Keeping receipts from your partner cheating on you is like keeping a live grenade in your junk drawer. Hanging onto the evidence could be viewed as a form of self-protection, or as a way to remind ourselves not to be fooled again, but it usually ends up acting as a time machine that drags you back into the hurt you’ve worked hard to escape.
This 29-year-old woman and her 31-year-old boyfriend have spent more than three years dating, and overall, it’s been a pretty excellent relationship in her eyes.
But a year into being official, her boyfriend met a girl while out at a bar. He added her on social media and then sent her some super romantic and inappropriate messages for several weeks on end.
She came across the messages six months later after going through her boyfriend’s phone, which resulted in an enormous argument.
She came close to dumping him, but after talking it over, they were able to move past everything. She truly thought she had forgiven him.
“This brings us to now, over two years since it happened, and 1.5 years since I found out. We’ve had some trust issues since, nothing very serious though, and all steeped in past trauma that we have worked through,” she explained.
“I feel like I’m self-sabotaging a bit here, but I stupidly went through these messages again the other day (I found photos of them that I had taken and kept in a hidden folder).”
“And yes, it hurt all over again, but I made a new discovery that hadn’t clicked for me when I first found out that I’m struggling to deal with.”
She checked the dates on a series of extremely detailed messages and pieced together that this all occurred when she was at lunch, informing her family of a scary and horrible medical episode she was struggling with.
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She was flooded with rage all over again, and she realizes it’s hardly fair of her to address this again with her boyfriend when they have tried to keep this firmly in the past so that they can have a future.
Also, their relationship has been amazing since the messages came out. Since she’s so furious once more, she’s not sure how to handle her feelings in a productive way.
Well, I think she’s deluding herself into believing she forgave her boyfriend, because she definitely did not. Forgiveness doesn’t equate to silence, by the way, so because she discovered something new and painful, I think she should bring it up to her boyfriend if she intends to stay with him.
Honestly, I would dump him if I were her, because he not only cheated, but he did it when she was going through a traumatic and vulnerable point with her health, so not only does he lack respect for her, he lacks empathy as well.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
