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The fact that he hid it from you in the first place changes a lot; its like you said, he had time to communicate this to you and failed to do so because of how you'd react or fear of losing you.

Besides the point, the cards are essentially in your hand right now, you have the power and make him regain your trust with actions. Start over.

However, for now id just fake it til you make it, when you feel yourself getting upset or triggered by one of his actions, take a step back and tell ask yourself why and maybe try to explain it to him without upsetting yourself.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer for this.

If I can, though I'd like to offer you a different vision for relationships than the monogamy-in-thought-and-mind-and-heart-and-body-or-else model that dominates in most of these subs.

My wife and I are both on our second marriages, and happier than we've ever been.

In each of our previous marriages there was deception and cheating and all the misery you're going through now. The natural reaction to which is, "I can't trust you anymore. Out you go."

But we were friends for seven years or so before we got together, and we talked about our feelings and our relationships together constantly, and one of the things that we discovered was, we were discovering that there's more intimacy for us in actually sharing such moments as the one your boyfriend had: a hot person attracted him, showed an interest. That happens to me and my wife a lot: and our reaction begins with, "Of course they were attracted to you: I find you incredibly sexy, why would they not?"

It's not always comfortable to know your spouse / partner found someone else attractive and did the natural thing and flirted a little, or even a lot. But it's REALLY consoling to know, "He / She is going to tell me everything."

Why don't people tell each other immediately about this kind of thing? Usually because of guilt or shame. Even if it doesn't go anywhere (your boyfriend belatedly toed the line), a person can feel he's failed some very difficult standard. Overcoming that takes real personal strength in both partners.

And that's because it requires a lack of mutual shame: you don't give those million signals that "You fucked up and now you're gonna pay." It takes enormous self-confidence. Most of all it takes enormous trust in a relationship and trust in our partners that we spent almost a decade building before we even kissed. We knew we'd tell each other the truth, because we knew that as soon as we started lying to each other, we'd be right back where we were before, unhappy, mistrustful, and most of all, lacking the intimacy that makes us happy together.

Nobody can tell you what you SHOULD do in this case except yourself: it's your self-image and your admiration for your partner that's at stake here, not mine and not Reddit's. Do what's authentic to you.

But there's more than one way to construct monogamy. There's more than one way to structure trust.

That is good advice but I’d like to add the boyfriend was trying to initiate a relationship with airplane girl while lying & staying with OP.

By his actions he’s no longer in a committed relationship with OP he is cheating- by their already established relationships parameters he’s cheating. He can say he’s just being nice (how cliché) but he’s not just being nice he’s lying to both women.

Yah no I would be dropping him over this. There's no rebuilding trust because he lied to you and hid it from you.

If he had stopped at the airport and getting her number for educational reasons, fine whatever. I would have been mad and jealous but moved on.

This isn't just borderline cheating, I would consider this cheating considering the flirting and offering to take her places that he knows are romantic or you found special.

First of all, thank you for such a long constructive reply. Also, I think you and your wife are absolutely right about honesty. Transparency in this situation would have prevented a lot of the trouble.

Funnily enough the first thing he said when I saw her photo was "see she's not even my type at all” and “ugly in real life". And even disclosed conversation between him and his friend where he was boasting about being approached but refused to share her photo because she's “ugly" - very alarming vocabulary to describe a woman and did not have the reassuring effect on me he thought it would.

In summary, he said he enjoyed someone showing interest and it boosted his ego. That it was something new and exciting until he felt bad for doing this behind my back.

You missed my point, but I don’t disagree with anything you say here.

He lied to you. You will always and forever wonder if what he is telling you is the truth. He ruined this relationship. For me there would be no coming back from that and yes that he was cheating on you.

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