I [25/M] may have ruined my relationship with my boyfriend [26/M] due to a drunken mistake. Can I save it?

This is a fairly catastrophic fuck up, and if it were the bf here we'd be pretty strongly telling him to walk away and not look back. That being said he isn't here and can make his own decisions, so we might as well tell you what you can do.

You had multiple serious problems, and if you are going to make any sort of sincere effort at making the situation right it's going to take multiple major changes on your part.

Problem 1: You got black out drunk and made a huge mistake. Solution: You are too old to blame fuck ups on being drunk, and you clearly can't or won't control yourself when you have too much to drink. You need to severely curtail your drinking, or better yet go pretty much outright cold turkey and stop. At the most no more than a drink or two when around anyone other than your SO, nothing more than the slightest buzz. Doesn't matter if it means you aren't having as good a time, doesn't matter if you totally have it under control or your SO doesn't care, this is your penance and a reminder you are solely responsible for your actions and the last time you let yourself lose control you fucked it up. You should probably consider this regardless of whether your SO takes you back.

Problem 2: You repeatedly got involved with someone else. Solution: This one is going to be more introspective. You need to figure out why you didn't say anything to your SO when you felt the other guy was giving you looks, why you didn't put a hard stop to things when he started flirting and getting physical, why you allowed someone else to kiss you and why you went back after being separated. Did you like the attention, were you caught up in the moment, whatever it is you need to take a deep and honest look at yourself and find out what was wrong with you. None of this "my friends and family think I'm a good person", you were clearly in the wrong here and can't honestly ask for forgiveness until you can explain why it happened and how you can guarantee it won't again without nebulous " I wouldn't do that ".

Then once you know what the issue is you take absolute, concrete steps to make sure it doesn't come up again. If it was the attention, you tell your SO whenever anyone flirts and make him the center of your positive reinforcement world. If it was getting caught up in the moment, you never spend time alone with people you are attracted to or who show an interest in you. Etc, etc.

By all rights you deserve to have your SO consider this an unreconcilable breach of his trust and leave the relationship. If he decides not to the onus is on you to make and maintain the sweeping changes that move this back to viable relationship territory. After you get over this, if you get over it, don't grovel and cringe or apologize the rest of your life but don't ever forget what you did or let things slip to that point again. If you can't deal with the idea that this is the new dynamic in your relationship and always need to be do the decent thing and let your SO move on without you.

/r/relationships Thread