This is very long, but there is a lot of history here. I’ve tried to include the pertinent details while making this as short as possible. I have been in an on/off relationship with a man for 4 years. We’re in our late 30s and both have been married before. I thought he’d be mature because he’d been married for so long (18 years) but as he’s really only dated his ex-wife and a couple other women before me, perhaps he’s not very mature when it comes to serious relationships. We moved in with each other after a year, shortly after I was diagnosed with a chronic illness, which significantly reduced my ability to go out and enjoy un activities with him, and physical intimacy. A year later, I received a message from a woman he dated before me, who said he’d cheated on me with her. He insisted he’d not so much as touched her and went to her house to talk a few times when he’d told he he was at work late. I broke up with him, and we resolved things a month later, when I started to have an improvement in my health.

A year after that, my curiosity got he better of me. I looked at his phone and found a sexually suggestive text he sent her during the time form the previous year. Twice over a few months, he insisted they’d only talked. The second time, I confronted him about the text, and he told me he hugged her, like he often hugs his friends. Each time he’d lied to me after we resolved things, I lost a little bit of trust. I decided I’d had enough lies (he’d lied to me about little things before that) and, due to my health as well, I decided to move far away 6 months later. He seemed agreeable to my decision and didn’t protest until about a month before my move, when he asked me not to leave and professed his love for me. By that time, plans already were in motion, ad I left. We remained in touch and didn’t specifically speak of breaking up or staying together, but a few months after I left, I found out the ex-girlfriend contacted him and he responded to her. I told him that it was over between us, as he obviously has no boundaries with women who are not his significant other and my health had declined again, so I wouldn’t be a good partner for him.  I didn’t want things to be over between us, but I wanted him to be honest and open with me.

We continued to communicate and I missed him terribly over the next 2 months, especially as my health continued to decline. He’d assured me that he was not interested in any other women, though he was going out often to “keep himself busy” and his mind off of me. Due to my health, I wasn’t able to do the same, nor was I interested in meeting any men, as I still loved him and wanted no one else.  A new woman had been very active on his Facebook page for the previous couple weeks. When I’d asked who she was, he responded “a friend from game night”. I replied I think she likes him and he said, “I guess” and changed the subject. A couple weeks after that, it was obvious that they’d gone out. I confronted him about it and he admitted he’d been seeing her for the previous 3 weeks and it was “casual dating”. I was quite furious as we’d communicated daily, he considered me a good friend, and he’d lied to me, again. Prior this point, I’d decided to return to the place I’d lived previously, and I’d hope he and I could be together again. He said that he had no idea that I was moving back (I’d mentioned I considered it two weeks prior) and that he wouldn’t have pursued anyone else if he’d known he had a chance with me again and that he would break it off with her immediately if I’d take him back.

After many emails, over a couple weeks about three conditions that I needed met in order for me to be with him again (if it was in fact “Casual” with the woman and he hadn’t had sex with her, honesty and openness from him, reducing his drinking), it came out that they’d had sex, which is not “casual dating” in my mind. My first inclination was that being intimate with him again after he’d been with another woman repulsed me and I wouldn’t be able to accept that. Then, after prayer and meditation on forgiveness, I decided that it was self-righteous of me not to try to move past it, and I agreed to resolve things with him (4 months ago, as he had promised to make effort toward the other conditions). After much contemplation, I agreed to move back in with him, as it logistically and financially would be best for me, and he had asked me to. This was 2 months ago, after we’d had a wonderful week-long visit where I live. Last week, he shared some news that not only had he received a DUI 6 months prior, it was his second one (I didn’t even know he’d had a first). The next day, I told him I had to end our relationship and I wasn’t going to be moving in with him. I felt I’d put up with too many lies and secrets over the years, and I thought that we had everything out on the table 4 months prior, which was not the case.

He’s told me he feels that I’ve overlooked all the positive things about our relationship–that he’d lied only because he didn’t want to burden me more than I already was burdened with my illness and trying to work while ill, that he’d lied to me because he didn’t want to me to think poorly of him, as he tried to present him to be the man I deserved and he felt I wanted him to be, the fact that he was loving, caring, generous, and a good provider. He felt that we should go to counseling as we’re not getting and younger and we’d planned to grow old together and he thinks it’s short-sighted to throw the past 4 years away, which were mostly happy, when I wasn’t ill and I didn’t know he was lying.

I don’t know if counseling would be worth it. Is it worth trying counseling if right now I feel I can’t move past the fact he slept with another woman? Because I love and care for him and want the best for him. I’m inclined to let him go. He said he’d be willing to forgo physical intimacy because we are compatible on so many other levels, but I feel that isn’t fair to him. I don’t want to be someone who resents the fact he sought happiness with someone else when I told him I couldn’t be the one for him, and I don’t want to hold him back from having sex that he desires (which he obviously does, if he had it with the woman he met just one week later, and can’t have with me often because of my illness or, because it repulses me after he’s been with someone else).  I don’t want to prevent him from doing fun activities, and I also don’t want to resent that he may go out and have fun while I am home, ill. He says he thought he’d have more time to prove to me that he is changing and that I can trust him to be transparent and honest. But how long am I to wait for that and how many chances am I to give someone who has lied and withheld information from me, repeatedly?