I've just ended my almost four-year relationship with a great man who didn't lay his kink cards on the table until way late. He's your typical straight guy with a shemale cock fetish. It wasn't too difficult to figure out what got him going since we're both very openminded and communicate very well, or so I thought. Apparently the dom pegging I provide him isn't enough, because I found a secret email account where he's soliciting shemale escorts in hot detail. The strap-on isn't up to par when he sincerely has a cock fetish and wants to see, touch, taste, etc. I'm genuinely more pissed that he didn't tell me that he wanted to explore this and allowed me the opportunity to make his fantasy fit with our life together. I can't tell if any of these escorts ever met with him and in usual hetero-male fashion, he is mortified that I know about his darkest cock fetish secret. He swears sincerely that I am all he wants and loves me like crazy—and I believe him.

So, my question is this: As a GGG girlfriend who would honor just about any fantasy, is this secret search for a stranger the betrayal I think it is or am I wrong? I get it that our play isn't the same as the real thing, but isn't cheating cheating? I would really appreciate your opinion.

Willing But Not Enough Sadly

My response after the jump...

The snooping-is-wrong absolutists will shit themselves if I don't include the phrase "snooping is wrong" somewhere in this response. So there it is, gang, right at the top. Heck, I'll toss it out again—"snooping is wrong, people!"—even though I happen to disagree. A little non-obsessive, non-controlling, non-abusive snooping is understandable and commonplace. No long-term relationship is snoop-free, just as no long-term relationship is lie-free, porn-free, or thinking-about-fucking-someone-else-while-I-fuck-you free. And when snooping uncovers something like this, well, it's retroactively self-justifying.

Deal, people.

Anyway, WBNES, on to your question: your ex's secret search is definitely the betrayal that you think it is. Without question. Cheating is cheating, fer sure, and the kind of cheating your ex was engaged in or preparing to engage in amounts to a Very Serious Betrayal. He was putting you at risk of STIs*, assuming he's actually seen a sex worker, or thinking about it putting you at risk. And it was unnecessary: it sounds like he had a pretty darn GGG girlfriend, just the kind of woman he could've opened up to about his secret kink, and negotiated a deal that allowed him to explore this without putting you at risk. But he didn't because he was ashamed, first, and afraid of losing you, second. And where did the sneaking around get him? Now he's really got something to be ashamed of—the lying and sneaking around—and he's lost you.

Unless...

Unless you can find it in your heart to forgive him. All of his kink cards are face up on the table now; you know his deepest, darkest sexual secrets, and, more importantly, he knows you know. He betrayed you, for sure, but forgiveness is meaningless if it only comes after trifles, WBNES, and never after one of those Very Serious Betrayals. If his kink is something you would've signed off on had he gone about things differently, perhaps you could take him back on the condition that he go about things—finding things, sucking things, get fucked by things**—differently from now on.

* I'm not saying that a man who visits a sex worker is gonna get a disease; the good ones are typically more cautious than your average freebie sluts. But outside sexual contact is outside sexual contact, it involves risk for the insider back at home.

** I'm not calling MTF sex workers "things." I'm calling their things things.