Thread: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Hey everyone,

So here's where I am in my relationship. I've been dating my boyfriend for two years, we're both nearly out of college. He goes to college and works year-round four hours away from where I go to school and work. We've been in this long-distance relationship for the entire two years of dating, making it work by calling each other for at least 15 minutes every night and seeing each other every other weekend or so. Not once during our relationship has he complained, or expressed doubts.

Except once. Last February I was afraid that I would be forced to move even more far away from him than I am now. We would go from being four hours apart to twelve. His response to me telling him of this news was, "We'll see [what happens]." It sounded foreboding.

In a (horrible?) coincidence, the same month, the girl he dated before me (their relationship lasted one month) became single again, and they started talking. He did this in secrecy, so that I would not know. According to his friends, this is the one girl who really broke his heart. Let it also be said that my boyfriend has always been the one to be dumped; I don't know if it's because he's unlucky or he doesn't care/is too lazy. I don't know why that is.

Anyhow, when I found out he was secretly talking to her and deleting messages from on his social networking accounts so that I wouldn't see them (to my knowledge, it was only slightly flirtacious conversations online), I didn't react. I thought maybe he was just deleting them so that I wouldn't get jealous, or something stupid. I didn't think twice about it.

But a month later, I broke up with him because he seemed emotionally distant, and the literal four hours of distance between us was making the relationship emotionally unbearable.

We got back together a week later, after MUCH talking and thinking through things. The next day he deleted online messages from another girl, one of his former co-workers who happens to be a model. At this point, I thought the right thing to do was to ask if there was something more to his pattern of deleting messages from other girls, so I VERY casually brought it up in an non-accusing way, "Should I be concerned that you've been deleting comments online from these two girls?"

Immediately his tone was anxious, extremely apologetic, and he kept saying he was sorry and that he made a mistake, and that he thought I should be more angry with him. He never explained what that meant, but I've been unable to get it out of my mind for the past few months.

Now it's July, and he's working again. I don't have to move far away, but as much as I've tried trusting him again, I feel like I'm always the one who worries about our future. Are we too young to be this serious (both 21)? Does he want to be with someone else? He says there is no one else he'd rather be with. He tells me he loves me ALL the time. Too much, possibly... to the point where that's about 25% of what he says to me. Who's he trying to convince, me or himself?

Beyond that, he seems moderately interested in being with me. He says "we" and "our" when talking about our future together. And when I asked him to, he talked to his ex (the one he secretly talked to before) about how he was not planning on leaving me, and that her suddenly getting in touch with him again once she was single made him question her intentions. He was very hesitant to talk to her about it, but he did do it... although he was apologizing all over the place and kept calling himself a "moron" and that he was "probably being an egotistical jerk" in the message. So...

Anyway, I guess I'm just asking for your opinions on my relationship. I'm worried my boyfriend is just going with the motions, or isn't sure he's found "the one." Can I justify this long distance relationship? He says that he's happy being in this relationship, so there's no reason to break up. Me personally, I feel sexually unsatisfied (he's never been able to please me), and I'm worried I'm putting too much of my time into this guy who might not be worth it in the long run. For the record, I ALWAYS make the time to please him sexually, nomatter how tired I am. We don't see each other often so I think it's important... although I'm rarely aroused when doing it, I do it to show him that I love him.

What do you guys think?