I can’t believe it’s come to this.

I cheated on my girlfriend.

There, I said it. Well, wrote it. I have never told anyone.

I can’t sleep – the guilt is killing me.

It was a one time drunk thing – with and old ex of mine.

I was a terrible, emotionless experience.

And now I am engaged to my girlfriend, and we are planning a wedding and I just look at her and think omg please forgive me, please forgive me, please forgive me.

I think I need to tell her.

We have been together for 7 years. The incident happened about 4 years ago. But our engagment seems to have brought this to horrible attention for me.

I am kind of numb. I feel like I can’t move forward until we deal with this.

Should I tell her?
Ok, so this might not be the answer you’re looking for…but I dont think you need to tell her or break up with her.

You did this 4 years ago, and never did it again, so what is telling her going to accomplish? Its going to make YOU feel better and her feel like shit. So basically, you’re going to ruin your relationship so you can get rid of some guilt…I know the guilt is eating away at you, but really, telling her is just going to make it worse.

If you really cant deal with being in a relationship with her and keeping this secret, break up with her, but DONT tell her about the cheating.
interesting.

i do need to purge this guilt from myself though, somehow.

i am seeing a therapist on wednesday, and i am going to ask her what she thinks about this.

thanks for your input.
Do you have any guy friends that you trust and can hang out with?

I agree, telling her will only turn things very bad right now.

Is there another way you can deal with the guilt besides telling her?

If not then your last option is to sit her down and have a heart-to-heart.
And also I only meant what I posted above if you are regretful and wont do it again.

One time with an ex isn’t something worth breaking up with your fiance over, unless you really feel that you need to tell her.

But I’m telling you what I’d tell all my close friends… you did it once, with an ex, 4 years ago, and it was drunk sex. It isn’t worth killing the relationship if you really care for her. But if you really feel that you need to tell her then I wont stop you.
Don’t tell her, don’t break up with her. Just know that it was a big mistake and you can eventually forgive yourself by making sure you won’t do it again.

i so rarely feel that its ok not to tell someone about cheating, but this might be an exception. telling her will only make you feel less guilty and it will make her feel horrible. if you know this was a mistake, if you know you will never do it again and you have not done it since, then your punishment is living with the guilt (which should be better than loosing your future wife)

but, if you still talk to this ex, feel that you might do it again, have done it on more than one occation, etc, tell her for her own sake so she can leave your ass before the wedding.
Personally, I’d tell her. It might sound harsh, but I couldn’t live with myself knowing my marriage/engagement was built off of a lie/neglecting to admit a truth.
Tell her.

The fact that the guilt is eating you up shows you know it was wrong and she deserves to know so she can decide if you are worth marrying.

Relationships are built on trust and communication. She needs to know. She has the right to know. If her love is strong enough for you then she will work through it with you. Offer counseling for the both of you if it kills her inside.
There is a saying,
If you love something set it free.
If it doesn’t come back it was never meant to be.

Think about it.
You need to sit down with your woman, look at her in the eyes and say to her that what you are going to tell her is going to hurt her but it is the absolute truth.
Tell her you love her so much that the thought of marrying her and not clearing the air is turning your life upside down.
Tell her that the risk that she will call off the engagement or break up with you is a risk you are willing to take, a decision you are willing to accept.

Bottom line:
Whatever she chooses you have cleared the air and have proven yourself to be trustworthy.
Tell her,better for her to know now then finding out later.
Don’t tell her, its going to ruin your entire future for no good reason.

Its like this, everyone makes mistakes. If you are truelly love her and are sorry for what you did then forgive yourself. I see it like this, you are in a good position, its like being in a bubble, and this mistake you made is like a needle, telling your gf is going to *POP* the bubble, and boy your going to fall hard after that.

Feeling guilty is your punishment for doing this to her, but in this case you have to carry this guilt, but not forever of course, just get over it that you made a boo boo, its life you can’t get a perfect score anymore, so what, just try to make the best of it on that what there is still left. You shouldn’t let your entire future come crashing down just because of this incident if you can prevent it, i would do so, because losing your girl and your future over a slippery slide hopefully isn’t worth it. I wouldn’t tell that’s for sure.
This is a really tough one. I think I have to put myself in her shoes here. If my bf cheated on me, even once and it was a mistake, I think I would want to know that. Especially if we were getting married. I would be absolutely irate if I married him and then years down the road found out about it. I would never be able to trust him again and I am sure it would end badly.
However, if he were man enough to admit what he did BEFORE we were married and told me that he could not start our marriage off with a lie, I would probably postpone the wedding and have to rebuild trust with him (if that was possible) but I think I would be less likely to leave him in that case if I was COMPLETELY sure this was a one time thing and a mistake that would NEVER happen again.
I guess you have to be willing to lose her if you admit this to her, but seriously think about how much more it would hurt her if she found out that your marriage started off with lies and deception years down the road.
thanks for all the input guys and gals.

punky72, you pretty much summed up what i’ve been thinking.

i can’t start this thing off with a lie. i can’t.
The therapist is there for YOU not HER. I might be worried he/she mightpush you into admitting it. Really, everyone else has said it perfect. Don’t tell her, ever.

agreed.

i see the therapist tomorrow, so i’ll see what she says regarding this.

Good job choosing the morally right choice

Like I mentioned before. Tell her and if it crushes her offer for the both of you to get relationship counselng. A therapist can help you both grow together and get her to trust you again.

i’d want someone to tell me

and i’m sure you’d want her to tell you if she’s cheated on you

I say this ONLY b/c he said he only did it once, 4 yrs ago, is never going to do it again and obviously feels very bad about this and knows it was wrong….

I just dont think its "morally right" to hurt someone else just to make yourself feel better. Its just selfish. For example, he’s said things like:

"i can’t start this thing off with a lie. i can’t"
"i do need to purge this guilt from myself though, somehow.""I feel like I can’t move forward until we deal with this."

I know everyone says things like "relationships are built on trust and communication" and thats true – but they ALREADY HAVE THAT and him telling her will only destroy all that for no other reason than his need to not feel guilty anymore. I mean, if he cheated, he SHOULD feel guilty – thats the punishment that goes a long with it. Trying to get rid of the guilt is almost like wanting not to be punished for it…and agian, thats selfish.

If their relationship is strong then she will forgive him and their relationship will not be over

And how are we to know he’d never cheat again, because he says so?

He should have told her years ago, the fact that years later it’s still haunting him just proves it always will. She still deserves to know IMO.

I wonder how many years he’ll wait now to tell her

And how many threads have we seen that say, "I/my SO cheated, we’re going trying to work it out, what do you think?" to which most reply, "Its not going to work, trust is broken and cant be rebuilt, just move on from eachother." Then there is the group of other threads that start "I/my SO cheated, we tried to work it out, and ended up breaking up anyway." Of course, there was always the "Would you dump your SO for cheating?" and "Is cheating a dumpable offence" which always have a majority of people saying yes.

How many couples do you know that completely get their relationship back to the way it was after finding out/being told they were cheated on? Even if its years down the road, most still eventually crumble.

If he tells her, there’s really very little chance of them staying together, so as I originally said, if he thinks he needs to tell her, he should just break up with her instead.

Because what he says is all we have to go on, like always.

Yes, it will always haunt him, and always will regardless of wether he tells her or not. If he does and they break up, he’ll feel like shit for loosing her. If he doesnt, it will continue to haunt him. Same same, except that in the 2nd one, they’re still together and she’s not been hurt.

She deserves not to get cheated on in the first place, but she doesnt deserve to be hurt and heartbroken over his stupid mistake.

Don’t get me wrong, I know exactly what you are sayng and what those who also agreed "don’t tell her" was the answer…I just don’t agree with it. Yes, him cheating on her was wrong. Yes, he should have told her years ago. Yes, telling her now could ruin their relationship and end it….but to me she still deserves to know

While he might tell us all he’s felt guilty for years that still doesn’t make me feel any sympathy for him and what he did. I don’t excuse that he was drunk and I certainly don’t excuse that it was an ex girlfriend and not some mindless fling he met one night. However, I don’t understand your rationale when you say if he wants to tell her he might as well dump her.

They’ve been together for years. I’ve known of couples who had been together years and worked through a cheating. This is why I kept suggesting if she did want to work through it they could see a counselor together.

If he never says anything to her and they get married he might still be haunted by it. I’d rather he come clean BEFORE the marriage so she can choose if she’d like to marry him.

Again, this could just be my thinking, but I’d hate being with someone who was constantly feeling guilty for cheating on me years before. For all we know she could eventually find out later and be hurt that he never had the balls to tell her hmself.

Well spoken

You think you’d want to know, but you wouldn’t. It was a mistake made and should be left in the past.

He could be using this as a reason to get out of a relationship that has suddenly gotten very serious.

I agree with the not telling her (now) because it would destroy her. That said, if you cannot go on without telling her, then telling her is better than breaking up with her.

But think about things. What good would telling her do? It would make you feel better and her feel like shit. If you love her, you won’t do that. It’s a long time in the past, and so long as you would never ever do it again, the issue is mostly over

I 100% agree with this. You’ve done enough in the way of selfish and stupid. Don’t do it all again just because you feel guilty. If you REALLY can’t handle it, leave her, but don’t tell her.
if you’re going to tell her, say good bye to the relationship as you know it. It will never be the same again. Yes the morally right thing to do is to tell her but in the process you are also jeopardizing your relationship immensely. Yah you will get points for coming out and telling her but its also going to raise alot of other issues. "Why didnt you tell me this before?" "WTF how do i know you havent done it more then 1 time?" "If you cheated once, how do i know you won’t do it again?" "why are you only telling me now?" and I bet she will ask "Why didn’t you tell me this before?" another 10000000 times.

The bottom line is simple. If you don’t want a stable future with this girl then tell her. If you do… its best to just learn your lesson and keep it to your self. Theres no way in hell she will be able to totally forgive and forget. This shit will always be in the back of her mind. Even if she does proceed with the wedding, you will be hearing about this non-stop in future fights for however long you are together. "Why dont you go back and sleep with your ex" "at least i didn’t cheat" blah blah. You get the picture.
Also these girls posting in here advising for you to tell her are not thinking logically. They are just giving their advice from an empathetic point of view to your fiance. There is no way in hell logic dictates for you to tell her if you want this relationship to work.
You’d be lucky if she stayed with you, and honestly, I’d be really surprised if she did. You really don’t think that by telling her it’ll make you feel better AND she’ll forgive you and you guys can just go back to planning your wedding, right? If I found out that the guy I was engaged to cheated on me years ago and just decided to tell me now, I’d leave his sorry ass so fast it’d make his head spin.

Don’t expect that she’ll stay with you. She probably won’t.
the therapist i saw yesterday told me not to tell her.

she said it serves only my purposes at this time.

there are other ways to deal with my guilt she said.

That’s what most of us have been saying… and we told you that for free…

I’d like to take this moment to pat myself on the back, just a bit.
did this therapist give you any ideas on dealing with it without telling her?
Wow. I just got out of a 7 year relationship because of a mistake I made. I ended up telling my ex-gf and we tried to work through it. She couldn’t forgive me and we broke up a year later. I didn’t sleep with another girl but it was just a horrible situation. I regret every bit of it but I don’t think I could have gone any longer without telling her.

This is a very tough situation but you have to ask yourself:

Is it worth telling her and possibly ruining our relationship over something that was meaningless and will never come up again. I understand both sides and I would have a hard time not telling her BUT since you are engaged and this happened 4 years ago… it may be in the best interest for both of you.

Good luck, bro.

Yes.
Reading this really scares me.

How can you possibly rationalize not telling her?

She can’t marry you if she doesn’t know who you are. And you are somebody who cheats. Sorry if that’s harsh, but it’s true. It doesn’t matter if it happened once; it happened, and you did it, and chances are IN HER EYES that changes who you are. She deserves to be able to make an informed decision.

Sure, it will hurt her and you don’t want to do that… but if you didn’t want to do that, you wouldn’t have CHEATED in the first place.

I’m sorry if this all sounds nasty. I don’t mean it that way. But not telling her is as selfish as telling her is. She needs to know. She could find out one day. She probably will. And even if not… it’s not fair that she doesn’t know!

You would want to know if she cheated. You may not ‘want’ to know but you’d certainly want to take that into account when deciding if she’s marriage material.

If my boyfriend told me he cheated, it would definitely crush me, but it’s certainly better than marrying somebody I don’t even know.

So your girlfriend murdered somebody once. You decide to move in with her and you find a body in the basement. But it was so long ago! It was only once! Telling you would only hurt you, right? Well, you’d want to know if she fucking murdered somebody in the basement before moving in. You’d want to make an informed decision.

A relationship is built on trust. You can’t start your new life together on a LIE. It may be easier on both of you not to tell, but that’s not a fucking relationship, and that certainly isn’t a marriage.

Regardless of whether or not your intentions by telling her are those of being honest or if they’re just to make yourself feel better… she still NEEDS to know.

I’m really not writing this to be an accusatory dick at you or name call you at all. But if she cheated, it would change who she is to you… and not telling is very very very very bad.

Honesty is not always the best policy.

If he truly regrets it and never will do it again, then telling her destroys her for no reason.

If you looked horribly ugly once, would you want your man to tell you, or would you want him to keep that a secret?

What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
She deserves to know the truth. Why the fuck should YOU get to decide if she knows the truth or not. This is something of VITAL importance to her life that she should know before she commits to spending the rest of her life with you.

First off let me just say this. I am involved with the love of my life and I love him from the core of my soul.

That being said, I do not THINK I would want to know, I KNOW for a fact that I would want to know about it.

It it not just the matter of honesty here but more importantly it is a matter of RESPECT and TRUST in ME.

If my bf and I were engaged and he made a one time drunken mistake and cheated one me and did come clean about it BEFORE we were married, yes, I would be very hurt and devastated, but at least he would have respected me enough to give me the opportunity to chose to spend the rest of my life with him or not. However, if he married me and I found out about it later (which let’s face it the guilt will only get worse and the truth will eventually come out whether it be now or 10 years from now) I would be far more hurt and pissed off that he did not respect me enough to come clean about it before the marriage and did not TRUST in the depth of my love for him to even give me the opportunity to work though this and find out if our love was actually strong enough to make it through this. Also, there would be absolutely no working things out if I found out after we were married and I would file for a divorce because I could NEVER be with someone that didn’t respect and trust me.

Seriously, it would take a lot of time to rebuild trust in him (if that were possible), however, if we were able to actually work though this and THEN decide if marriage was the right thing, we would be able to make it though all the trials involved in a marriage.

If this is the case then he should tell her for sure. I mean….what…he’s not really ready for marriage, so he should keep this secret, marry her, and then file for a divorce later because he wasn’t ready for this level of commitment???? How is that even logical???? I don’t follow this method of thinking.

Really? A therapist actually told you to keep this a secret and seriously live with the deception? To repress your feelings of guilt??? Wow, not deal with your problems…that’s sure a new method of therapy.

Because not telling her doesn’t serve your purpose at all…did this therapist actually have a degree?

What "other ways" can there possibly be for "dealing" with guilt?

Maybe I have things wrong by trying to teach my children to be honest and if they tell me the truth then the consequences will be a lot less severe then if they lie about it and I find out later. I mean really, whyshould they take responsibility for their actions and learn from their mistakes so as not to make them again when they can just find "other ways of dealing with" their feeling of guilt???????????????????

See, this is the flaw in all of this. The consequences will NOT be less severe if she finds out now rather than later, they’ll be the same.
Tell her now = she leaves him.
Tell her later/she finds out later = she leaves him.

I dont think you’re wrong in teaching your children that lesson, because most of the time thats how things work (especially in the parent-child relationship). In this case, however, its different. Things arent always the same or as simple as when we were kids.

He never said he wasnt taking responsibility for his actions, and from what I can see, he HAS learned from his mistake, he’s never done it again in the 4 years since…So, since he’s gotten both of those things covered – what is accomplished by telling her? Squat. The only one that get ANYTHING from him telling her about it, is him. He gets to feel better about doing something awful (that he should feel bad about anyway). Whoopdedoo.
This has nothing to do with HIM feeling better for telling. It has EVERYTHING to do with HER having the right to know before she commits to marriage.

I had alopecia when I was younger and all my hair fell out. It was years and years ago, but my boyfriend knows about it. Why?

Because experiences make you who you are.

Like it or not, he’s a different person because he cheated.

Justifying it by saying you don’t want to hurt her is bullshit. It isn’t fair for her to be hurt by it, but a relationship built on a lie is NOT A FUCKING RELATIONSHIP. Honesty is *the* most important aspect of a relationship. She deserves to fucking know.

Exactly.

He doesn’t fucking matter right now. If he didn’t want to feel guilty, he wouldn’t have cheated.

If he loves her, he’d understand that she needs to be able to make an informed decision. It’s not fucking fair otherwise. Honestly. That’s completely against the number one aspect of a good marriage.

TELL HER.

Um…no they would not be the same

If he tells her now, sure she may leave him or she may try to work things out. However, now would be BEFORE they were married and she was given an opportunity to make an informed decision on whether to MARRY him or not!

Tell her/she finds out later AFTER they are married is just inconsiderate and disrespectful putting her in a position where she is now married to a man that she loved and trusted but turns out he is only selfish and did not take her RIGHT TO CHOOSE into consideration at all!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the outcome may indeed be the same and HIS consequences may be the same, however, her consequences (for something HE did) would be FAR worse later than now!!!!!!!

The actual lesson here is that we are all responsible to make good choices in life. When we make bad choices then we have to own up to those mistakes , take responsibility for those mistakes, and suffer whatever consequences go along with those bad choices. I hardly feel like lying to someone you say you love is taking responsibility for your actions at all.

So if I were to smack my child over the head with a 2×4, feel horrible about it, and not ever do it again (at least for the next 4 years so far), then that makes it okay because hell it was only one time right?
taking responsibility for your actions does not mean telling everyone what you did.

If you hit your kid with a 2×4 once, felt horrible about it, etc, etc, telling them you did that 4 years later, after you’ve been an incredibly loving parent would serve no purpose other than to unburden yourself at your child’s expense.

That’s just it though….I am not saying "tell everyone" about it. My child would be the one that was hurt so would I not owe my child an apology, explain that they are not at fault and I should never have hit them, swear that I would never do it again because I love them and feel horrible about it. this would rebuild their trust in me….however if I just hit then and never said I was wrong about it do you honestly think they would be able to trust me not to do it again?

I know, I know….but she doesn’t know he cheated and what she don’t know wont hurt. However, if she were to find out later or he were to come clean later do you think she would ever be able to trust he would never do it again? If he were to be honest now, he would have a better chance of her regaining trust by him being up front about it prior to them getting married.

with you first paragraph, I’d agree. However, if the child never remembered the incident and never knew, and you told them four years later, it would cause them a great deal of emotional grief for no good reason.

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