Resident agony aunt Coleen Nolan has advice for a reader who worked hard to rebuild her relationship but a recent situation has made her realise the trust has gone
Dear Coleen
A couple of years into our relationship, my boyfriend did some stuff that really upset me. Basically, he got too close to another girl and if I hadn’t found out I’m certain they’d have had a full-blown affair.
They didn’t have sex, but there was a lot of heavy flirting and meeting up on their own for drinks. I have no doubt it would have turned physical, given what they were messaging each other.
I was so hurt and thought about leaving him, but I was also in love, so I gave him another chance. It wasn’t easy to move on from it, but we were doing OK until recently.
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A couple of weeks ago, he went away with work for several days, which was triggering for me, as the girl he got close to is a former colleague and they used work as a reason to meet up.
He claimed the trip was “strictly work”, but then I saw on social media there was a lot of partying, clubbing and drinking. When he got home, I asked about it and he got so annoyed and defensive, and told me I was paranoid, He didn’t care about how I felt.
Something inside me flipped – like a light going on – and I realised I didn’t want to be with him and feel insecure all the time. I honestly feel excited about moving on by myself, which is weird after fighting so hard to rebuild the relationship. He wants us to stay together, but I’m genuinely over it.
Is that normal?
Coleen says
The thing about trust is that it’s very easy to shatter– one lie is all it takes– but it’s hard to rebuild.
Maybe your boyfriend didn’t tell you the truth about the trip because he knew you’d be unhappy, but when you’re trying to prove that you can be trusted again, you simply can’t lie about anything. You have to be totally honest and transparent.
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Do I think it’s weird that you’re suddenly over him? No, because the way you felt about him going on the trip and the way he reacted over it has provided a wake-up call: you’ll never feel you can trust him 100% and you don’t want to live your life like that.
It’s a great feeling when the penny drops if you’ve been struggling for a long time. You saw everything clearly and I think you should trust how you feel. But also remember you did try really hard to get the relationship back on track, so you can walk away knowing you did all you could.
Sometimes, you just can’t get past a betrayal, even if you really want to, and the right thing to do is to call it quits.
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