Expert: Don - 5/27/2008

Question
Hi, my name's Chris, I'm 21, a student and for the past 2 years and 4 months I've been with a girl who's a bit older than myself (23).
As far as I know she hasn't cheated on me yet, but she has lied to me about various things in the past, and we've fought over her lies a few times.
Now we both live in South Africa, and later this year she intends to go on one of those "student working holidays" in the U.S.A where a person works in a ski resort. She wants to go with her younger sister and one of her sister's friends.

However, one of my closest friends recently went on one such trip, and he commented how all of the girls he met there were very willing to have sex with almost anyone,  being in a "party mood" almost all the time and many of them regularly sleeping with various differnet guys over the course of their trip.

Furthermore, my gf's sister and her sister's friend aren't the kind that would tell me if anything happened. They've both proven this in the past, since I know them from high school, and in an unrelated case a while back, their one friend cheated on her boyfriend of a number of years, and they simply kept quiet about it ot protect thier friend.

I just want to say that I don't buy this whole "I was drunk" excuse, as I've been near comatose a number of times and still aware of my actions. So i certainly knew what i was doing.

Now I've never cheated on this girl, but in my heart I really feel as though she will cheat on me whilst away, and then never tell me about it. As a result of this, I've found that I've bee trying to severe my emotional attachment to her to lessen the expected pain, furthermore I now have regular thoughts about cheating on her because I'm certain she will do the same to me...

Have you any advice? Many thanks

Answer
I think you're letting your imagination get the best of you and need to relax and calm down before you make a mistake.

From what you are saying you give your girlfriend very little credit and it makes me wonder why you are with her at all. You have to realize that just because some other girls went out and cheated on their boyfriends and had sex with a bunch of guys while they were working at that place doesn't mean that your girlfriend will. She's her only person and she'll make her own choices, you can't let what a bunch of other people did have a negative effect on how you think about and look at your girlfriend.

If she has given no reason in the past to believe that she will cheat, why do you think all of a sudden she'll decide to cheat? You're just overreacting to something some guy told you about some girls that you don't even know.

You need to have faith in your relationship and trust that your girlfriend is a good woman and won't do anything to hurt you. And if you can't do that then you don't need to be with her at all because you obviously have some trust issues with this woman and shouldn't be in a relationship with a woman you can't trust.

So stop being paranoid and give your girlfriend the benefit of the doubt before you do something stupid and end up losing her over nothing.