Broken Trust on Both Ends

[fox1123]

Hi everyone, I'll try to keep this short and too the point, that way I don't take a side or defend myself. I'll stick to the facts.

 

About a year or so I met a girl online, not on a dating site but through an app. She lives in across the planet for me. Around the time I met her I had just gone through a break up about 1.5-2 months before. We would talk about the most random things and it was completely friendly and nothing serious. Just a penpal type of friendship. After a couple of months of talking we bonded over our previous relationship and a strong friendship and feelings started to progress, but because of the distance we both denied it to ourselves. But when we did talk about it we always said we would tell each other if either of us ever hooked up with anyone.

 

fast forward to late June, I ended up making out with some girl at a party. and that was that. the next day, feeling guilty I told her about it and we went through a rough patch. Before I had kissed the girl, she had been going on some dates with another guy, but she said nothing ever happened and she only went because her friends made her. so after i kissed the girl we talked and fought and we agreed that we should have been more open. and we agreed to focus on each other and not date other people, she would focus on her college courses and i would focus on my career.

 

but then I messed up again. Maybe a month later I was having some drinks with a friend and I ended up blacking out and when I the next day I realized i had a cut on my lip, and i didn't know why. After a couple of days I started to think that maybe i had kissed another girl. I asked my friend from that night and he didn't know, he ha a lot to drink too. So for the next couple of days and months i didn't know what to do. I cut down on my drinking to basically zero, maybe a drink when i go out with friends every other month ( I would only drink socially anyways) and have thought and prayed about if I should tell her or not. if felt very guilty but I wasn't sure and i didn't want to lose her over something I wasn't sure about. But let's say i did kiss someone.

 

fast forward to yesterday, I was asleep and i woke up at 2 am to a message from her telling me she had been lying about her age. instead of being 18 she was actually 17. the crazy part about this story is that she had a birth certificate with the right year, which she had used growing up (for school reasons I think). I was blown away, I didn't sleep the rest of the night. I didn't know what to think. For almost a whole year I had been lied to over and over and over. This wasn't the first time. she had told me she had cousins who lived with her aunts in her moms house, it turned out that they were siblings. she told me this maybe 6 months after I knew her. I let that one slide because she was protective of her family and I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

 

So we talked about it yesterday, and said she was sorry, etc. And I believe her. She told me she wanted to fix this, and I said we should. But then I confessed to her what I had done all those months ago, how i didn't know if i had or hadn't done that, but that I wanted to be truthful and just like her, I had been too scared to tell her because I was so afraid to lose her.

 

Today we talked again and she is hurt, which i understand. She said that i had "betrayed her trust twice" to which i defended myself saying that we had never agreed to anything when i kissed a girl the first time (she was going on dates with a guy during this incident) but i agreed that the second time I had. She also told me that she didn't feel if i would ever be "content" with her, or if she could trust me again. She says she still loves me and is in love, but that she doesn't know if we can work this out.

 

I may just be freaking out because it's all still so raw, but i find it so hard to understand. She wanted me to give her a chance for me to trust her again and I am willing to give her the chance, but she doesn't know if she can do the same. I wanna clarify that I don't believe in "tit for tat" I just want advice as to what I can do to show her that I'm worthy of another choice, and also advice on how both she and I can rebuild the trust on both ends.

 

At the end of the day we both love each other, and I love her more than her mistakes, and I wanna work through them.

 

Being honest, I have no other secrets and she says she doesn't have any other to.

 

I'm hoping someone out there can help. Thanks

[ElizabethIII]

If I have this right: you have never met in person, she lives on the other side of the planet, you have been kissing other women and she has been dating other guys.

 

You have never met. You aren't in a real relationship. You don't even get to day 1 of a relationship until you meet for real. You don't mention any plans to meet and you both have seen other people be it kissing or dates.

 

It doesn't sound like either one of you gets anything out of this.

 

The best thing to do is for both of you to either stop talking or just be pen pals. Date people near home you can actually have a real relationship with as this whole thing just sounds pointless.

[fox1123]

If I have this right: you have never met in person, she lives on the other side of the planet, you have been kissing other women and she has been dating other guys.

 

You have never met. You aren't in a real relationship. You don't even get to day 1 of a relationship until you meet for real. You don't mention any plans to meet and you both have seen other people be it kissing or dates.

 

It doesn't sound like either one of you gets anything out of this.

 

The best thing to do is for both of you to either stop talking or just be pen pals. Date people near home you can actually have a real relationship with as this whole thing just sounds pointless.

 

Thanks for the advice.

 

Just to clear a couple things up, there are plans to meet as soon as possible, it's just a money issue, which we have both been saving up for. i just didn't included it because it didn't have to do with the issue.

 

also the dating and the kisses took place about 2 months after we had met online, and we were both in denial about our feelings because we both had never considered being in a long distance relationship (especially to someone we had never met in person.) the second kiss happened shortly after the first one, when we had decided that we both weren't gonna be dating or doing anything with other people because we wanted to explore our possible future with each other. the second kiss happened maybe a week or two later. this was in July. Since then there has been no other incidents on my end, and she has not been going on dates.

 

we do get a lot out of it emotionally. we can talk to each other about anything, and we do. over the phone, FaceTime, etc. we are in love with each other. and we do plan on meeting soon. I agree with you that we can't really say we are in a relationship in the classical sense since we have not ever physically met. That's why we have avoided calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. specifically for those reasons.

 

as for future plans, we have talked not just about meeting, but eventually her moving to the US to finish her studies and work here, which is very common in her field to do.

[justwhoiam]

She's 17 and on the other side of the planet. Enough said.