, also ones that would never lie to you. You just need to raise your standards.
He lied to you and he was playing mind games after he got caught [gaslighting you/trying to make you believe in a different reality, by saying you were exclusive but not gf and bf -they are the same thing].
You can’t trust what he says. How do you know he is not lying now? He pulled it off before and tried to gaslight you.
Throw away the whole man.