Dear Meredith,
I love your advice! I started reading it back a few months ago, and you definitely are dead on with your insight!
So here’s my situation: I seem to have a knack for being cheated on and I can’t figure out why.
My past two serious relationships have ended in me getting cheated on. I was with the first guy for three-and-a-half years. Last year on Valentine’s Day I was supposed to fly out to where he had transferred for college, but it never happened thanks to some issues out of my control. When I broke the news to him that I wasn’t going to be able to make it, he said it was alright. He was planning on telling me when I got off the plane that he had a new girlfriend and was going to pawn me off on this guy he knew. Oh and he spilled the beans that he had been with several other girls too. Real sweetheart, huh?
Well, that guy I was supposed to be pawned off on and I both shared a dislike of my ex and had a lot of other things in common, so we started talking and before I knew it — we were a happy couple! Since there were almost 500 miles in between us, I spent the next ten months traveling back and forth and even started looking for a job out there (he was on board and very supportive of it). Then we got to Christmas and things just went wrong. Two days before New Year’s, he decided to dump me at random saying he couldn’t deal with my “adult-like responsibilities” (holding a job and limited vacation days?). Then to find out a week later, he spent eight of the ten months cheating on me. Another sweetheart!
So that brings me to the most recent situation and the final straw for me. I met this absolutely wonderful guy through a dating website. After starting to talk, it turns out we had mutual friends and had crossed paths before. Everything was going great for about a month. We’d see each other 1-2 times a week, talk everyday, a couple sleepovers, etc.
My plan was to ask him on Valentine’s Day weekend where we stood with the whole dating thing. It had been about a month, lots of dates, we both seemed really interested in each other. But I wimped out on asking him in person cause something just seemed off that weekend. So later that night after some encouragement from a Bostonian friend, I called him up and told him I had some questions.
Question number one was of course ‘What are we doing?’ and his reply was ‘Not ready for a relationship yet… not over ex… blah blah blah’. I was alright with that surprisingly, but I had a weird hunch. So for question number two I just outright asked him what I was suspecting which was his involvement with a mutual friend. He seemed pretty stunned and then he stunned me with his honesty. Turns out he slept with her (just once) the morning of the same day he came over to see me. I told you I have a knack for this!
Since then, he’s apologized profusely, I’ve actually met up with ‘the other girl’, hung out with him (no intimacy though), and I still talk to him almost daily. But the initial excitement he had just seems to be gone and I don’t think he’s going to get it back. A girl calling you out on something like that kind of ruins the fun I guess? Any way to get that back? It was a bad move on his part, but maybe there’s something still worthwhile?
Obviously, I know I can’t fault the guy for the whole not being involved with just me. That was the point of asking him what we were doing. But seriously – what is it with guys taking advantage of situations and for all tense and purposes : cheating?
I’m a trusting person, I don’t like to play games (not a big one for setting up this massive mind game chase), and I don’t really ask a lot of people. I’m a generally happy (I have my down days like everyone), stable (not a moody person), independent (good job and just bought my first home) woman in her 20’s. What the heck am I doing wrong?!

– Feeling Burned and Heartbroken, NH