I need some advice because I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore. I’ll try to keep this short without leaving out important details.

My boyfriend and I have been together for 6 years. We met online while overseas and spent the first 2 years doing long distance. Eventually, we applied for a temporary partner visa so we could finally live together in his country. Everything was going great. We were excited to build a life together, and we’re expecting the permanent visa to come through in the next 1–2 years if everything goes well.

Unfortunately, some things have happened that are making me question whether our relationship is viable long term.

It all started when we decided to try an open relationship.

It was something we BOTH wanted to explore. We each made a Grindr account and agreed on some simple rules: no meeting anyone without discussing it first, keeping each other updated, and being honest about anything that might cross boundaries.

After about two months, neither of us had met anyone. Personally, I found the whole thing exhausting. It was high effort, low reward. Most guys weren’t my type, weren’t interested, or things just went nowhere. Eventually, I stopped using the app.

I asked my boyfriend how his experience was going, and he said pretty much the same.

Then, about a month later, I caught him lying.

One day, I was using his phone to find a photo when I noticed him getting nervous. Something felt off. I opened his texts and saw a guy’s name I didn’t recognise. He immediately snatched the phone away.

I asked who it was. He said it was just an old friend from business school. When I asked to see the conversation, he went into the bedroom and deleted everything.

I confronted him. First, he claimed they were discussing business. After repeatedly questioning him, his story started falling apart.

Eventually, he admitted he’d reconnected with someone on Grindr whom he’d had something with before we met. He initially claimed it was just friendly conversation, but after more questioning, he admitted they’d been exchanging nudes and talking about their days for about a month.

He insisted they’d never met or had sex and said he’d blocked the guy.

I was devastated. I remember going into the shower just to cry. We barely spoke for three days.

Then he sent me confirmation of a psychiatrist appointment. He told me he knew what he’d done was wrong, that he wanted to work on himself, and that he’d been struggling with his mental health and bottling up issues in our relationship, including our lack of intimacy.

For context, I’m not as sexually active as he is, and I knew that had been frustrating for him, although he’d communicated it before and I didn’t do much about it.

Eventually, I decided to forgive him. Not completely, though. I made it clear that rebuilding trust would take time.

And for a while, things genuinely got better.
He was seeing his psychiatrist, and I could see what felt like real progress. We communicated better. I made more effort with intimacy and sex, not because I felt obligated, but because I wanted us to work.

We agreed to close the relationship while we fixed our issues. Maybe we’d revisit being open someday, because I still sometimes feel attracted to the idea of sleeping with other guys too, but we both understood our relationship needed to come first.

Months passed, and things were genuinely good. Our jobs, finances, home life, family relationships, everything seemed to be falling into place.
I actually felt closer to him than before. Almost losing him made me realise how much I loved him and how happy he made me. I thought he felt the same.
Eventually, he stopped seeing his psychiatrist, but things still seemed fine.

Until today.
I noticed an Apple transaction on our shared bank account. Because of what happened before, my mind immediately jumped to Grindr.

I know this sounds paranoid, but I created a fake Grindr account to check whether he was being truthful.
And there he was.

A profile with a new photo. Active.

When I got home from work, I decided to give him an opportunity to tell me the truth.

I casually asked about the Apple transaction. He said he didn’t know what it was, checked, and showed me it was actually a ChatGPT subscription I’d forgotten to cancel. The irony, lol.

I then said something like, “Oh, for a moment I thought it was Grindr. Sorry. You don’t have that anymore, do you?”

He looked at me and said no.

And that’s when I lost it.

I told him to cut the bullshit because I’d already seen his profile.

What hurts most isn’t even necessarily the app itself. It’s that he lied to my face AGAIN.

After everything we went through. After seeing how much he hurt me the first time. After all those conversations about trust, honesty, and rebuilding our relationship.

He still chose to go behind my back.

And the worst part is that we weren’t even against the idea of an open relationship in the future. We just agreed that we needed to fix our relationship first.

I don’t know whether he’s actually met anyone this time, and I don’t want to assume things I can’t prove. But I do know he had an active profile and lied when I directly asked him about it.

Now I’m questioning everything.

I love this man. We’ve spent six years building a life together. We share a home, finances, plans for the future, and we’re in the middle of a partner visa process.
I genuinely thought we’d come out stronger after
the first incident.

But now I wonder whether I’m just setting myself up to be hurt again.

I don’t want to throw away six years over something that could potentially be fixed, but I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life checking whether my partner is telling me the truth.

Can trust realistically be rebuilt after someone breaks it twice, especially when the second time happens after they’ve already seen how much the first betrayal hurt you?

And there’s another layer to all of this that makes everything even harder: my immigration situation.

The thought of having to return to my home country, a developing country, and rebuild my entire life from scratch after everything I’ve sacrificed to get here is honestly unbearable. I’d rather die. I’ve spent years building a future here, and the possibility of losing not only my relationship but also the life I’ve worked so hard for is terrifying.

I feel trapped between staying with someone I love but can no longer fully trust, and potentially losing everything I’ve built over the past five years.

Anyone who’s been through something similar? Am I doomed?

Since I was 13-14 I have been identifying as asexual/aromantic to some degree. But I have always told myself that when I feel more comfortable in myself (I’m trans ftm), I would probably be open to dating someone (at least romantically, idk about the sex part), preferably a guy. Right now I’d probably say I’m gay (but also open to any gender if the person is cool bc why limit yourself) and asexual-ish.

Now, in 2023 I started high school. There was this one guy in my class who I didn’t interact that much with until the end of my second year. We hung out quite a few times that summer and are still very good friends to this day, after graduating. But, he has left me very confused about a lot of things for these past two years? I have never really had a crush on someone, or found anyone attractive in a romantic way before. He’s one of the only people in my life who really gets me, and we are very similar in how we think about stuff, but we are also veery different. Whenever I’m with him I just really feel like I want to know more about him, how his brain works, and it’s so exciting getting to know him better. He talks a lot but he is also the best listener I’ve ever met, and I feel really seen by him. He’s the kinda person I would want to take with me to all my favorite hangout-spots and have deep conversations with, or just sit in silence for a while, enjoy each other’s presence. It’s kind of as if he lights a little spark inside me whenever I’m around him, and I’m just really INTRIGUED about him, yanno? And he has appeared in a few of my dreams, in that maybe platonic-maybe romantic context… But I’ve never really fantasized about us being intimate-intimate. More like hugging, mmmaaaybe kissing..? Or just being close to each other.

Buuut, since I’ve never liked anyone romantically before, but also never really had a friendship this good, I keep second guessing myself on whether these are romantic or platonic feelings? Help please?? Also, he’s bi/pan.

I'm a 34-year-old gay male who's a virgin and been single my entire life. If you're wondering why, I spent most of my teens and twenties fixating on straight friends of mine waiting in vain for them to reciprocate and only came to fully embrace myself during the pandemic, and I'm also very much an introvert with Asperger's syndrome and exclusively straight male friends. A year ago I went on dating apps for the first time and went on two dates with a guy, but that fizzled out and went nowhere as we had similar personalities but not many common interests, and he was also still extremely close with his ex who he used to live with. I've recently started trying again as I moved house a few months ago and have been training at the gym for a year. I've never been overweight or particularly out of shape, but I've always been skinny and have gained about 30 lbs in that time without getting noticeably fatter which is a good sign I guess.

I won't hide behind the fact that I can be picky and prefer masculine, straight-acting guys, and a major reason for me hitting the gym is to hopefully attract a man who does the same. Therefore, I swipe left on the vast majority of the guys that come up, but I've had a few matches so far. I however get cold feet easily and have only initiated a conversation with three of them, one of whom never responded. With the two who did however in both cases they've quickly ended the messaging when I've told them I'm fairly new to dating. Clearly, bringing that up in very early stages is not a good tactic, but that (and being a virgin) is a conversation that would have to come up eventually.

Doing all of this stresses me out because it's such unfamiliar territory and I spent my entire life interacting with other guys in a purely platonic manner, but I'm compelled to keep trying because I don't want to end up alone forever, but I feel basically clueless on how to go about this.