20 July 2023 , 17:03
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Dear Coleen
I’m a man in my early 30s and made the mistake of being honest with my girlfriend about why my last relationship broke up. We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months and recently I admitted to her that I had an affair in my last relationship, which was the reason my ex dumped me.
I explained I wasn’t proud of my behaviour and that I’d learned a lot about myself and how not to behave.
At first, my girlfriend seemed perfectly OK about it and even said she admired me for being honest. But now she’s gone a bit cold. When we went out the other night she said she’d been thinking about what I’d said and didn’t know if she could trust me because she’d been cheated on in the past and didn’t want to go through that again.
She even asked me if I’d cheated on her since we’d started dating (which I haven’t). Now, I really regret being so honest and wearing my heart on my sleeve as it’s massively backfired.
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Can I pull this back? How can I prove to her that I’m not the same person and would never do that again?
Coleen says
You can reassure her, but it’s really up to her to give this a go and accept that this is a different relationship.
Also that maybe you had an affair because your ex wasn’t the right person for you.
I’m not condoning the cheating (you had the opportunity to tell your ex the relationship wasn’t working for you), but an affair is usually a symptom and not the cause of a relationship in trouble.
All you can say to your girlfriend is that you promise not to lie to her and if the relationship doesn’t feel right to you, you’ll speak up instead of running into the arms of someone else.
Look, I think honesty at the start of a relationship is a very good thing because communication is so important through good times and bad.
You could have lied to her about why your last relationship broke down, but you didn’t, which shows you have grown as a person.
Life involves making mistakes and learning from them, and you took a big lesson from your last relationship.
You’ve been dating only a couple of months, which I think is too soon to know if it’s a long-term thing.
You need to get to know each other better and let the relationship develop. But it’s unfair of her to give you a hard time for past mistakes and shortsighted not to give things a go if there’s chemistry between you.
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