I am in a relationship with a man, have been for a year or so. We are both quite young, early twenties, and we had a bit of trouble last summer, but have moved on and become much stronger.
We are very close friends, we have alot in common and we both have the same outlook on life. He says he sees me as someone he would like to be with longterm. Wonderful, i feel the same.
Now, he is very emotionally distant, i know he cares and he does show it but quite rarely, he is not the type to say i love you at all. I can deal with that, i have learnt how to be comfortable with that.
I am a very understanding and complacent person, i will do anything to make him happy and he knows it. He doesn't really take advantage though, until we talk about the main problem i have.
I found some texts on his phone, there are 5 girls he regularly texts. He doesn't meet them, however he will try and arrange to see them ect. He is very flirty on these texts, (not a problem in my mind yet, we all flirt a bit) but he goes too far, and asks for sexual favours. They always say no and laugh it off. He has recieved sexy pictures from them, and this is where i start hurting.
We talked about it and he says that it is for the ego boost, to know that other girls still find him attractive and if it came down to it he probably wouldn't cheat; he knows that when he asks the girls that they'll say no. (his exact words). He says that he isn't out looking to cheat on me, but does have the opinion that variety is good, but he hasn't cheated on me, and if he hasn't wanted to yet, chances are he won't (his words again).
So, i have a good man, who is good to me in general, but he isn't morally opposed to cheating. His father cheated on his mother and caused a very painful divorce when he was ten, so you'd think he would be so opposed to it!! Anyway, my reaction, after i stopped feeling sick, was to tell him that i wanted the permission to be able to look at his phone/social networking sites whenever i wanted, he agreed. I said i didn't mind the texting, as long as it wasn't infront of me and i made it clear how much cheating on me would hurt me. But lets face it,we don't live together so if he wanted to he could. He is an honest man, very blunt, and i know (and checked during our discussion) that if i asked him outright he would tell me. I did say that if he cheated on me, one time with one random girl, that i didn't want to know, i have been badly hurt before and can't face that again. I know that is almost a get out of jail free card, but that was all i could think of to protect myself.
SO everyone, after that not-so-brief passage, is there anything else i should do? How do I move on? Thankyou for reading!

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