My boyfriend of 6 years told me that for the past 2 years he has been hiding the fact that he was paying one of our mutual friends for pictures. He says the last time he did this was two years ago and hasn’t spoke to her since. He said he was reaching out to her to check in recently and noticed that she had saved a message he sent to her and started to panic thinking she was going to use this as “blackmail” against him so that is when he decided to come clean. This is not the first time he’s paid women for pictures, and he says at first it just started off as a way to help her out while she was going through a tough time. But if you’re helping a friend, you just help them. You don’t ask for something in return. It bothers me more that we just moved in together, signed a lease together so we are both finically responsible, and decided to drop this truth bomb on me 2 weeks after moving in. He said he’s been feeling really guilty about it for the past two years and that is why our intimacy has been “lacking”. Which is funny cause he’s made excuse after excuse for that rather than tell the truth.
The problem here is it’s not the first time he’s lied to me about something like this. I’ve caught him buying pictures from other women, being a creep on Instagram, as well as spending hundreds of dollars a month on OF (which I wouldn’t have had a huge problem with if I wasn’t being neglected in that area of our relationship). His excuse for that one was he wanted to see how it worked cause I made a joke about starting one.
I don’t know what to do. He swears that his is really ready now to start our life together. Marriage, kids, ect. It’s only taken him 6 years of acting a fool and me sitting back patiently letting him figure things out. I just feel numb, I didn’t even yell. I was almost not surprised that this happened at this point I’m almost used to it.
He seems genuine this time around that it will never happen again, that he hasn’t done anything like that since but the guilt was eating him up now that we are actually moving forward in our relationship. I just don’t know if I believe him enough to try for the hundredth time to forgive him. I still love him, that’s the part that hurts the most. If I didn’t still love him this would be easy, but I just don’t know what to do. I can’t talk to friends or family about this because I know they will judge me and think I’m pathetic for staying and I don’t want them going after him either (I have a pretty protective older brother). But we just finally moved into our own place after living with his parents for the past few years. I feel like this could be the opportunity for a fresh start but I can’t sleep. We have a spare bed in my office I could use, but I just feel like that might cause the beginning of the end for us. How can I move forward with this without completely destroying my life?
TL;DR My boyfriend lied to me about buying pics from a mutual and finally confessed after we moved in together on our own and now wants to take our relationship seriously.