TLDR: She drunk cheated and I don’t know if Its deeper than she describes.
Some background info: I’ve always been a pretty confident person. I have never struggled with confidence issues before this, and have had success with women. We’ve been dating for 6 months, talking for 9. This is my second serious relationship (the previous one being 4 years and ending at 17.) The relationship is long distance. She lives in Wisconsin and me in Florida. I travel for work and she is a junior in college. My job flys me state to state and I live with her in her apartment for 5-10 days out of the month.
Around 2 weeks ago, she confessed to cheating on me with her coworker [19F.] For context, she’s been going through an extremely stressful and busy time with personal family issues, and it is the end of the college semester. She brought it up around a week after it happened because she couldn’t handle the guilt. Essentially, they had planned to drink a fifth of Jack Daniels between the two of them. Late into the night, they were sharing sexual trauma with each other (recounting rape, other heavy topics) and one thing led to another, and they started kissing. She told me the entire interaction lasted around 10–15 minutes, she completely disassociated (she dissociates relatively often) and she was not pleased in any way. She only ended up fingering her coworker, and stopped when they both began to cry. They then threw up immediately after from the alcohol. It’s worth mentioning that she was extremely transparent about this whole event. She told me about the plan to drink with her days prior, even texted me several times that night and sent me a video of them together before they started getting really drunk. She stopped texting at around 2am, the cheating happened around 4.
We had many very long discussions about that, and I decided to try and reconcile because there was no emotional attachment in the cheating, and she didn’t do it for pleasure. She agreed to stop drinking (a problem for her) and she promised that she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. She seemed genuinely ashamed and upset with herself. I honestly believe her recount of the story, ( we are religious and she made a solemn promise that she was telling the truth.)
Now the problem that I’m facing is that I can’t get the idea out of my head that she doesn’t respect me at all as a person because she cheated on me at a time when nothing was wrong in our relationship at all. Now there have been a myriad of issues I’ve dealt with since then. I didn’t want to go full surveillance on her because I thought that would have only worsened the issues between us, but I find myself not trusting her. When she went to study with a friend, I asked if she had done anything with him. When she went out a couple of nights ago for karaoke, I couldn’t help but confirm with her that she hadn’t drank, even though she had already told me twice before that she wasn’t going to.
I look at myself in the mirror and I begin to wonder what it is (or isn’t) about me that made her feel like cheating. I’ve discussed this with her on multiple occasions, and every time she apologizes and tells me that she feels terrible for affecting my confidence, it had nothing to do with me at all and that she was completely disassociated from reality and too heavily under the influence to make a good decision. I can tell she regrets her decision, but I don’t know whether it’s because she ruined something good or because she thought she could handle the guilt. I love this girl so much. I have the burning desire to be with her and my life has improved drastically since I began talking to her, but I’m worried that this instance of cheating and my lack of confidence or the ability to regain it will affect the overall healthiness our relationship has had thus far.
Does her behavior suggest something that I’m not seeing?
Comments
Welcome to /r/relationship_advice. Please make sure you read our rules here. We’d like to take this time to remind users that:
We do not allow any type of am I the asshole? or situations/content involving minors
We do not allow users to privately message other users based on their posts here. Users found to be engaging in this conduct will be banned. We highly encourage OP to turn off the ability to be privately messaged in their settings.
Any sort of namecalling, insults,etc will result in the comment being removed and the user being banned. (Including but not limited to: slut, bitch, whore, for the streets, etc. It does not matter to whom you are referring.)
ALL advice given must be good, ethical advice. Joke advice or advice that is conspiratorial or just plain terrible will be removed, and users my be subject to a ban.
No referencing hateful subreddits and/or their rhetoric. Examples include, but is not limited to: red/blue/black/purplepill, PUA, FDS, MGTOW, etc. This includes, but is not limited to, referring to people as alpha/beta, calling yourself or users “friend-zoned”, referring to people as Chads, Tyrones, or Staceys, pick-me’s, or pornsick. Any infractions of this rule will result in a ban. This is not an all-inclusive list.
All bans in this subreddit are permanent. You don’t get a free pass.
Anyone found to be directly messaging users for any reason whatsoever will be banned.
What we cannot give advice on: rants, unsolicited advice, medical conditions/advice, mental illness, letters to an ex, “body counts” or number of sexual partners, legal problems, financial problems, situations involving minors, and/or abuse (violence, sexual, emotional etc). All of these will be removed and locked. This is not an all-inclusive list.
If you have any questions, please message the mods
This is an automatic comment that appears on all posts. This comment does not necessarily mean your post violates any rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Oh man. You’re going to get all kinds of responses from “dump her!” (Probably the majority given this subs crowd) to “Dude, that’s so hot!” You guys are young. Don’t think of her as “the one.” Think of her as the one you’re going to learn about yourself from. Maybe she develops into “the one” but for now, she’s not. Given that she’s the one you’re going to experiment with and learn about yourself from – do you forgive her? Could you see how this was just a mistake and won’t happen again? Or do you see this as something you can’t/shouldn’t get past? You’re both so young and so now is the time for relationship mistakes (when you’re not serious, serious). What does your gut tell you? Think about it. Go with how it guides you.
You lost your confidence because you lost your self respect. Get a new gal
From what I’ve experienced and I was 9 years together with my first love – I was the empath who always forgave her – Dont make the same mistakes I did and LEAVE. This will always be on your mind from now on and it will NEVER go away. Trust me on that.
I’d leave over this. You now know she’s a cheater. She sure tried giving excuses as to why. She still chose to be a cheater.
You need trust to make LDRs work. Now that it’s gone, that feeling of distrust and constant betrayal panic during everyday life is just going to eat you up and turn you into a terrible version of yourself. Ask me how I know.
The truth is you are way too young to make it work when one of you has already openly cheated physically. You want to live years like this?? Worrying yourself sick all day and night wondering if she “disassociated” again today or if she would even tell you? Super unhealthy, man. I wish I had left the it-got-weird-LRD I was in at your age way sooner, we were just too young and I was too stubborn to accept she wasn’t my forever until she was literally just openly hurting me.
You deserve better and trust me at your age you’ve got a long road ahead of you. Walk it with someone who doesn’t need to make excuses for why they hurt you.