Dear Stargazer:

Looking back, I can see that it was a mistake on my part to submit that long post yesterday because it resulted with you feeling offended and not helped at all. It is not my first mistake and will not be the last. I will try to learn from it best I can and do today better than I did yesterday.

“If you want to re-read my ONE and ONLY (thread) once more, that is my story, that is what I posted looking for advice on“-

– I re-read some of what you shared on this thread, having nothing but this one thread in mind, just like you assertively and boldly suggested in the above quote (I am positively impressed by your assertion and boldness!), and came up with a different answer to this question:

“Do I tell my boyfriend I kissed someone and risk losing my 8 year relationship, house, dog, life? Or do I just try and move on from this and make sure to NEVER do anything like that again“?- yes, tell him. Two kisses will not cause any reasonable man to break up with you, and besides, you said it yourself : “I don’t think he would leave me“.

In regard to your concern that if you tell him, “he will live with that pain“- I don’t think that a reasonable person will feel a significant amount of pain over his girlfriend having kissed a man twice while drunk and on drugs during a holiday for the first and only time in 8 years. Besides, he himself was inappropriate with a girl before and.. you got over it (“he was inappropriate to a girl around 4 years ago but I got over it“).

You got over it, he should reciprocate and get over 2 kisses.

“We’ve both made mistakes in our relationship“, you wrote about yourself and your boyfriend.  You can add me to the sentence: we all made mistakes, and will still make more mistakes… can’t help being human. All we can do is .. do better today than yesterday, and do better tomorrow than today. It is okay to be human, Stargazer. We have no choice but to be human.

One meaning of the word Stargazer, the name you chose, is a fish of warm seas that normally lies buried in the sand with only its eyes, which are on top of the head, protruding. Your assertiveness and boldness most recently does not belong to a fish buried in the sand. It belongs to a fierce fish boldly swimming in the vast sea.

“I was really struggling mentally. I still am“- your mental health struggles will no longer keep you buried in the sand if you accept your humanity, your boyfriend’s humanity and my own. This acceptance will free you to … explore the vast sea of possibilities, possibilities that are available to the bold and assertive.

anita