Guilt is eating away at me and it's killing me - I love him but don't know what to do

[sealrocks]

Right before I got together with my boyfriend (lets call him Mick), I slept with my ex (whom I started seeing when I was 16 and stopped age 20, he wasm y first everything – hand hold, kiss, first time but we were never fully together as he always wanted to be in an open sort of thing (we could see other people) and I liked him so much and thought id never like anyone else I went with itP and spent the night with him 2 days before. I never told my boyfriend this as I didn’t consider it cheating because we weren’t together. I missed my train (when I had looked at the time it was too late to get it) so I asked Idgit (the ex) if I could stay the night. I ended up having sex with him and spending the night (it was boarding room so there was no couch, just his bed but that's no excuse). I did feel bad about this while it was happening but i told myself it was okay because me and Mick weren't actually together, and hadn’t been intimate (no kissing or hand holding), but we wanted to be together. After me and Mick got together I continued to see my ex for about 3-4 months every 3 weeks, because he was a very instable person (he ha tried to kill himself, and was calling me and saying that he couldn’t live without me and he couldn’t go on and what have you). I never cheated on my boyfriend and I never went back to my ex’s place, always a public place. The last time i saw him he did something to hurt me (whch I told my boyfriend about) and I never saw him again and stopped speaking to him shortly afterwards. I also want to clarify that I did not have romantic feelings for him during my relationship with Mick but I was still very attached, as we had been friends since we were 12 (so about 10 years). But after this I stopped all contact with the ex and had the most loving, best relationship with Mick. Fast forward to 10 months together and we had a conversation about cheating. Mick said that if two people like one another and one of them does something with someone else its cheating. This immediately made me feel horrible. In a panic I texted my ex to tell him not to tell my bf about what happened that night should he be contacted by him and he said okay (which I later told my BF).

 

Over the next week however I began to tell the story of that night little by little, answering all my Bfs questions great detail. He knows my and the ex kissed, knows I gave him a handjob, knows the ex put it in twice (but we stopped before he could ejaculate), knows that the ex took of my pants, shirt and bra at one stage, knows how many seconds everything lasted, basically he knows everything. The only thing is that I told him that I had left to try and get my train and that I missed it and had to come back, when really I missed it before I had even left, I just told him this so he wouldn’t think I missed it on purpose. We are trying to work things out because we really love one another, but fast forward to now (3 weeks later) and it’s eating me up that I haven’t told him about the train thing. I know it should be fine because I told him every little sexual detail he asked for but this is just overwhelming. There;s so much more to the story but I cant type it out. I feel horrible, absolutely horrible about not telling him about the train thing but since my confession which was 3 weeks ago I feel terrible about every single little thing. I don’t know what to do. When I tell him thing,s even little things he blows up, and im not sure this is worth starting a fight over of he knows everything single detail so why is this one eating me alive. Help me. I went online and found multipe websites to say you shouldnt even tell your partner about cheating because it's selfish because you unload your guilt by hurting the other person, so I don;t know why i'm obsessing over this one minute fact that happened 10 months ago, when I told him about evrything else. It's like I can't see anything but this, Im a prisoner of my own head and i fele horrible all the time. Doing that with my ex is the singlemost biggest regret of my life. I hate myself for it.

[SweetGirl28]

Oh my, you gave every little intimate detail but didn't confess about the train? That would have hurt him way less

than everything else you divulged. Anyway, you weren't together, it wasn't cheating. However, he might feel you

weren't serious about him when he pursued you, because you still were intimate with your ex.

It shouldn't matter right now, you haven't done anything since, but you can't control how your BF feels now.

 

Don't get needy and clingy and desperate. Hold yourself together, and if he breaks up with you, let him go.

[DanZee]

I hate to say it, but the websites you read were right. Guys have little reptile brains when it comes to sex, and they don't want to even consider their girlfriend has had sex with someone else. They don't want to imagine it. And here you are throwing it in his face, giving him graphic details about how many times your boyfriend put it in and everything else. Yuck! What's wrong with you? And then taking a week to tell him every little detail? Are you trying to ruin the relationship?

 

And finally at the end of your post you get to the result of this. Your boyfriend is blowing up at you. He's devastated. You've destroyed his trust and everything else. I don't know if you can salvage this relationship. It sounds like he's turned abusive and you're emotionally dependent on him and afraid he's going to leave you. This was certainly something you should have kept to yourself. All you can do is apologize profusely and ask him to forgive you. But do be prepared for a break up and hopefully you've learned something you can take onto your next relationship.

[sealrocks]

I hate to say it, but the websites you read were right. Guys have little reptile brains when it comes to sex, and they don't want to even consider their girlfriend has had sex with someone else. They don't want to imagine it. And here you are throwing it in his face, giving him graphic details about how many times your boyfriend put it in and everything else. Yuck! What's wrong with you? And then taking a week to tell him every little detail? Are you trying to ruin the relationship?

 

And finally at the end of your post you get to the result of this. Your boyfriend is blowing up at you. He's devastated. You've destroyed his trust and everything else. I don't know if you can salvage this relationship. It sounds like he's turned abusive and you're emotionally dependent on him and afraid he's going to leave you. This was certainly something you should have kept to yourself. All you can do is apologize profusely and ask him to forgive you. But do be prepared for a break up and hopefully you've learned something you can take onto your next relationship.

 

I'm not throwing it on his face that's the thing, I don't want to tell him these details but he asks to know them. He gets so mad at me if I don't tell him the details, like he wants to know every little thing that's why i'm so stressed because every thing i remember i think 'oh no now i have to tell him bc i know he wants to know and i can't keep it from him'. The only way i can stop is if he tells me he doesnt wanna know anymore, which is unlikely to happen. We have been trying to work it out and i believe we could get past this if i could just eliminate my guilt and need to tell him every little thing - because he wants to know.

[sealrocks]

And i know i shouldnt have taken that week but i was too much of a coward to just get it all out at once.

[Cope]

I hate to say it, but the websites you read were right. Guys have little reptile brains when it comes to sex, and they don't want to even consider their girlfriend has had sex with someone else. They don't want to imagine it.

 

I'm not sorry to say that there are men that have actually evolved and don't feel threatened by his gf/wife'sexes. True story bro.

 

 

That said, what is considered cheating between a couple is their business. Apparently he considers it cheating, yet if he's talking about it and working on it maybe he can get to the point to understand it wasn't cheating.You should definitely define what is considered cheating for both of you after all this.

 

A friend of mine is married with two kids to a guy that had sex with another while they were still in the extremely early stages of dating.

 

If he still can't handle it, prepare for a break up, but it's not your fault, it's his. Don't accept his yelling or mental abuse of any sort by rationalizing it as a punishment for a behavior you don't find bad.

[indea08]

I agree with Cope, this is all your boyfriend's issue. You never should've told him about the night with your ex because it wasn't his business. The fact that your bf asked for specific details (down to how many seconds things lasted!? What the he||!?) tells me that he's pretty immature.

 

Regardless, what's done is done. Tell your boyfriend, "I'm sorry for telling you all of this, it was before we were together and I'm happy with you now and would like to focus on our relationship."

 

You guys need to decide (TOGETHER) what you will consider cheating. Just because HE considers something cheating doesn't mean YOU have to consider it cheating. But you guys do need to agree on boundaries going forward.

 

Don't apologize for what you did with ex, you did nothing wrong. The only thing you should apologize for is telling boyfriend about it.

[nutbrownhare]

You had sex with another guy before you and Mick got it together. Not just once, but many times over a four year period because you were in a relationship together, which was nothing to do with Mick and was none of his business.

 

This statement is ludicrous:

Mick said that if two people like one another and one of them does something with someone else its cheating.

It's cheating if the two people have decided they're in a relationship, sure, but if you're not actually in a relationship with someone you can't possibly cheat on them.

 

Your real mistake here was to go along with Mick's ludicrous definition, and then "confess". Many people don't like the idea of their partner being with someone else and although you did it for what you thought were all the right reasons, the details would have been better left unsaid. In fact, it would have been better if you'd never mentioned that night in the first place; doing so has given it a totally unwarranted significance.

 

You need to get back your sense of self worth. As Indea says, tell Mick that you're happy with him and would like to focus on your relationship in the here and now. Tell him that you're not prepared to go over the details again, that you want to leave the past where it belongs - in the past - and your ex is an irrelevance. If he really won't leave it alone, then ask yourself if you really want to be with someone who tortures you like this...