TLDR: BF of 6 months approached a woman in public, pressing her to get her number then lied to me 3x about who she is. He claims that we should not break up because he did not cheat but I feel like I can't trust him again. Is this relationship worth saving?
Before we started dating my BF (M31) was the womanizer type, that loved flirting and being forward with women. We started out as a hookup and a bit of a fwb situation until we caught feelings and started dating.
Things were good for a while and we had lots of fun together but he did display some behaviours that I really struggled with. For example, following and liking (often bikini/sexy) pictures of women he had slept with in the past on IG. When I voiced how that makes me feel, he would get defensive and often told me that it means nothing and that I am making a big deal out of nothing. After a few fights he finally stopped this kind of behaviour.
Overall, he treated me mostly well, invested a lot of time and effort into our relationship, was planning future with me and often said that he can see himself spending his life with me. He often did nice things for me, planned fun dates, we travelled together and when we were happy we were really happy.
Now this situation happened about a month and a half ago and I am really at my wits end and questioning my own perception of reality. I went to visit a friend for a few days and I knew he was going to see his friends. I had a bad gut feeling and I checked his IG and noticed that he started following this new girl but her profile was private. When on the phone I asked who she was, and he told me that she is some promoter that he ran into at a mall but I did not believe him cause he is a bad liar and the way he said it was really suspicious.
Given those past behaviours that he has showed, I pressed him more and then later in the evening he sent me a video of a bartender from a bar he went to with his friends that night with the bartender saying that the girl is actually a waitress at the said bar. Another alarm going off. We got into an argument at this point and I did not believe anything he says. I stopped talking to him that eveving and enjoyed my time with my friend.
The next day he sends me a long message telling me yet another story about who she was, prefacing it with "I don't know why I lied, you deserve to know the truth" and told me that he was eating at the food court and she was sitting nearby and they talked for about 15-20min and exchanged IG but nothing happened. I was proper angry at this time because I thought that he is treating me like I am stupid and was clearly lying multiple times. I broke up with him and he started to pester me with a million calls and voice notes ranging from being super angry at me and calling me crazy to telling em that he loves me and that he can't be without me.
Honestly this was torture and I was so heart broken so I reached out respectfully to the girl herself explaining who I am and what the situation is and asked her what happened between them and if he asked her out. She said something along the lines of "we didn't get that far because I was taken aback by him knocking on my window and he was pressing me to get my number, not really wanting my social media, and I guess I know why now". She was very compassionate and nice and I had no bad feelings towards her because she was in this innocently. He was the one hiding the fact that he had a GF.
I sent him screenshots of my convo with her and blocked him on everything, since again. he was lying in the last version of the story again. After a week of absolute heartbreak and suffering I called him and told him he has one more chance to tell me exactly what happened if he ever wants me to talk to him again. He at that point told me that he saw her in her car in a parking lot during the day and didn't really think twice about it and approached her and sked for her number but never had any intention of talking to her or seeing her again, he was just in a good mood and had a feeling similar to when he was single.
He promised he has never touched, kissed, had sex with, or even went on a date with another woman while he was with me and never intended to do that with her either. He says that this 15 second interaction is not worth blowing up our relationship that he thought would end up being a marriage.
I could mayyybeee recover from the interaction he had with her but it is the incessant lying and his lack of accountability that he showed in the aftermath that really make me not want to be with him anymore. He is trying to convince me to get back together with him and offering me things like all access to his phone and social media whenever I want and promising this will never happen again but I can't look at him the same way. He has instilled so much insecurity in me and I don't know if there is any way back from this.
I still love him and I am in so much pain because of this. I don't know what to do. Do you think I should get back together with him because he "technically" did not cheat (if we accept that the last version of the story is true)? Should I cut my losses here and move on? Is there any charitable way to look at the situation? I am at my wits end.
