I have a serious, possibly relationship-ending dilemma. I will try to be concise. I have been dating a wonderful man for several years now. We met when I was still in college and he had just graduated, and the many financial problems that beset us kept us from getting married. At one point, while looking at a copy of Maxim, my fiance told me he wouldn't mind if I posed like a Maxim girl to make more money. Two years into the relationship, I became a webcam girl for extra cash. As a stuffing/feedee model, I never posed nude, though I took plenty of shots in sexy lingerie. I thought he wouldn't mind, and told him about my webcam work after I'd been at it a few months. He was never comfortable with it, but put up with it because I needed to make more money. Four years later, feeling terrible about what I had done, I shut down my website.

Last summer, 3 years after shutting down my site and promising not to do that kind of work again, I was in dire straits. My hours at work were cut, I was broke, my credit was getting really bad, I had become very depressed, and in desperation, I set up social media accounts to sell my old photos. I figured they had already been seen seen before, and as long as I didn't take new pictures or do webcam shows, it wasn't that bad. Recently my fiance found the sites when doing a search under my stage name online. He's very upset about the promise I broke and feels betrayed. And I feel so ashamed. Our relationship is in jeopardy, and I have no idea how to restore his trust.

What can I do now to save our relationship?

Remorseful Former Webcam Model

My response after the jump...

Looks like you figured wrong, huh?

And you knew it would be "that bad," RFWM, which is why you didn't give the fiance a heads up. You figured it would be easier to ask for his forgiveness than to get his permission—if you got caught—so now your only hope is to ask/beg for his forgiveness.

Don't get me wrong: I think your reasons for selling your old photos are solid—hours cut, flat broke, cratering credit—and if you had any sense you would've laid them out for him before you started selling your old photos. And if he had any sense he would've given you his okay. A girl's gotta eat, after all.

Ultimately, RFWM, it's not those non-expicit photos that are giving or should be giving your fiance pause. It's the way you allow wishful/desperate thinking to blur into active deception. Two years into the relationship you assumed he wouldn't mind your becoming a kink/fetish model based on an offhand remark he made about posing for Maxim. You were wrong. Recently you figured he wouldn't mind if you sold your old photos because you weren't taking any new ones. Wrong again.

Your fiance may not want to spend his life with someone who makes enormous assumptions about what he's okay with—assumptions that turn out to be incorrect—when she could just as easily check with him and know for sure. So instead of telling him that you're sorry for selling those old photos, RDWM, you should tell him that you are aware of this pattern, you can see why it would upset him, and that from here on out you won't be making any self-serving assumptions about his opinions or his comfort levels. From now on you'll ask.