Should I be mad he slept with someone else and lied about it?

[pookiebear0389]

Me and this guy have been friends since high school. We're both in college now and for the past two years have slipped into a "more than friends less than boyfriend/girlfriend" relationship. In the beginning the friends with benefits relationship was working great until he started doing little extra things that fwb's don't do. He began buying me birthday gifts, Valentine's day presents, Christmas presents, etc. He also began taking me out on dates (although he never called them dates) where he would insist on buying my dinner, movie, etc, (he even took me out into the country to watch a meteor shower because he knew I was dying to see it). All these things led me to believe that he wanted an actual relationship with me so about two months ago I asked him if wanted to officially be together. He seemed caught completely caught off guard by this and as a result he said he wanted some time to think about it. About a month ago we began hanging back out again but the relationship topic never came up again. At this point hanging out with him his behavior had changed to where he was almost always unavailable so I began to distance myself from him. When he realized what was happening he began to suddenly become more available to me and hanging out again. It was at this point of us hanging out that I asked him if he had been sleeping with anyone during the entire time of our relationship (which I told him in the beginning was my only no no rule to our friends with benefits relationship). He assured me that he hadn't and a few weeks passed. Well Last night I found out that was not the case and he has been sleeping with someone for the past month. He claims he only has feelings for me and can't explain why he slept with the other woman. He wants me to forgive him and claims that I shouldn't/cant be that mad cause we weren't technically dating. So my question is: Am I wrong to be mad/hurt by his actions? I feel like he violated my trust just as bad as if we had been officially dating. Help!

[normalice]

I had a FWB once that told me she doesn't mind that I sleep with other people, but she doesn't want to know about it.

anyway, after we stopped being friends with benefits, she said she wanted to know if I had slept with other girls, and became increasingly mad with every girl I told her about, so I stopped telling her. I didn't owe it to her to make her mad.

We guys tend to throw out mixed signals, I believe you call them. Really, it is no different from what 'flirty scantily clad' girls do. Sure, they'll express little sexual innuendos, laugh at sexual jokes, make some of their own, but then if you try to get them to sleep with you there all like "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT IDEA, you CREEP?"

Similarly, men tend to flirt 'relationships.' We do a lot of things that may indicate we are interested in a relationship, but that isn't really what's on our mind. You can never assume that a guy is trying to get into a relationship with you unless he asks directly. Just like I can never assume a girl is trying to get me to have my way with her, unless she asks me directly. There is no 'mixed signals.' There is only random noise that we try to interpret as informative, but it isn't.

In the case of your guy, I suspect once he slept with another girl, it only made him realize that he prefers you and only you. However, if you did make it clear from the beginning that he should not sleep with other girls, that's a little hard to swallow. It is very likely that he found such a rule unfair and simply ignored it - a friend with benefit has only one commitment: to be of benefit. if he has asked you for an 'official' relationship, I don't think there is any risk of him cheating on you in the future: he's had his fun and is ready to settle down.

The only risk is you not being able to forgive him. That will wreck the relationship, if you can't. You can't really change your mind about how you feel about it. Sure, I could probably come up with some philosophy that one could adopt to render the facts irrelevant, and you probably could to - but that doesn't change the way you feel about it on an instinctive level. That will always eat at you, one way or the other. Circumstances, unfortunately, dictate that you two can not be together (unless you honestly think you will be able to look past this one day).

[TheUglyOne]

Well, it sounds like you weren't officially dating, so he thought it would be okay to sleep with another woman. And he'd be right in that regard.

Lying about it was very uncool though, and I can only guess why he would. I'm thinking he thought you probably felt more about your relationship and had an idea you would be upset, so he thought he could get away by lying. While I don't think you have a call to be upset with him sleeping with another woman, you do with him lying to you about it.

[Pepper1104]

No you're not wrong. You guys had something in place and even if it technically wasn't defined as a relationship it's still a breach in trust. You guys were like a couple but in my honest opinion I think he just wanted the girlfriend experience minus the actual girlfriend

[Anonymous]

Well, not about him sleeping with someone else. It's friends with benefits, not an actual relationship. That's really the only benefit to that type of relationship. Unless he doesn't use protection while with you, I don't think he is obligated to tell you about other sexual partners either. It's really none of your business. You're only a friend with benefits. You should know your place.