I'll try and describe the situation as succinctly as possible. Your honest feedback is greatly appreciated - discovering TRP has made me better with women as well as other areas of my life.

Anyways,

• We're early 20s, I'm a year older. Met in last year of University, I was her first. I work in technology, she's becoming a school teacher. Meet in September, start of the last year.

• Perfect relationship for the first 5 or so months. Great sex all the time, everywhere; girl is very respectful. Honeymoon phase if you will.

• While finishing up school I launch a start-up company. Become overly stressed, our interactions are shorter, and she starts feeling neglected. Start having fights, etc. I start forgetting important events, e.g. 6 month anniversary (is that a thing?). To be honest this is the first decent relationship I've had go past a year, so I'm a little out of my element. Plus the start-up thing doesn't help.

• Few more months go by into summer. Sex is still really good, as much as I want/can handle, though it's a lot more make-up sex at this point. Common complaints are, "You only see me at night", "You never take me anywhere", "You forgot about XYZ". I really did really mess one up: I left early to catch a plane flight for a one-day business trip, on the same day of her graduation. I thought I could do both, but universities are always behind schedule and apparently when I left (after being at the ceremony for 3 hours), ten minutes later she's up there getting her diploma. Jeez. That was a major conflict; crying in front of her mother and all her friends; nearly left me when I got back.

• Get through the end of summer, it's August now, and my business has failed; at least my role in it. I'm somewhat depressed, and frankly not putting enough energy into the relationship. We have a 5 day vacation trip, and apparently I wasn't all that fun, and again there was fighting and she cried, etc.

• End of August now. We get back from the trip. That night I get the phone call, and it's over.

Now let me summarize what happened since then:

• It's Sep1 and she's about to move to another town to start her professional degree, about 2.5 hours away (semi-long distance?). The day before I tried "winning her back" in my semi-depressed and all-too-logical state. But on the last possible day before she leaves, I turn it around, "rally" if you will, get to meet up in person (we had stuff at each other's places), find that original fun and confident guy she first met, and we reconcile. In fact we have sex behind a church. We bid farewell and vow to work on our relationship, even though we are not in the same town.

• We visit each other every 2 weeks. It's very up and down for these next few months, though it gets into a better rhythm. But... cue Valentine's day, which I fuck up. Essentially I had us stuck in one venue for half the day and I was too sexual in public. Uncalibrated if you will. That night, another fight, potential break up, hot make up sex, keep on going.

• From then on towards May, i.e. today, I've been "getting it" if you will, with respect to relationship game. I show some thoughtfulness, e.g. normal person stuff that she likes (write her a card to celebrate a professional achievement, talk to her a bit more about my professional life, pick out a dinner spot once in a while, etc).

• Some more details: I'm not, or at least haven't been, a great "boyfriend". What I'm good at, and this going to make me sound like a douchebag, is having a high "efficiency ratio" in the relationship. Hell, I joked with my friends that this is the "alpha ratio". Basically, if you spend X hours with a girl in a given week, what % of that time is spent having sex and doing what you want, vs. lame relationship stuff? It's always been very high. Obviously it's inevitable that girls will start seeking more commitment-like traits, and I suppose I fought this too hard for too long. And, as I mentioned before, I do have some social calibration issues (basically, tech guy who learned confidence and attraction skills).

• Clearly I wasn't (am not) very mature, and perhaps have been doing too much "taking" rather than giving; though to be fair, giving her multiple orgasms seemed to solve most problems. That being said, after my first business failed, I came to a realization: I want a stable monogamous relationship with a supportive partner. Lame, I know. But I don't really get the same thrills from having multiple plates (something I have experienced) as I do from engrossing myself in my work. Right now I'm working a full-time job, doing some side contracting, and launching a project on the side. It's a lot of work, but I love it. My gf keeps busy volunteering and getting her teaching career started, and towards the end of the week we go out and do something nice, then fuck all weekend and recharge.

• To this date, we've been together over 20 months.

So what's the problem? Well, over the last week we've been talking about planning a summer trip at the end of August, it would be the 1 year anniversary since we started our "round 2" of the relationship. She's really into anniversaries lol. Anyways, we're getting into planning specifics (these days, this flight, these hotels, etc) and today out of the blue I get a call from her, all sobbing.

She says, "I don't think we should go on the trip". After getting her to calm down, she drops the bomb shell: during that half a week or so last August when we were broken up, she slept with someone.

Apparently, during the rough summer she started to confide in a male friend. I guess this went on for a few months. Then after the break up, they met up, and... yeah. I asked for some details. Apparently the guy was a year younger, and she, quote, "Did it to try and move on from you" (me). Apparently she cried afterwards and never spoke to the guy again. On the phone after the sob story I told her I didn't hate her but I need some time on my own. She pleaded to meet up later in the day via text but I denied.

Ugh. What the fuck. This hit me like a bag of bricks. She has a lot of qualities that make her better than other women, AWALT notwithstanding. After a year and a half I start seeing her in my future more. It's always too good to be true until it isn't -- virgin girl with a heart of gold who pretty much satisfies your every need. She does shit like plan my birthday gifts months in advance. But now my trust is broken, no other way to say it.

If she told me at the time when I got back together with her, I don't know what I would have done either. But keeping this from me for 6+ months... Can I trust anything? What else might trickle out? Well, if anything else were to come out, I can guarantee that this would be a non-issue: I would have to drop her. But if it's just this, damn, I don't know.

I'm pretty well-read on TRP materials, and I try to apply them in my daily life. I have been doing so with great success compared to a few years ago, thankfully. But this is just so... weird and borderline. Here's what's fucking with me, i.e. why I can't make an easy decision one way or another:

• We were technically broken up (it was finalized by her).

• But am I the "beta bux" she left for a fling? I was her first partner, we fuck for hours when we meet up, often at the expense of doing "relationship" things. Why? Because 1) that's what I generally want, and 2) it regularly puts her to sleep. I hit that ass good. Besides, I don't even have bux -- a constant source of tension was my inability to do semi-nice things because of my broke entrepreneur status for months at a time.

• I don't know about the other guy, but since she is so adamant in contacting me, I suppose I can find out more details, if you guys think that's a good idea. How "alpha" can this other guy be if he was orbiting for months, finally gets some after she leaves me, and then cries afterwards? Of course, with my trust broken, I do not know if I can believe her account of events. To be clear, I place all blame on her for her actions; if she wanted to do it she was going to do it.

• I feel repulsed by the fact that someone else was with my girl in that way. I don't know how much of this is a legitimate feeling worth having, or how much is a remnant from my high school days where I had a fairly traumatic event involving a girl who rejected me openly flirting with another guy in front of me (they were both my science lab partners, christ what a semester). As I said, I am the more experienced one sexually, and while I would never take a high notch-count woman seriously, it's not like I need a virgin, though I had one.

• Before this event, I was very positive about wanting her in my future.

Now, I know what I can't do -- forgive her unconditionally, and for that matter, forgive her any time soon. It would show too much weakness and absolve the bad behavior. Fuck the reasoning though... I wouldn't want to because I'm legitimately hurt. One thing advised to me by a friend (another TRP reader) is to downgrade her into a plate. But where does that go? Exploring other thoughts, is there any way over time that this relationship could be repaired?

If anyone's read this whole thing, I really do thank you and look forward to your feedback.