Confessed to Cheating with Strangers

[lovebug89]

My boyfriend and I are college students who have been together for four years. In the beginning of our relationship, I wasn't looking for anything too serious, but we fell in love. My boyfriend had firm beliefs that cheating is wrong...we always agreed that we wouldn't cheat on each other, and if one of us felt like we were going to cheat then we would break up with each other first.

 

The past four years have been the best of my life. I've been in relationships before, but we truly became best friends. My boyfriend also chose to abstain from any sort of sexual activity until he fell in love, so I was his first everything (even kissing.) We have an adventurous sex life, and though we go to different schools, we have sex whenever we are in a bed! (about once or twice a week) When an issue came up in our relationship, we were very good communicators...and we can't go a whole day without communicating and working things out. I always felt like the luckiest girl in the universe, and I trusted my boyfriend whole-heartedly.

 

The past couple of days, my boyfriend had been feeling sick. He's been throwing up, and when I called him yesterday, he started crying. He hasn't cried since he was in grade school, so I knew something was very wrong. He immediately came over and confessed to me that earlier in the week he had visited a massage parlor near his school to have a full-service massage (with sex.) He said that he looked it up on the internet, and he found a place. After the lady asked him if he had heard of the place, he said yes and she proceeded to take off her clothes in front of him. She asked him to get more comfortable and take off his boxers, and he did. She wanted to give him a blowjob, but he refused and instead she gave him a handjob. Then she asked if he wanted sex, and he said yes. Once she got on top of him and he was inside of her, he pulled her off and said no, so she finished by giving him a handjob and he left. I was in complete shock and disgust because he had never had the slightest indiscretion (that I knew of), but he told me more and it made complete sense. He told me that when I was out of the country in the summer of 2008, he went to a strip club with his friends a few times, even though he knows that I am completely against strip clubs. Eventually, on the weekends, he started going alone. He said that when he was with his friends, he would buy lap dances, but when he was alone, he would just go in and watch the girls dance. He said that every time he went alone he felt like a complete idiot and a loser, but for some reason he still kept going. One of these times, the strippers at his friend's Bachelor party gave him a handjob. It got to the point where last weekend, he went to the strip club three times in one weekend...twice alone and once with a friend, and he confessed to me that he felt addicted to going to these establishments.

 

He told me that after visiting the parlor, he was sickened by how much he was hurting me. He told me that he visited these places because he felt scared of committing to me because many people our age, especially his friends, are single and not serious with anyone. After the indiscretion at the parlor that went too far...he realized that he wanted to get married to me and have kids once we were out of school, and that he couldn't live with himself if he had hid that from the love of his life. He said that he wanted to look back and say that he had made mistakes in our past, and that he knew it would take a long, long time to regain my trust, but that he had never cheated on me from this day forward.

 

I am completely torn...I love him so much, but I am in so much pain. I am glad that he was honest and told me this all on his own and came clean about everything...but how do I move on when I can hardly sleep at night thinking about his mistakes, and I know that he had lied to me in the past when he visited clubs and said he was somewhere else? It hurts so much, but when I dream of my future, he is the man that I see at the end of the aisle...he is the man that I see caring for my children. I will always love him. He has decided and promised that he will never ever visit a strip club, massage parlor, or cheat again because he never wants to lose the best thing he has. He told me that the reason why he kept going back is because it felt different, and he felt wild and brave for being able to do this without me knowing, but that he now knows that what he truly wants is me. He has begged me to please consider staying with him because he will never ever hurt me this way again, and he has also agreed to see a couple's therapist. He said that he would do anything it takes to regain my trust from this experience, and we would be more open to telling each other our desire's to avoid these situations. He also told me that he is having a sit-down with his closest friends and telling them that he doesn't want to visit strip clubs, and to please respect that he had developed an addiction, and never wants to be in that position again.

 

I believe that he is truly sorry because he came forward with all this information on his own...and I would have had no way of knowing otherwise...but I am scared of regret. I am so afraid that I will learn to move on and one day forgive him, and that I will learn to trust him again...only to be hurt once again. Should I stay with him because I love him and he is willing to have a completely open line of communication from this day forward without further indiscretions, or am I doomed to despair? Please help.

[aerogurl87]

He needs professional help first of all and even if he is truly sorry, you need to end things with him and give yourself some space to think. If he's really sorry he will go get some help from a therapist about how to break his addiction to strip clubs and the like. Also if you were having sex one to three times a week I think most men would be happy with that and not need to go to a shady massage parlour for sex. Once is a mistake (with the stripper) but twice with a well thought out plan is not a mistake. So I doubt he's as really sorry as he is angry that his guilt started to eat him up.

[ducknrun]

Wow I am sorry you’re in this position. Most people here I would say will give you the advise to take time apart or separate and there usually right.

 

You’re most likely feeling one way and coming up with reasons to go against it. The way things sound it feels as though you want to leave but you give him excuses such as he told you the truth or he is truly honest.

 

As aerogurl87 said, he didn't just do it once he did it several times. He went to the strip club knowing that you didn't like them. He went to the massage parlor know what he wanted out of there.

 

Do what will make you happy. If your can get forgive him and move past then do it. (That means after you get your trust for him back then you’re not going to be able to check his phone records, look at his back records, and sort through his email). He sounds like he is giving you everything you need to give it a shot but you never know his intentions...