Apologies in advance for the very long letter. I really need an outside perspective. A month ago I moved in with my boyfriend of two years, whom I love very much. He's great in many ways: smart, hot, successful, and all around a fun person to be around that makes even the most mundane activities exciting. I have dated multiple men long-term, and have never found the same amount of passion and togetherness that I have found with him. However, recent issues are really tearing me up and making me want to run.

A little less than a year ago, we began experimenting with an open relationship. It was something that we both wanted, and it involved some fun and some sadness, due to feelings on both sides. I advocated setting rules. I told him that to be open, we could only have sex with other people alone when the other is not available (I travel very frequently, so this isn't as restrictive as it sounds). I also told him I didn't particularly want to know about it after it happens. I also am game for threesomes frequently, which has been a fun new thing for me. He agreed, if a little reluctantly, to restrictions. There have been minor hiccups, but it seemed we were working toward an understanding that could be fun for both of us.

Fast forward to last weekend, a month after we signed a 12 month lease together, and he goes radio silent for an entire afternoon. We had had plans, and I was worried about him. I texted some of his friends, and they told me they hadn't seen him. Finally, he texted me back and told me he was with the very friends that I had just messaged. And, when he came home he had hickeys all over his body. He lied very obviously and continuously, and could not understand why I was upset. In the morning, the truth came out. He had met someone on a dating app, got very drunk with her, and had been hooking up with her the whole afternoon.

I am devastated. I know I cannot be everything for somebody, and though imagining my partner having sex with someone else isn't too fun, I also sometimes feel I need some variety and can put myself in their shoes. But this was a premeditated violation of our agreement. He lied continuously, betrayed my trust, and couldn't even have the decency to text me for hours so that I wouldn't worry and eventually figure out a very lazy cover-up of the truth. I do not trust him anymore, and this has left me feeling anxious, distrustful, and the saddest I've been in years. It's also making me feel incredibly stupid, because I feel I have ignored red flags.

He says he wants to go back to monogamy because our openness is a "slippery slope" (he was texting the woman when I was traveling, and continued the conversation when I came back). I have successfully practiced monogamy in the past, and would like to try again, but I simply don't trust he can do it. He's stopped drinking heavily and says he's committed to making our relationship work. However, he goes back and forth between taking responsibility and not thinking it's a big deal. He seems very sad that he has made me upset, but does not seem to realize exactly what he did wrong. He has mentioned he has been to therapy in the past, but that it did not work for him. I think he needs to go again (and maybe I do, too).

I certainly don't feel like I'm overreacting, but I hope that you can let me know if I am. I want to be with him, and we were talking marriage a week ago. But I am a kind, fun, successful, smart (though you wouldn't know it from this situation), attractive, and fit 28 year old. I don't think it would be difficult to find someone who didn't do this. I told him that the kindest thing he could do if he didn't think he could practice monogamy, or an honest open relationship with rules, would be to tell me now so that I can leave. He said he can because he wants to be with me so badly.

Basically, I don't know if he really has an issue that he needs to work on, or if he is just an asshole. Do we break our lease (embarrassing, depressing, expensive, also we have roommates...) or try to make this work?

Who Gives Hickeys Anymore?

I'm going to punt on this one: you should go read this classic Dear Sugar from 2011 at the Rumpus. In "Column #81" Cheryl Strayed recounts the day that she discovered her boyfriend—the boyfriend she had just moved in with—had been cheating on her. It's Strayed at her empathic, self-revealing, and heartbreaking best:

I told him it was over. He begged me to stay. I told him he was a lying, selfish bastard. He agreed that’s exactly what he was.

We talked and talked and talked and talked and after an hour or so my rage and sorrow subsided enough that I went silent and listened while he told me everything: exactly how it went down with the woman who sent him the postcard; what I meant to him and what the woman he’d slept with meant; how and why he loved me; how he’d never been faithful to any woman in all his life, but how deeply he wanted to be faithful to me, even though he’d already failed at that; how he knew his problems with sex and women and intimacy and trust and secrets were bigger than this one transgression and rooted in his past; how he’d do everything in his power to understand his problems so he could change and grow and become the partner he wanted to be; how knowing me had made him believe he was capable of that, of loving me better, if only I would give him another chance.

As I listened to him talk, I alternated between sympathizing with him and wanting to punch him in the mouth. He was a jackass, but I loved him dearly.

Strayed and her boyfriend are still together—they've been married now for nearly two decades. I'm not saying it'll work out if you listen to Strayed, WGHA, or if you listen to me. All I'm saying is that, per Strayed's example, an infidelity doesn't always have to be a relationship-extinction-level event. Individual results may vary, trust but verify, there's work to be done, etc. But if you want to give him a second chance... maybe you should.

Read all of Dear Sugar #81 here.