A Boyfriend Over Dignity?

When I read the question about having to stand my ground on an issue despite risking losing a close friend or a job, one issue immediately flew into my mind.  I have been debating sharing this topic with everyone but I finally decided to just go with it; this is anonymous, right? :)

Here goes nothing.  This past summer I was drinking with three, now ex, friends. As we all may know from experience or observation, reasoning and rationality and all else goes out the window for some people, and let me just say, I had never been that kind of drunk in my life.  However, this night was completely different than every other experience I have ever had.  To get to the point, I ended up totaling my car in the process of driving home and it turns out that night I had cheated on my boyfriend of 4 years. 

I’ve heard that girls who regret things in the morning pretend not to know what happened because they were drunk, but in this situation I really had no idea.  I knew right away that something was different and I had to tell my boyfriend I might have done something.  He demanded that I find out exactly what happened so I had to contact my friends I was with and ask what happened.  After the truth came out, that I had indeed cheated on him, he was understandably furious.  He wanted to literally kill everyone who was there that night because they all knew I was with him, they let the cheating happen and did nothing to stop me from driving home. 

However, I knew the blame was not solely on them; I do feel extremely guilty and responsible. I knew that if I let him get his revenge on them that I would never feel right about myself again.  I was facing losing my boyfriend or giving into him and losing my sense of morality.  I knew I had to stick up for myself despite the pressure he put on me to “get them back.”  This may seem like an easy decision to many but for me it wasn’t that easy.  I had become the bad person and he acted like everything would be okay if I just gave him the information.  I love him so much and the temptation of giving into him was there but my critical-thinking kept my opinions strong.  He could have gotten thrown into jail or even prison if he let his anger get the best of him and it would’ve been my fault.  Then, not only would I feel guilty about cheating, I would feel guilty for allowing those people to get hurt and for him getting into trouble.      

We are still together and dealing with the problems I created.  Thanks to standing my ground, he thanks me for preventing more problems and I will never feel that guilt I could’ve so easily brought upon myself.

I hope you are not too quick to judge; it took a lot of courage to publish this post.