How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

I’m in a monogamous relationship. My partner went on a boys’ trip to Costa Rica. I was anxious about it to begin with because he took this same trip, same people, a year before we met, and he told me all about the hedonism that took place.

Present day: After he returned from the most recent trip, while we were out, he left his phone open to a text exchange between him and a woman from Costa Rica. He left his cell phone on the table, and he walked away. I saw the texts: they included him calling this girl beautiful and talking about some mundane things, but also evidence of videos and pictures (video and pictures deleted, but their ghosts forever preserved). He denied that he did anything physical/sexual, but did say the group, as a whole, met girls in local bars and brought them back to where they stayed to swim and hang out. He insists it was all innocent.

I’ve asked him a few times to please be up-front with me, and he is sticking with this story. Obviously, I wasn’t born yesterday. I am now dealing with one question: Do I stay, and if I do, how do I get over it? How do you stay with someone you love despite the bad choice they made? We have a pretty good relationship, we have fun, we have great sex, and I love most of his friend group. I’m torn because I do not want to be a doormat. If I stay, I feel like I’m leaving opportunities for future indiscretions.

Admittedly, I have thought “why not” and considered playing around with other people just because it seems to be open season, in my mind. I’ve asked him if he needs an open relationship, especially on trips, but he denied this invitation and shut down communication specific to this particular topic. Please give me advice on things I should consider while I’m contemplating whether I should stay in this relationship or go.

—Vulnerable and Sad

Dear Vulnerable and Sad,

Despite your lack of hard proof of cheating, your suspicions are reasonable. I wonder if your partner offered an explanation as to why he’s small-talking and calling “beautiful” a woman whom he didn’t spend much time with, regardless of what actually went down during said time. Even if it’s “innocent,” he should be admitting that he could see why it looks suspicious and why it isn’t as bad as it looks. Over-defensiveness is only going to make a red flag redder.

For the sake of efficiency, let’s assume your suspicions are correct. Firstly, forgiving someone doesn’t make you a doormat. I understand not wanting to ignore bad behavior and certainly not wanting to react in such a way that it will make it easy for him to deceive you again, but forgiveness is a necessary part of maintaining relationships with members of the highly fallible species that is humankind.

Forgiving him might look like straightforwardly telling him, “I think you cheated on me with the woman you were texting with. This is hurtful to me, and I don’t want you to do it again, but I want to maintain our relationship. I forgive you.” Don’t back down or revise your suspicions because he said so—lean into them and tell him that you’re choosing to move forward with him regardless.

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Internally, this process may be more difficult, but it might help to acknowledge some truths: People like variety, and your partner is in all likelihood, attracted to more people than just you. So he took a taste. He did so unethically and at cost to your emotions and other internal mechanisms (like self-esteem), but desire can override a lot of rational thinking. Acknowledging that your partner is human and that his desire for others can have nothing to do with you and isn’t actually even a threat is one way to process this. It may not be easy to get there—I recommend reading some books about non-monogamy like The Ethical Slut and Opening Up.

Those books will prime you for further conversations about non-monogamy. If you approach that subject again, you might want to frame it differently: Instead of asking him if he wants to be open, why don’t you say that it’s something you want? That’s at least somewhat true, right? Even if you never get there and all it amounts to is talk, taking the pressure off him and his desires might make it easier for him to communicate. He might feel like you asking him if he needs an open relationship is a trap; you expressing your own desires could be disarming. Finding this text exchange could be a turning point. You are under no obligation to forgive him, and perhaps after all this reflection you find that you simply can’t. But if you think preserving your relationship is the right thing to do, use this as an opportunity for deeper, more honest communication.

—Rich

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