Long Distance and Cheating

[acp12]

I started dating one of my best friends the summer after freshman year. He moved a month after we started dating, and we stayed official for 3 months after that, but he broke off the relationship.Throughout the past 2 and a half years we’ve been talking on and off. We’ll call each other ‘baby’ and talk on the phone every night and tell each other we love each other and even have skype dates every once in a while. But we aren’t official, he wouldn’t make it official. And he never really gave me a reason as to why. I applied to the University of Texas at Austin, it’s my number one choice school. It is also only an hour away from where he lives in San Antonio, Texas. The plan was that hopefully if I got accepted there we would give an official relationship another shot. But recently, he opened up to me and decided he wanted me to know the ‘real’ him. He’s had sex with over 5 different girls that I didn’t know about in the past year and a half. He said he was sorry, that everything he said to me was real and that when he was talking to me he was being the person he wanted to be, and that he does genuinely love me. He also said the reason he did not want to make our relationship official was because he knew he would cheat on me. He blamed his actions on the distance, and he said that if I was there things would be completley different. I don’t know what to do. Does he really love me? How could he have hurt me in this way if he loved me as much as he says he does? Would it be wrong of me to even consider giving our relationship another shot?

[Anonymous]

DON’T THINK about that guy because of he is actually a cheater.
I can understand that distances matters, but with 5 another girls?
do you think he actually sorry?
he is trying to cheat you.
ONE thing more, next time don’t believe on long distance or chat relation.
JUST CHILL AND FORGOT THAT GUY BECAUSE LIFE NEVER STAY AT ANY LOCATION AND I HOPE YOU WILL HAVE A GOOD RELATION NEXT TIME.

[ThinkingRight]

Sorry, but i have to disagree with alyssa. i don’t think the guy did anything wrong. i’m sorry that your feelings got hurt and your heart was broken acp12, but by your own admission, “[b]h[u]e broke off the relationship[/u][/b]“.

Also, you said for “the past 2 and a half years we’ve been talking on and off”, you had “skype dates [b][u]every once in a while. But we aren’t official, he wouldn’t make it official[/u][/b].”

The guy was not your boyfriend and he was very clear and honest about not wanting a commitment. Just because you wanted an “official”, exclusive relationship doesn’t make it so. I’m sorry… I don’t like to see anyone get hurt, but in my opinion — you hurt yourself by staying involved with a guy that clearly did not want the same thing you did.

He was very honest and direct about what he wanted and what he did not want. I have to say I think he’s done nothing wrong. I do not think someone can be considered a cheater when there is not an exclusive relationship.

[acp12]

But he TOLD me he wasn’t messing around with anyone else. I’d ask him about other girls and he’d tell me they were nothing. So it’s not so much that he did those things, it’s that he told me wasn’t and lied to me about it.

[April Masini]

Here’s the reality check: In 3 years, you only dated for 1 month. 😯 You “stayed official” for another 3 months. I’m not sure what that means, but more importantly, you were apart for over two and a half years. This wasn’t a relationship with a strong foundation to begin with and it sounds like you didn’t really get to know him very well while you were dating for a month in person.

It was a gamble to commit to a man for two and a half years long distance, and it appears that you lost because while you thought this was an exclusive relationship, it wasn’t. 😳 One of the things I talk about in my book, Think & Date Like A Man, is understanding the status of your relationship. Sometimes what he says doesn’t match up with his behavior and in that case, you should always trust his behavior. Bottom line is that if a man wants to be in a relationship with you, he’ll act like it. He’ll take you out and show you off to his friends. He’ll introduce you to his family. He’ll stop hanging out with other singles and start going out in couples. Your boyfriend didn’t do any of those things, from what I can tell. 🙁

In answer to your questions, the reason he hurt you is because he wanted to date women in person more than he wanted a long distance relationship, but he didn’t want to let go of the relationship you had. Maybe if you’d known him better before committing to the two and a half year long distance relationship, you would have understood his character better and known he wasn’t going to be faithful.

I’m not sure if he really loves you like a girlfriend. Certainly lying to you about sleeping with other women isn’t how someone who loves you would behave. 😳 It sounds like while he cares about you, he really wants to explore his dating options in college. While this is hurtful to you, in the bigger picture, it’s normal.

My suggestion is that now that you know his character more fully, unless you’re both going to be in the same city to conduct your relationship, you should probably expect he may want to date other women. Two and a half years is a long time for you to expect a college student to be faithful to someone he only dated in person for one month, years ago.

I hope that helps. Let me know how things go.

And please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url]http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001113133958[/url].

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