give him another chance?

LegacyUser

Met this guy end of August, I moved to another country and we kept it up long distance since, he's flown out to see me twice so far. I explained before I went that I'd try distance but it doesn't generally work, but cos I felt something special with him, I laid my cards on the table and said straight up I hope this goes somewhere and after telling him what it might be like, with teh distance and the difficulties this creates, he was up for giving it a shot.

So, everything was good - four months, no arguments, he seems a very calm, together, trustworthy guy. He also seemed to be quite keen, talking about future etc.

Problem: he came to visit last weekend and told me that a week prior, whilst drunk in a club, he kissed a girl, once he realised what he was doing, he left and went home. So, I took this quietly, didn't fly off the handle, said ok, give me time to think about it, we talked and slept on it (seperate rooms). next day, things were very awkward, I felt worse and cold and didn't feel like talking much. That evening though we had a long chat and I took his word that it wouldnt happen again, he seemed very upset, withdrawn, quiet and told me this is the first time he's ever cheated on someone, he was extremely drunk, there was nothing behind it (him missing me/unhappy with the relationship/scared of the distance etc)

I told him about an ex that would hurt me emotionally, then make it up after - and I had no desire to get into that cycle again. We hadn't talked about ex's before this as I wanted to avoid jealousy.

Now, he has a friend who lives in another town close to me (1hr drive) who we hung out with the first time he visited. We were supposed to go to his on Friday, but obviously I'd just heard the news so we stayed in. We were supposed to meet at a mutual location Saturday but he cancelled late the night before and invited us down on Sunday. I told the boyfriend I had no desire to travel to meet him, that if he wanted to see us, then he should make the trip up to us which he agreed with.

So we're out drinking Sat night with friends, things are good and he turns around and says he plans on visiting his friend on Sunday. I didn't reply and proceeded to get distant with him, not really responding to comments and shrinking from his touch - letting him know I'm not happy. A while passed and he wasn't reacting/asking about it, still trying to touch me/stroke my back. I gave him back a gift he'd given me earlier as a sign he was really committed to making this work. That night, quite drunk, it turned into a big row.

Basically, he asked if I was unhappy about him going to the friends, I told him of course - he was running away from this, and not bothered - that either he thought well, everything's fixed so I can go off and have my fun, or else he just wasn't that interested in fixing us. Either way, it was stupid and hurtful and I felt abandoned. His reaction was that he was scared, he'd ****ed up by kissing someone else and now he's ****ed up again, he needed someone to talk to and still does, needs to get is head sorted. My response was a very cold 'u've no right to any support, to run off and have a friend make u feel better, ur the one who's messed up, if anyone needs support it's me and I decided to stay and talk this out instead'

he was quite upset too as the gift meant a lot to him (given by a lost relative) and it hurt him that I gave it back. I was annoyed as I didn't want a gift, I wanted trust, and actions to show he really was going to fix this and keep his promises. He walked out (intending to go to his friends) despite me saying that it was too early for trains and to sleep it off here. he came back, restated that he was just scared earlier, didn't know how to handle being amongst my friends after what had happened between us, walked off again etc. This happened again and on the third time I said look, I can't do this dramatic fighting, I had enough of it in the past, i dont' care anymore. He left, I went to bed after waiting a while and saw he didn't return. Turns out an hour later he'd called my phone, I woke up in the morning to a few missed calls and him calling me again to let him into the flat as he'd nowhere to go.

So I went back to bed and left him to sleep it off, unsure if he'd be there when I woke up. He was and we chatted again, I made it clear I was really bothered by him walking out - that that was something I would find very very hard to forgive. Also, that I had opened up about an ex of mine, and he went and repeated the same behaviour - picking a fight with me to try and turn it back on me, make me feel bad, so that he wasn't the bad guy anymore. I said I couldn't do that again.

he apologised, again saying he was just so scared and freaked out and didn't know what else to do, panicked, didn't realise that it would affect me so much (wanting to visit friend) and admitted that he probably was just thinking of himself and how to make himself feel better (running away) that he'd never opened up to anyone before and he did with me and now felt really bad that he'd messed things up so much, possibly irreperably. I said well, it wasn't irreperable until you walked out on it. He admitted that it was a really **** thing to do and not the way to handle arguements, but he wasn't used to them and normally that's his reaction but would change, would be the man I need him to be.

So what now? I'm torn between wondering if I'm painting him too much with the ex's brush - that he's the type to hurt me out of beign inconsiderate/selfish, then pick a fight to turn it on me, I forgive once i see he loves me, and then I'm left feeling a little hollow inside,

I honestly believe the kiss was a huge mistake and wouldn't happen again, tho maybe I'm being blind? but he seemed like such a straight guy, very quiet and shy and trustworthy, he did come clean straight off with me about it and he hadn't drank for a month prior, and normally doesn't drink this much so it really hit him.

The fight is what bothers me most - am I addicted to this kind of guy, the one that uses words and promises to seduce and win me over, then goes right back out and ****s up on something else again, till eventually he doesn't even try to pretend like he cares it hurts me.

Arghhhh....advice? drop it now or give it a chance? I don't like this feeling too - I really liked him cos I felt equal to him, I respected him and always felt he had something to offer. I liked him and not in a crazy lust/romance way, a steady, I think this guy can be a good catch kind of way. I always enjoyed love making with him cos it felt honest - that we were being emotionally and physically honest about how we felt and the two matched. Now it feels a bit fake, like it did with the ex - that we kiss, but it's a lust born of loss/fear/heightened emotions....and that in the end, i don't feel connected to him like I did before. Would that come back or is that lost now, that connection?

Stench Blossoms

I'd say drop it and take time to get over what your ex did to you so you don't paint all men with the same brush.

It probably took a lot for him to own up to what he did and he bought you a gift. You threw a hissy fit and gave it back to him.

Also, sorry to say this but you sound a bit controlling if you've an issue with him going to see his friend. Yes he messed up but he's a human being, nobody's perfect.

LegacyUser

OP, you come across as extremely high maintenance based on what you have written here.

What's with the childish immature silent games? Tell him you're not happy! Don't return gifts and go silent on him to provoke a reaction.

You're going to find it very hard to maintain any relationship, particularly a long distance one, if you're the kind of person who goes into silent huffs without explanation. Mind games never work.

Men need things like this pointed out to them, they're not mind readers.

You seem to expect him to be 100% dedicated to you and only on his visit, fully on your terms, not allowing him to see his friend, etc.
You do not own this man, and cannot control him to that degree.

I think you need to re-examine yourself before focusing on any long distance relationship.

Miss Fluff

It's clear from your post that you're not just carrying baggage but a whole suite of luggage. All the (unresolved) issues from your ex is spilling in to this relationship. Are you really sure you're ready to be with someone? I think the kiss in this situation is almost secondary, all the stuff that's going on is all down to you and your issues. I also agree with Stench in that you come across as very controlling. I don't think it's fair to punish this man for what's gone on in your past tbh.

Katgurl

You need to decide if you can get over the kiss. That is up to you. Do or do not and then move on.

As for this weekend I think it is you who behaved badly, sorry. Shrinking away from him, not speaking to him, returning a gift? Was this all while you were out with your friends? Locking him out of the apartment seems to be accidental but still, the poor guy!

He is right to not let his friend down. Hi friend is expecting visitors. He was let down on Friday. None of this is his fault (assuming friend is male here, could be wrong).

I don't think you sound ready to be in a relationship. Tbf it sounds like you were waiting for something to go wrong and your default settings kicked into 'punishment' mode.

Sorry I'm aware I'm being very harsh but I've a friend who does the whole sulking / letting you know she's upset instead of dealing with the actual issue. I'm really the only person who entertains her and my patience is running out.

You should tell your boyfriend you need some time to think and let him get on with things. Tell him when you will be in touch again.

Plus you really haven't said much about the kiss. If you're Genuinely not too upset then there is no point seizing opportunity to lambaste boyfriend for it. If you ARE upset then you need to work through those emotions (painful yes) and figure out if you want to continue with this man.

lumjm

Although as the above post mentioned you sound controlling/high maintenance, your reactions to him are very understandable! your nice, quiet, 'trustworthy' boyfriend told you he was snogging another girl!! It would make me physically ill, so you giving him the silent treatment, although immature, is just you not knowing how to deal with this. Id say take a break from your relationship. A proper break to see what you really want, he should allow you this after telling you this. The same situation happened to me and eventually the relationship deteriorated and ended. It really depends on the person I guess as to whether you can genuinely get past it and be happy, and to be honest you dont sound like you would.

LegacyUser

OP here,

firstly - thanks everyone for taking the time to reply, might not be exactly what I expected or wanted to hear but I appreciate the input and I really do take a lot of it on board.

I just want to clear a few things up though as I think that it might be clouding the issue.

As for me being controlling- I really am not - I've been told that by friends and family and ex's - in fact, an ex said i was too easy to walk over. I've never even had issues with him cancelling skype dates if he had something else to do. I encourage him to go out, party, see his friends, the first time we were over we in fact spent a good portion of it with his friend. I would never normally 'forbid' him to see his friends and prior to the admission of cheating, was more than happy for him to visit his friend or for us to go down to his friend. I really don't have time for women that do those sort of things, or try to monopolise his time - we went out as a group all day saturday so he could meet my friends. This weekend was different though and I expected concessions to be made and for him to stay with me the weekend so we could sort things out - was that wrong?

As for the silence/games - I told him clearly on Friday that i didn't want to visit his friend, on Saturday again that I thought it would be better for his friend to come to Madrid as right now I didn't really fancy going that distance and if his friend really wanted to see him, he should make the effort. I think I was clear on what I wanted. i didn't want to create a scene in the bar so I gave him a sign that I wasn't happy (which he figured out and knew exactly why i was unhappy). I returned his gift after he told me he wanted to cancel our last day together so he could visit his friend. I haven't been silent/playing games, from teh start I told him how I felt about it, that I didn't want to go. I was silent in the bar as I didn't want a scene. When we came back, I told him that i was unhappy and why.

Now help me out here - do you really think I was out of line to expect him to spend our last day together?? considering he'd come for the weekend, dropped a bomb that he cheated on me, we made up - is it too much to expect he'd WANT to stick around to have a nice day, try and leave things on a really nice note before he goes back? If ur boyfriend did the same, would you not be hurt, confused and generally pissed that he cheats, u make up, then he wants to spend the last day with a friend instead of u??

As for the ex - we split 3 years ago, I think I'm over the issues of that relationship and have dealt with it.

I know though that I freaked out this weekend and saw him in the same light as my ex. This is what I need advice and help with.....am I seeing things for what they are - that he should have stuck around and didn't, that picking a fight and walking out of the flat was wrong....or am I being too reactive and defensive as alarm bells are ringing like mad here....and I can't tell if it's cos I'm seeing warning signs of inappropriate behaviour/dealing strategies, or cos of past issues.

As for letting his friend down, Katgurl - I totally get what you mean, and I didn't want him to let his friend down, but his friend also was invited up to visit us for three occasions - he cancelled all of them and wanted the trip on his terms, for us to visit him. Now I don't see it as unreasonable that we should want the same, and considering the fight myself and the boyfriend were having, I didn't feel like making the effort, but was more than happy if the friend wanted to keep any of the arrangements we had.

Returning the gift and locking him out of the apartment - it wasn't accidental, he walked out of the flat twice, with his bags, telling me he was leaving. I simply went to bed on the third time after waiting a good half hour with no call/text to let me know where he was. i asked him not to leave as he didn't know the city, but he did - I didn't expect he would come back.


The kiss i can forgive as I know mistakes happen - and we sorted that out in that I said I was willing to give it a shot. My issue is that straight after he decides to spend our last day with his friend, then proceeds to start a fight about it that night, walks out of the flat and tells me he's going to his friends anyways and leaves me wondering where the hell he's going to sleep/go as he doesn't know the city.

I know I'm shooting ye all down, and I do appreciate the help but I seem to be coming accross as the bad guy and I'm not sure ye fully followed what happened or know what i'm like as i'm not controlling, demanding, etc and I don't want that to cloud what you see. I do want to know, now with a little more info, if ye still believe I'm clouding things with what happened with the ex, if I was really out of order, or if I should just leave things with the guy.

LegacyUser

I still think you come across as high maintenance. Reading your latest post, you seem to be very highly strung, and while no-one here stated that your boyfriend was right, he had told you the truth of what happened, he apologised, he did all he could on his part - and if I were in his shoes, you would have wrecked my head with your behaviour.

It's no wonder the guy wanted to get away to his friend. He wanted to get away from you so badly, he was willing to head off late at night into a city he doesn't know.

I'll be surprised if he's interested in pursuing a relationship with you after this.

Perhaps you shouldn't have gone socialising with your friends in a crowded bar on such terms with your boyfriend? Maybe you should have sat down and discussed things, and maybe spent a night alone together. Why was it okay to go out socialising with your friends but you weren't willing to allow your boyfriend to socialise with his friends?

LegacyUser

We spent Friday night alone together discussing, Saturday evening again discussing, I had already organised Saturday night with my friends so after we made up, we went to the bar. And it would have been perfectly ok for his friend to come up and socialise with us and my boyfriend, I wasn't against that, I was however against the idea of either of us just leaving the other instead of sticking it out and working it out - I could have left him alone and spent the weekend with my friends, but if I did that, as far as I could see, that would be me walking away from the relationship and abandoning it/him. And that's just it - if he was so eager to get away from me, after cheating, then making up - is that not an awful sign? why apologise, work hard at getting me to forgive him, make up with me and then be so desperate to get away the minute I agree to give him a second shot. If u were serious - would you not sacrifice a day with ur mate to spend time together before leaving the country again? he had all week to hang with friends/talk to them about it btw, I didn't

I let him know that appreciated him telling me the truth, and it was a large part of why I said I'd get over the kiss.

Maguined

My interpretation is that it is likely when out with you on Saturday and you were being quiet and shrugging off his attention to avoid making a scene your boyfriend read this as you being very upset with him, it would of been extremely awkward for him to be out with your friends and to have you still upset so he might have thought you would not like to be in a similar situation so it would not be a good idea for his friend to come up and visit.

He could of also thought you might wanted space after the Saturday so it might have been easier if he went off to his friends. Personally I would hate to be in a social situation with friends if my girlfriend was so upset with me that she did not want to even talk to me and was going to give me the cold shoulder all night so I would want to avoid the situation to be honest.

lumjm

OP you need to give him space, who knows how he's feeling after what sounds like a pretty draining weekend. He was probably dreading saying it, knew it would hurt you, then was a relief so wanted the day away from anything to do with the situation, because whether you forgave or not it would of been another day of him grovelling, and being honest he obviously wasn't up to it. Yes you may see that as selfish but you had discussed it and he was doing the right thing to do your seperate things on the sunday. He needs to clear his head too, he may be feeling confused about his feelings. And what the posters mean about you being high maintenance is just the vibe from your posts,its perhaps the wrong phrase, but they're very long and analytical of every move he makes, obviously he knows you're like this and wanted space to breathe.

LegacyUser

ok, so how should i have handled it?

we were on good terms by the time we got to the bar. - I wasn't upset with him at the time he told me he'd go to his friends.

when he first told me about the kiss he wanted to go to his friends and I totally understood that, and ok, fair enough, to want to feel like escaping when he was the bad guy and it seemed that we were through. But I asked him to stay cos I wanted to fix things. We did patch things up and it was only after that that he told me he was going to visit his friend.

I got cold and shrugged him off after this- I expected him to then check it was alright with me if he left on our last day, but he didn't.

How would you have reacted to that or how would you handle it better? If he told me the kiss was because of confused feelings, or that he was having them now, fair enough...but he kept assuring me he was into me, wanted to make things work and would try his hardest to fix things...doesn't that mean that your last day with ur girlfriend, after patching things up, should be spent trying ur damndest to make good memories and leave things on a good note?

lumjm

op there's not much you can do, you cant make someone act a certain way, if you really are let down by him I think you should review your decision to forgive him. It sounds like you need more out of a relationship than a long distance one can provide. I think most girls would have broken up with their bf having been told what he told you, if you have been only going out a few months. I dont know but I would think his heart isnt in the right place firstly that he did it, and that he legged it on last day. Maybe have a break from the relationship, its getting complicated because of the distance and you wont really trust him. But best of luck

nowyouresix

OP: It's all very very dramatic. Your bf kissed....and only kissed ,another girl. He owned up to you. He apologised.You spent two nights discussing it. The next step....you move on. Forgive him, or forget him. Easy. If in doubt, get out. LDR's rarely work anyway.

curlzy

Hey OP,

I honestly think your getting very unfair treatment here and bad advise to be honest. I don't think you sound like high maintenance at all and I think all of your actions are completely understandable. PI/RI can be very sanctimonious at times and expect OPs to be absolutely perfect and be divinely calm and giving, to never give in to emotion and talk things through etc. What I think PI/RI posters forget is that they're not perfect either.

At the end of the day your Long distance BF cheated on you, then gave you a gift and wanted to clear off to visit his mates to make himself feel better. I completely agree that he should have stayed with you. I honestly would drop him if I were you, he's proven you can't trust him. I've been literally black out drunk on a few occasions and I've never cheated so I don't take that as an excuse.

TBH he sounds passive agressive, it's not his fault blah blah blah, he got scared blah blah. So yeah if I were you I'd google passive agressive because your ex sounds that way too, could it be that you are attracting passive agressive men? If so you need to figure out how to change that because passive agressive people are toxic.

Best of luck OP.

Elmidena

I'm a bit baffled by the responses here and don't feel you warrant such judgements etc, so anything I reply with will be based solely on OPs posts as I read them.

I've mixed feelings here; you know this guy round about four months, is this correct? He's been out to see you twice and you haven't been to see him; does this not strike you as a bit odd? Most men wouldn't be bothered going to a different city to meet their other half in that time, and here he is shelling out on airfare or whatever. This in itself shows he wants to nurture your relationship rather than let the void drift you away from his heart.

He doesn't sound like a heavy drinker, so I doubt he'd be going to Spain for the cheap booze or holiday atmosphere. Him having a friend in the country is coincidental; he could just as easily fly to his mate's and crash there and not have anything to do with you. Him wanting to visit the friend was probably because he was looking forward to it, and had arranged it before his drunk kiss, and didn't want to let him down.

By the sounds of it, I think your gut was right--this guy is a nice guy. A kiss probably tortured him and he was afraid of losing you. But he manned up and bit that bullet. He offered you a gift of immense sentimental value and still flew out, whereas if you were a game etc then he'd just drop you. He didn't, and that roars volumes. If he was like your ex, then why to eff would he be spending his cash and weekends on seeing you, or his general free time off on skype etc? Sounds a bit of a bad emotional blackmailer to me; doesn't seem he'd argue to make things worse or to snipe at you over time. By the sounds of it he hates confrontation and wants a simple life. Him wanting to see the friend is understandable, but lacking in tact. You are right to feel miffed that the majority of the time together was spent wrapped up with his infidelity one way or the other, particularly when you were willing to overlook it. Of course it would be nice to end on a happy, hopeful note but things don't always look so obvious to everyone else.

If you want it to work, then keep dialogue open. There's no point mentioning the kiss any more as you're ok with it and he's not likely to repeat that. Why don't you visit him for a change? Either planned or as a surprise, because I do think that you would fare better on his "turf" so to speak, and there'd be no alien surroundings for him so any walking out etc wouldn't be met with such worry and drama. If it works then I wish you the best, and if it doesn't well at the very least you gave it a shot when you don't believe in long-distance relationships