SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I recently found out 3 weeks ago that my boyfriend was sending nudes to someone on snapchat because he had saved the photos on his my eyes only. I confronted him and was told that he sent these to two of his guy friends because he believes that they may be gay and didn't really give much of a reason other than "he was trying to be supportive", and he also shared that at the beginning stage of our relationship he was exchanging nudes with a female as well He claims to be straight and I in no way care what gender or what he may he attracted to, I told him that it was all infidelity to me. We made up and were doing okay that week until I went through his phone while he was sleeping and found more things. I found screenshots of women on tiktok with nice bodies, two cashapp transactions which turned out to be him subscribing to women's snapchat premiums, and a text conversation with a girl and a FaceTime call that he says his sister in law had been trying to set him up with that he confessed to having hooked up with once.

A little clarification on the timeline, I asked this man to have the DTR talk with me 3 months into dating because I was serious about being with him. We've been together for almost 2 years now, we are both each other's first serious and long term relationship. We had a serious talk about how his job requires him to move, and in October he asked me to join him in moving across the U.S. for his job in November. This man hooked up with the girl in September of 2020.

Since all of this came to light, our communication has improved quite a lot as we now have no secrets (I showed him every interaction I had on my phone rejecting men and only talking to friends and family on every app he used to betray me), we've been working on rebuilding our relationship with God since we are both religious and just have been lost for a bit, he has been open to answering every question I have and has been working on prioritizing me and the emotions I've been dealing with by leaving work early, removing contacts in his phone and social media, he's been much more helpful around the house with chores and cooking, he's written me a poem, set up an appointment to begin couples therapy, he's also been much more attentive to purchase things I mention wanting or setting up appointments for me to get my hair done, etc. I see the remorse he feels for the pain that he's caused me, and I notice everything he is doing to show me that he wants me as his life partner and is willing to give me space when I need it, and has offered to let me take out any anger on him. I'm struggling so much with getting the image of him being with someone else, and I don't know how to feel, I wish I knew why this happened but he hasn't given me a reason other than him being under the influence and giving into the flesh. Is there anyone out there that has experienced something similar? Is it worth giving someone another chance? Does anyone have any advice on how to cope with this sort of pain? I can't reach out to my friends and family because I don't want to deal with the anger or hatred that this could cause them to feel toward him, and because I have no one to talk to at this point besides him and God I tend to feel very alone.

Although a noble thought:

and I in no way care what gender or what he may he attracted to,

then you should care. If he’s gay there is not really a realistic reason to continue with this relationship.

Is he gay? I don’t know, but for me – the typical straight male guy – sending nude selfies to gay friends is at the very least extremely strange emotional support. To me its sexual, plain and simple, and if in an allegedly monogamous relationship then a serious breach of expectations.

Couples therapy is great, but it wasn’t an issue between him and you that made him think sexting with other people was such a hot idea. I think the key issue is for your BF to come to grasp with his sexuality – be it straight, gay, bi – or realize if hes dealing with some internal issues like low validation, self-esteem or sexual addiction.

Should you stay? The easy and sensible answer is no. But if you do then put some serious thought into the above.

I stopped reading at "boyfriend cheated" frankly.

There are about 200,000,000 men in the US of A, probably 5,000,000 that are within dating age range, of which out of those, maybe 4,000,000 that won't cheat on you, and you won't have memories or concerns in your mind for the rest of your life as you likely will with your current boyfriend.

Give him another chance to do right, sure, but with someone else. Same for you. Live and learn.

Sending strength!

It might be a little too materialistic or practical to some here, but my opinion is that reconciliation, which is a 2-5 year process, is only worthwhile if there are significant outside reasons to repair the relationship.

Kids, shared house, shared business, enmeshed plans and goals that need significant disentanglement.

I didn't see you mention any of those. For that alone, I would advise you just find someone better than him.

He cheated with essentially no outside influence early in your relationship. How will he behave when life gets hard? When you have a kid and can't give him as much attention? When a parent dies and at least one of you is grieving?

Dating is a test drive, and in my opinion he has failed spectacularly.

Your BF regrets getting caught and what that did to your relationship. I wouldn't stretch that to being truly remorseful for what he did to you. Many BS do, and it's not reality. Even if he is remorseful, that doesn't mean he will not do it again.

Since he failed so soon in your relationship, he's very, very likely to betray you again. He hooked up with someone a month before and still asked you to move across the US with him. Does that sound like someone you can truly trust with your heart?

You've been dating 2 years. Betrayal recovery takes 2-5 years and is an iffy proposition. As HouseOfPlane said, your best course of action is to move on, heal, and find someone worthy of you. Your BF is not and is unlikely to ever become someone worthy of your trust.

I'm going to be extremely blunt here, because I am short on time, and think you need to hear this.

HE NEED THERAPY. IT NEEDS TO NOT BE FAITH BASED.

He needs to seriously explore his feelings on being gay or not. The whole sending nudes to guys story is complete bullshit. If he is gay then you are working really hard at something that you cannot fix, heal, or rebuild from. That should be the first and foremost thing to do for both of you.

He has to figure out his real why's not under the influence, excuse, not drawn by the sins of flesh excuses, but really digging into what her wants, and why he chose to betray you when you were planning to move cross country to be with him.

He has a lot of work to do.

Should you stay? No. You should not. This only gets more complicated from here. When you are in a relationship, and it's young and new, there should be absolutely no desire to cheat. He did. You deserve better.

You should also get yourself into therapy to help yourself heal from this trauma. This is a very real trauma, and if you don't take the time to heal yourself you will continue to choose poorly with men that treat you like an option, and think they can lie to you.

Get strong. If he is truly committed he will come back to you after he does the work. But let him do the work.

Make sure there's an affair in there for real before you enact capital punishment on this relationship.

After that it's a question of what is hurt and infidelity worth trading for. If you have little of your life's commitments tied up in this thing, I'd consider capital punishment to be the correct remedy if there's any kind of A with some other woman (including nude texting).

If there's mostly porn and NO interaction with actual females, then that's a much much lower standard. When they start getting off with actual other people, that should be the end everything if it happens early in the relationship.

One line in your post indicated something about "a hookup". Verify that fact and apply the above. JMHO.

Good Luck.

His excuse about sending nude photos to “gay friends” is just not believable.

It’s just another lie.

He needs to be honest with you and himself. Period. If you don’t at least get that from him this relationship is doomed. He should not pretend he is heterosexual if he’s not. If he’s bi-sexual or gay or whatever - accept it.

Otherwise he will have more problems to face.

Its difficult, but you should dump the BF.

He cheats now, he will most likely cheat after you're married.

Best thing you can do, is to leave now, and find a new BF. Plenty of them out there that hasn't cheated on you.

Don't chance your life with a cheater. Read all the other threads on this board. ITs so much more work, and much more difficult to leave cleanly after you have a house, kids, pets...... YOU get the drift.

You can cut it clean now, and find someone new. His lie about sending nudes to gay dudes, that's either bullshit, or still very scary. What if he's under the closet Gay. How does that help your relationship. As a man, let me tell you one thing. NO fUCKEN way I send nudes to friends b/c I think they may be Gay. That's an absolute no, and I'd suspect 99.9% of men out there feel the same way. So he is basically just lying to you.

The only only ONLY reason to stay with a cheater is because of shared children and shared assets. Dating is a test for marriage - he failed. Cut your losses now and be glad you found out before you really melded your lives together.

Cheaters often squander the gift of forgiveness and reconciliation, especially when it comes with few meaningful consequences.

They often lay low for YEARS before cheating again.

Second and subsequent betrayals often come after children are born and houses are bought, and by then you are even more inextricably bound to your cheater.

I wasted a lot of my youth on the wrong two men, and I can never ever get those years back.

You will never ever forget your boyfriend's betrayals, and deep down you will never ever trust him the way you once did. There are so many men your age just praying to meet a girl like you, who will not betray your trust the way this one did.

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life having your only serious relationship being one in which you were cheated on?

You deserve and can have so much better.

[This message edited by NorCalLost at 4:17 PM, April 15th (Thursday)]

Run. Run fast and run far.

There are plenty of other candidates that are deserving of you. This one is not.

((((Asdfjkl21)))) <-- hugs to you

RUN ! FAST !!

I'm struggling so much with getting the image of him being with someone else, and I don't know how to feel, I wish I knew why this happened but he hasn't given me a reason other than him being under the influence and giving into the flesh.

And he will be under the influence and have flesh available again multiple time in his life. And you will never get that image out of your head. It will be with you forever, but only if you stay with him. It will fade to nothingness if you don't.

He may be a great person in so many ways but not a good mate for life. Sorry. Better now than later! If you read some of the stories here it might make it clearer for you.

Take care, I know it still really hurts.

Oh how I feel for you in this situation.It sounds like you are clinging to the last vestige of your relationship you thought you had that wasn't.I know the pain.Something is trying to shake you awake but you seem to be keeping your eyes shut tightly not wanting to see who.If you rebuild your relationship with this man it won't be the same one.You and the relationship will forever be changed.It will be something different.Something you are going to have to want.He is trying really hard right now to do what is right.Cheating partners usually would do this in the beginning.Later on they usually fall back into the same behaviors because they never truly changed.They try to be what you want them to be however at their core they aren't.Sadly they feel stifled by those who demand a monogamous relationship and become resentful,angry.Just watch to see if this change he is making is genuine or if he is just still the same person pretending to be someone else.The relationship you thought you had never was.I have been in your shoes many a times in my life.The pain is unbearable I know.Don't think that because these people on here seem so blunt that they don't understand what you are going through.We have made the same choices with poor choice partners in our lives and it wreaked havoc.You say you are a faithful person, religious.Have you ever thought that maybe that someone trying to shake you awake is God himself?I remember being 4 months pregnant and praying repeatedly throughout the day. 'Please God...Jesus help my marriage.Make it work.'It didn't happen.The reason? I was praying for the wrong thing.It's like this.When a child so badly wants to do something that is bad for them.Potentially dangerous.That parent won't let them.That child will kick and scream because he wants something so badly that could hurt him but the parent lovingly holds them back.That's God.As soon as I said'God...let me see the truth and accept what must be done.'I had everything laid bare before me.The truth.The damning evidence and I was moved out of there within 24 hours.The swiftest I have ever seen prayers answered are when we pray for the right thing to happen.We can't demand anything we desire from God because we serve God.Not the other way around.God is a loving all being and wants the best for you.I apologize for being so preachy.I am just trying to reach you from a place you will understand better.It sounds like you don't have many people you can confide in.Or is it you are afraid of what those people may tell you? Have you sought IC? Don't know if you have read the abbreviations list but what I mean is individual counseling.I hope you do and find a good one.I think it's difficult to get the answer you need without a little independent soul searching.Sometimes when we do it with the person we love who hurt us it can be a little hazy because it's not about you but them or the relationship.I'm not saying don't work on it.I am trying to lovingly tell you to find your own space and find someone ,a support group separate from your partner to clear your head so you know what is the best decision moving forward from here.I hope you can wake up and know what you need.It has to be about that.You are already trying to tell yourself what that is.Maybe it's time to listen to that voice in the back of your head screaming at you.I wish you the best.

[This message edited by Bonetired at 5:46 AM, April 16th (Friday)]

RUN! If you stay, he absolutley WILL cheat again. Guaranteed. Please don't put yourself through this. He's not mature enough to be in a relationship. You deserve better.

First, you need to care what gender(s) he's attracted to. A woman can make a sexual relationship work with a bi male, but not with a gay male. Your BF needs to know which he is. One key indicator is his level of enjoyment of sex with women - my understanding is that a gay person doesn't get much enjoyment, if any, from heterosexual activity.

The reason he gave for sending nude pics is bizarre, IMO.

If he's bi, you need to figure out if he is willing to be monogamous.

You've found a number of big red flags. They say, 'Go.'

But R is possible if your BF does enough work on himself. That means IC. I agree with tush - not faith-based, unless the faith does not accept the usual fear of homosexuality. I say that because your BF needs to know if he's gay or bi or straight (or poly or pan or non), and it will be easier for him to figure himself out if all variations are accepted.

[This message edited by sisoon at 10:14 AM, April 17th (Saturday)]

The relationship you described sounds exhausting.

You don’t exactly sound sure of whether he is gay or not.

It’s like this two years into the relationship.

What will it be like 5 years from now?

There are issues in even the most healthy relationships but it does not need to be as difficult as this.

Just a little psychological explanation here. You are dealing with a child. For some reason he has never gotten past childhood emotionally. Every man on here and every woman on here is going to tell you they fantasize. A fantasy life can often make sex even more fun but a mature person does not act out at his fantasies with other people. Even though you are not married to him he has committed to you verbally. So he’s cheating. It does not matter whether he touched anyone or not what he is doing is cheating. He has not grown up. You cannot make a long-term monogamous relationship with a child. I cannot stress enough that he is a child emotionally. If he threw out a comment that he was sending nude pictures to gay men and he was really sending them to women he still screwed up. I have gay relatives and they would be so offended by this.

No. Leave. Like, yesterday.

[This message edited by Mene at 1:34 AM, April 18th (Sunday)]