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December 17th, 2007
So here is the story Alexis....
My girlfriend has been dating a man for about 3 months. In the past she has been cheated on so she is the type to always have her guard up and never let men into her life. So she met this guy, and everything was going great. She definitely thought he was a potential boyfriend. He is very sweet to her, they talk everyday and he treats her like a queen.
Over the past week she started to feel like things were too good to be true...then, last week the guy lied to her about where he was. She wanted to have a nice dinner date with him but he said that he had to finish up some work and they would go out after. He seemed so stressed out so my friend waited for him to finish work so that they could have a great night out and he could forget about his work stress.
Well, a week later, she found out that there was no work stress.....there was no work.....instead he went out with an old college friend that came into town (who happened to be a girl). Nothing happened with the friend, she is happily married, etc. They just had a nice night to catch up. He was scared to tell her because the friend happened to be a female and he didn't want to risk a fight because of jealousy (he knows she has a lot of trust issues from previous relationships)
But the main point was that he lied to her about where he was. She's not sure what to do now, she's thinking about breaking up with him because it will be hard to trust him again, but she wants to be with him because he is a great guy and she actually likes him a lot. She know he cares about her a lot, and is not sure what she should do....should she forgive or break up with him?
A helpful friend
Dear Helpful,
You boil your question down to two possibilities. I’m not sure it’s that simple, but I’ll get in to that in a minute. My first question is why you are writing me instead of your friend writing me herself. I’m going to assume that your friend has been coming to you for advice and that you’re stuck. Here’s the thing though, when we talk to our friends about our love lives, it’s nearly impossible to always convey the whole story. So, I could give you advice based on what you think is going on but it could be the wrong advice based on what is actually going on – know what I mean?
Okay, disclaimer done… here goes: a few fundamental pieces of info are missing for me. How did she find out about the ‘date’ with the old pal? Did he confess or did she find out through other means? I don’t mind so much if she found out and called him on it, but I definitely feel better about the whole thing if he confessed.
The thing is, if she has a history of jealous freak outs, he’s learned that it’s easier to avoid telling her the truth than it is to just deal with her. This is partly your friend’s fault. Sometimes we ask our partner to always tell us the truth but then we make it impossible for them.
It was wrong of him to lie to her, no doubt, but they need to talk to figure out why he thought he needed to. If, as you say, she really likes this guy, she needs to learn to give him some freedom and trust that he’s going to come back to her. She also needs to explain her feelings of jealousy if she has them and he needs to take those feelings into account. Is there a reason he had to meet his ‘pal’ without his girlfriend around? Maybe he should have invited her along.
To answer your original question, then: break up with him – maybe not. Forgive him – probably, but maybe not yet. They can only solve this through talking and I sincerely hope they do.
Good luck!
Alexis Brown
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