My BF Kissed someone else... ?

[Uneunsae]

part of being a mature adult is understanding what is a forgivable little flaw and what isn't. what it is not is inflicting punishment out of proportion with the ''crime''. maturity is also recognizing that people are different, that they have different strength to their natural impulses, and what applies to you does not necessarily apply to others.

it's not like this is a rare occurrence on the spectrum of human behavior. men DO think with their dick at times, it's a physiological reality. and this has nothing to do with not loving their partner, being selfish, or an immature person. it also doesn't mean that guy is unfit for a relationship. you say this gets used as an excuse, but it's not an excuse, it's a real behavior exhibited by human males throughout the ages. that men think with their dick sometimes is pretty much a given. and the ease of restraining themselves is different for different guys.

we are an animal species, governed by the physiological processes taking place in our bodies. it is not abstract concepts and morals that govern human behavior. it is the emotions that have the first and foremost influence over everything, even rational thinking. it is a highly complex neurological wiring in the brain, and not as simple as knowing what is a ''right'' or a ''wrong'' thing to do. to make it more clear, for some doing the ''wrong'' thing triggers a strong emotional reaction and it in turn inhibits behaviors that would result in the consequences of that ''wrong''. for others that ''wrong'' does not trigger a strong emotional reaction and there is no or there is only a minor inhibition to engage in acts producing applicable consequences. this is only part of the story, but is essentially why some people engage in more risky behavior than others. the fact that it is easy for you to push a guy away does not mean it is just as easy for another guy to do the same under similar circumstances. and demanding he have the same neurological wiring as you do is nonsensical.

the fact that you don't get this makes your whole approach juvenile and uneducated.

the point is to understand what you individually will tolerate and what you will not. it's fine if you don't want to accept such offenses. you have the right to live your life that way. but universal standards applying to everyone equally do not exist. and claiming they do is incorrect.

Putting oneself in an atmosphere or situation where this type of thing is likely to happen is irresponsible.

Men don't think with their dicks, they get impulses from them. Last time I checked, my brain was at the other end of my body. To say that men are incapable of thinking with their brain just because another guy might flirt with him, touch him, or otherwise make a pass at him is insulting to all men.

You can say that I am "uneducated" just because I don't see things the way you do doesn't really make sense. No where did I deny sexual impulse. No where did I even mention that it is "easy" to override them.

And calling me immature? Following your body's impulse without regard for others is immature. "Because we are animals!" Not being able to own to up your own desires and stay single instead of telling someone you are devoted to them is immature. Acknowledging natural phenomenon, but also being able to HANDLE THEM is mature.

Expecting people to not violate trust in all relationships is not the same thing as wanting people to do the same things I do. If a guy wants to sleep with someone new every night, I couldn't care less and I don't think there's anything wrong with that UNLESS he's committed to someone in a monogamous relationship.

This has nothing to do with "morality" so I don't think it was necessary to bring that into the conversation. Also, if someone is judging right or wrong by some emotional thing, then they need to step back and re-evaluate themselves. Almost anything can be used to elicit a strong enough emotional response to do something which most people would consider to be "wrong".

This has everything to do with being considerate of others, being a man of your word, and being able to keep your hands to yourself. If men don't have enough self discipline to keep their hands to themselves then they, as Buzzer put it, have no business in a monogamous relationship.

I have no issues with sex. Sex is amazing. I love it and my libido is sky high. But I do not follow my penis around like a dog on a leash.

[Buzzer]

it's not like this is a rare occurrence on the spectrum of human behavior. men DO think with their dick at times, it's a physiological reality.

That's a euphemism for: men sometimes allow temptation to override rational thought and better judgment. That in and of itself is still a choice. You are never drugged by your own body and chemicals and hormones into doing something you are not in a proper mental state to refuse to do.

we are an animal species, governed by the physiological processes taking place in our bodies.

If that's what you truly believe then don't even pretend to be in a relationship at all, and this whole discussion would be dead on arrival. It's the height of hypocrisy to enter a settled relationship that where it (rarely) occurs at all in the animal kingdom it is only instinctual and related to successful childrearing, but then to defend breaking out of the boundaries of a monogamous relationship with "I'm just an animal..."

the fact that you don't get this makes your whole approach juvenile and uneducated.

The point at which you lost all credibility in 5, 4, 3..

[Camfer]

I still think it's worth casting more scrutiny on this alleged friend. The friend witnessed something months ago and decided to wait to tell the OP on the BF's actual birthday. From here, that looks like no friend at all, someone who is deliberately trying to sabotage the relationship. Given what we know thus far, I'd be way more upset with the friend, not the BF.

The BF pursued nothing further from the kissing bathroom troll. All this talk about cheating and sex etc is all good and valid, but it is perhaps way overreaching from the information we actually have. To make a leap from an isolated kiss to "someone can't control his sexual urges" is a logical fallacy I just can't make from what I read.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

I would be leery to base any action on this one report.

I know from personal experience that there are guys out there who will force their attentions on ya. I have had guys give me unwanted lip locks and attempt to slip me tongue.... I have strong jaws, my teeth are hard so they met a bit of resistance... still didn't stop them from trying.

Things that give me the leaning that this was not a welcomed kiss:

"He says he saw them it didnt last too long"
"By BF came home straight after, I was at home"
"and the other dude came up and kissed him, he says he was tipsy and he just let it roll for a few seconds and that was that."



That your BF left immediately tells me he wasn't actually very interested in this person. Most likely it was an unwanted advanced and your BF took the flight over fight route when dealing with it.

He may actually be very ashamed, and feel guilt for something that is on par with sexual assault.

Is your BF more of a passive person? If so then the chances are higher that this kiss was not something he was willing to do.

While it may have looked to an outsider than your BF was being a willing participant, it may be actually a fear response to play along with the person pushing themselves on you because you never know what they will do if you resist to much.

I doubt your BF was actually that tipsy. Sounds like an excuse to hide deeper emotional 'trauma' from the experience. A kinda sorta 'denial' that someone took advantage of him.

Most likely it was unexpected, unwanted and he didn't know how to respond to something like that. This is a sort of sexual assault. While it isn't as bad as being raped, or molested, it does come with other side effects, such as hiding from it, such as denying that it actually happened, fear that you did something to provoke the attack....



Not talking about it is NOT lying... It is omitting data, but that isn't altogether a lie.

You confronted him on this bit of data, and he came clean.

Another aspect of not talking about it is he most likely didn't want to hurt you, get you angry, and there is the doubt you would take his story at face value.

Well you are living up to these expectations he had that kept him silent. You are not seeing his side, you are not hearing what he has told you - you have gotten angry and taking it as a personal slight.

Lets do a thought experiment.

Instead of being kissed, he was held down and raped by this guy. After the rape your BF kept silent about it....

Now, would you still be jealous, upset and accusatory of his story that the sex was unwanted? Or would you be a bit more understanding?

Would you be able to understand the complex emotions he would be going through? the fear, shame, guilt and not wanting to upset his partner, mayhaps even risk his partner going off to deal out vigilante justice?

Being forced kissed brings up the same sort of emotions that being brutally held down and raped brings. Trust me on this, I have experienced both and the same emotions come in play.

You need to pull back a bit here, and look at the over all picture and actually process what your BF has said what happened.

"he was in the bathroom and the other dude came up and kissed him, he says he was tipsy and he just let it roll for a few seconds and that was that. It didn't mean anything and he didn't tell me because he thought I'd break up with him if he told me."

Apparently he has good reason to fear telling you about stuff like this, here you are accusing him of cheating, calling him a liar and clearly seeking the advice to break up with him.

Your anger response is something to be feared - clearly.


Perhaps because of my past experiences I can see this and accept his side of the story far easier than you.

I hate to say this, but forced kissing, forced and coerced sexual situations happen a lot more than we in the LGBT community like to admit.

I stamp his story as not only plausible, but I will also place a large bet that it is exactly what happened.

I also approve of his letting it slide and omitting it from your lives and letting it go and moving forward.

I advise you to let this incident go. Put it behind you.

And if it happens again, do not immediately leap to the conclusion that your partner is seeking to steal kisses. Drunk people do stupid things - and a lot of drunks out there feel that once they get a few drinks in them its a pass on social etiquette that means they can lip lock anyone they want to, wanted or not wanted.

So chances are high guys are going to paw him, grab his butt, his crotch, lip lock on him and do all manner of crap which your partner may not actually want.

[Buzzer]

To make a leap from an isolated kiss to "someone can't control his sexual urges" is a logical fallacy I just can't make from what I read.

With respect, I don't think that's an accurate summary.

"The kiss wasn't a big deal BECAUSE men can't be counted on to control their sexual urges" is more the point of contention.

[meridannight]

Putting oneself in an atmosphere or situation where this type of thing is likely to happen is irresponsible.

and where exactly do you NOT have the atmosphere where this thing is likely to occur? people meet people everywhere. do you really think a night club is a special case where sex is most certainly to be found, but a workplace isn't? a guy working with another on a daily basis could form an emotional and physical connection to him which would be much more difficult to say no to, than casual sex with a stranger to be potentially stumbled upon at a night club. does it then follow a guy who goes to work where he has such close connections with his colleagues is irresponsible?

Men don't think with their dicks, they get impulses from them. Last time I checked, my brain was at the other end of my body. To say that men are incapable of thinking with their brain just because another guy might flirt with him, touch him, or otherwise make a pass at him is insulting to all men.

this is what ''thinking with a dick'' means. and that's what i said. i didn't say the dick possesses cognitive abilities by itself.

did i say men are incapable of thinking with their brain? no. in fact, everything is governed by the brain. it's not always as rational and logical as you seem to think though. that was my point.

You can say that I am "uneducated" just because I don't see things the way you do doesn't really make sense. No where did I deny sexual impulse. No where did I even mention that it is "easy" to override them.

you in fact did imply it was easy to override them. you might not have phrased it directly like that but you said it was not that hard at all. how else should i interpret the opposite of ''hard'' then?

And calling me immature? Following your body's impulse without regard for others is immature. "Because we are animals!" Not being able to own to up your own desires and stay single instead of telling someone you are devoted to them is immature. Acknowledging natural phenomenon, but also being able to HANDLE THEM is mature.

well, i never said it wasn't. i said it is immature to assume every guy handles every situation like you and has the same control as you do. that is a juvenile assumption.

staying single has nothing to do with this. people should only get into a relationship when they truly want to be with the guy, make a life with them, that is my opinion on this as well. however, not everyone starts a relationship under this premise, not every relationship is intended to be as serious, and some guys have a very lax understanding of what a relationship actually means. does that in itself mean that those people do not have the right to initiate a relationship or make an attempt? of course not. i also disagree with such an approach towards a relationship but i am not trying to degrade their relationships as something inferior or outright claiming they should stay single instead.

it's this tendency you have to think you can tell how other people should live their lives that i have a problem with. you have the right to live your life however you see fit, but you do not have the right to tell how others should live theirs. they can make all the mistakes in the book, and sometimes that still works out better in the end than your never-cheat-or-betray-my-trust policy. which is better then? if it works for them, it's a successful relationship.

This has nothing to do with "morality" so I don't think it was necessary to bring that into the conversation. Also, if someone is judging right or wrong by some emotional thing, then they need to step back and re-evaluate themselves. Almost anything can be used to elicit a strong enough emotional response to do something which most people would consider to be "wrong".

that wasn't my point. we are not consciously making decisions on emotional bases, that is just the neurological reality of things. mostly it is unconscious. the emotional centers in the brain influence the way we process and perceive factual information, they influence cognition and motor output. a person who gets grabbed by the arm by a stranger in a city that is under some physical attack responds differently from the person getting grabbed by the arm by a stranger on the streets of a peaceful small town, for example. and the difference is in the emotional reality of the subjects. it is the emotional centers that determine whether the external environment is a threat, or a peaceful surrounding, for example, and they trigger the appropriate reaction in the individual. this applies to every situation in life. and this is what i meant when i said emotions govern human behavior, and not abstract principles (like zero tolerance for cheating without taking into account the real life context).

and we are all judging ''right'' or ''wrong'' by emotional standards. when you form an emotional connection to someone, then it feels more ''wrong'' to hurt them than to hurt an anonymous person on the street, even if the hurt was exactly the same thing. there is no universal ''right'' or ''wrong''. there is only the subjective ''right'' and ''wrong'', and that is always in connection to our emotional reality/state.

''almost anything''? really? i'd like to hear an example. and it doesn't matter what most people consider ''wrong'', it only matters what the individual in question considers ''wrong''. that is the only factor playing into his decision-making processes.

This has everything to do with being considerate of others, being a man of your word, and being able to keep your hands to yourself. If men don't have enough self discipline to keep their hands to themselves then they, as Buzzer put it, have no business in a monogamous relationship.

that is not up to you or Buzzer to decide. they have business wherever they want to be. it's this pretentiousness of yours that is really annoying.

[Jake]

However there is some difference here between the people who think it's an overreaction because it's too rigid of a response to something that possibly could and should have been worked out with discussion and people who seem to be implying it's an overreaction because what the OP's boyfriend did could just up and happen to anyone randomly or after they had a couple of drinks.

This is not directed at you personally Alex... but sometimes in these advice threads I feel like people push the idea that partners should just trust unconditionally, even sometimes to the point of overlooking when someone's behavior is untrustworthy, such as with the boyfriend's dishonesty in this case. Trust is earned over time and over an established history of behavior and loyalty and consideration for each other. It should not simply be given out regardless of how a partner behaves. The way that someone settled for 5 or 10 or 15 years with a partner they trust looks at a situation isn't (and probably shouldn't be) the way that someone in a young relationship looks at things because the level of established trust between the two parties is in entirely different universes. Too much trust extended to people who have not earned it will, more often than not, result in hindsight situations of "oh... yeah.. I guess you shoulda seen that coming, you were kind of dumb in the situation, but still, that sucks..."

Don't worry I don't think Alex feels in anyway concerned, we had our load of problems when we first started dating, even situation similar to what the OP is telling us about, however I had already another way of dealing with similar issues. And one of the first thing is to let the dust come down... if you were truly in love with someone you want the detail and the decision is yours to take once you've got the details. So here's a question for you... How does a couple settle for 5, 10 or 15 years in a relationship? You believe, perhaps it's all blue skies and roses, they have settled that long because they have learned to communicate adequately between one another and that level of communication start right on your first day of dating. There's an advice that every married person gets before they leave the church. NEVER GO TO BED ANGRY. I've got that same advice when Alex and I got married, but I had already applied it 6 years before we were married. From day ONE.

At the end of the day Alex and I are a couple, we have set goals, we have houses and asset together, we have children and a joint account, this all started like many other relationship, but we have both removed that DARN DELUSION of perfection. He's not perfect and neither am I and we have learned to tolerate, speak of our weakness and find solutions. If none of you naysayers are ready to do that, I surely wish you a happy single life because your quest will be one hard ship to sail.

[Buzzer]

Don't worry I don't think Alex feels in anyway concerned, we had our load of problems when we first started dating, even situation similar to what the OP is telling us about, however I had already another way of dealing with similar issues. And one of the first thing is to let the dust come down... if you were truly in love with someone you want the detail and the decision is yours to take once you've got the details. So here's a question for you... How does a couple settle for 5, 10 or 15 years in a relationship? You believe, perhaps it's all blue skies and roses, they have settled that long because they have learned to communicate adequately between one another and that level of communication start right on your first day of dating. There's an advice that every married person gets before they leave the church. NEVER GO TO BED ANGRY. I've got that same advice when Alex and I got married, but I had already applied it 6 years before we were married. From day ONE.

Yeah I agree with that. But that's kind of a moot point if you have a partner who willfully withholds information from you for months at a time like the OP's, isn't it? There's nothing to discuss if you can't trust that your partner is going to tell you the truth if he thinks it might risk costing him anything.

There are even posts here saying 'the real issue is the friend who told you.' Really? I can't understand where that's coming from-- sure, some people "aren't real friends", some people thrive on drama or being the bearer of bad news. That's kind of a cosmological constant about human social reality, though. It's not the reason a good or solid relationship fails. It just seems like a way to try to say "oh, neither of you are at fault, kill the messenger instead." The OP's boyfriend put himself in a situation where something that could easily damage trust or their relationship could happen-- and then it did. And then he concealed it for months, but it came out later anyway. Then the OP overreacted and kicked his boyfriend out without any discussion. In this situation if anyone thinks the only real problem was that someone finally "told" the OP about it, it's almost a bit scary. It's hard to see that reasoning as anything other than "it isn't wrong, unless you get caught."

[meridannight]

"The kiss wasn't a big deal BECAUSE men can't be counted on to control their sexual urges" is more the point of contention.

that is NOT what i was arguing. i said the kiss wasn't a big deal because it was a small and innocent first-time mistake. i don't think men can always control their sexual/erotic urges so easily, but that is not the only reason why i think the kiss was a no big deal in this situation.

Uneunsae escalated the subject to about a guy not being able to keep a dick in his pants and treated kissing and actual cheating as if they were on equal footing. i strongly disagree with the latter and i argued that sexual control was largely determined by the guy's physiology.

[Buzzer]

that is NOT what i was arguing. i said the kiss wasn't a big deal because it was a small and innocent first-time mistake. i don't think men can always control their sexual urges so easily, but that is not the only reason why i think the kiss was no big deal in this situation.

I agree that this was something that probably should have been settled the night the BF got home, with a discussion. Let's not forget that the bf decided instead to conceal it for as long as he could and the OP found out from someone else entirely. It wasn't necessary for it to result in kicking-out but ultimately I'm not the OP and don't have to live with his bf, so that was his call.

However, if you were not arguing that men can't be held FULLY accountable for what they do with their bodies while in relationships, then I don't understand probably 80% of your post which went everywhere from "men DO think with their dicks sometimes, it's physiological fact" to "we are just animals."