I have appreciated and agreed with much of your advice in the past, and now I need some. This is very long, so please accept my apologies for that. And, we’re off…

My boyfriend and I will have been together for a year very soon. He is a very sweet, thoughtful, and gentle person and I feel very lucky to have found him. As a little bit of background, my last boyfriend was sort of a charismatic loser who cheated on me a lot. a LOT. I found out, we broke up, and I quit dating for more than a year, based on my inability to trust men. Enter Current Boy (CB), someone who I had been acquainted with for a long time. After spending some platonic time together, he let me know that he had had a crush on me for years. I was psyched, and we have been together ever since. We moved in together very quickly. In our case, we made it work despite the obvious dangers.

So, here’s the deal: I am a bit more “seasoned” than he is when it comes to sexual relationships. He has been with (much) less than a handful of people, despite having dated many. Me: well, college was fun and I had lots of boyfriends. CB knows and doesn’t care about the discrepancy. The problem is, that through all I know of him, I have seen him as very innocent. He is the exact opposite of some of the smooth, ladies’ men I have gone out with and been at times mistreated by. He is very sensitive, doesn’t have sex unless he has strong feelings, et cetera. I couldn’t be happier about these facts.

So, the other day I am looking at my bank account online, and I see a charge (a very small charge) to some online billing company. I call my bank about something else entirely, happen to ask about the charge, get an 800 number to call, and promptly forget all about it. Later that night, I am home working on a web page. I go into my browser to view the page, and I end up clicking on one of the items in the cache memory. It’s a porn site. Initially, I am upset, because I have told CB that I could never go out with someone who needs porn. However, I have looked at my own share of porn, and I decide to just wait until he comes home, mention it, and bring an end to the whole thing. Then the unidentifiable charge on my bankcard comes to mind. With my philandering last boyfriend, I really had to hone my super-sleuth skills in order to prove his infidelities to myself, once and for all, and I guess they linger on, because I decided to find out what the mystery charge was for, just in case. Well, it was for a porn site, a trial membership to watch streaming video of a typical blonde porn-type chick and her “girlfriends” getting it on. On MY
credit card. I have given him the number in the past, to order things like concert tickets, and since he has been so utterly trustworthy, I never gave it a second thought

CB comes home. I confront him. I am pissed. I cry. He hates himself. He is distraught, says he doesn’t know what came over him, but that he hadn’t been able to get into the webcam area. He says he was relieved, because he assumed the charge would not go through, as it didn’t work to get him into the site. He felt stupid, but relieved because he thought it didn’t work and I would be none the wiser.

He feels terrible. He has cried and dragged himself through the mud, because he knows I have been kind of down lately and didn’t want to make things worse. He is very depressed, because he thinks he has changed everything, that I will never trust him, and that eventually I will break up with him. His guilt is so strong that I shouldn’t add any, but I am very upset for about twelve different reasons.

First, after the last jerk, I thought that I had finally found someone for whom I would be enough. I know CB’s looking at this stuff shouldn’t have much bearing on my self-worth, but it does. So, I am insecure about my sex appeal lately anyway (though not to the point of ruining our sex life), and now I feel like crap. I also feel like I have been duped by CB’s “I am inexperienced and innocent”/”I am shocked that you’d joke about entering the video-store porn room” shtick. Then consider that he used my credit-card number without my permission. In addition, I feel he might be lying about not getting into the webcam area, to make the whole thing less upsetting to me. The last piece is that he works outdoors, so when it rains or the like, he does not work. I work regardless of the weather. I don’t support him, but I take care of immediate emergencies and bills (through working multiple jobs, at times), and he pays me back. So, not only does it bother me that he somehow feels okay with using my hard-earned money for his onanism, but he did this while he was sitting home, not working (again — it’s been a rainy season), and I was out busting my ass.

So, how can I get past this anger and feeling of betrayal? We are starting to consider planning a future together. I don’t want to break up with him over a little bit of porn and a big, honkin’ mistake about which he is devastated, but I can’t stop thinking, what if this continues? Am I a big baby? Please help.

Disillusioned (and Paying for it)