I was cheated on by my boyfriend over 2 years ago and am still trying to get over it...

Hi everyone. I'm posting on here because I can no longer go to my friends and family for advice about this, and I am also afraid to bring it up to my boyfriend because it is upsetting for the both of us to talk about his past. To give you a little recap about our relationship, we met almost three years ago and started hanging out immediately. He was in the final stages of a horrible relationship that was ending with a girl who treated him horribly. She was a cheater herself, with many alcohol and drug problems and all sorts of crazy that she made him feel responsible for. He fell in love with me because I was the opposite. I was the first person who didn't put any pressure on him and simply enjoyed hanging out with him and he felt like he could be himself without any consequences. However, the first two or three months we started dating, he was not good at committing to me. His ex girlfriend (the crazy one) talked him into a night of drinking with her which ended in him cheating on me. He said as soon as it started he ended it, knowing that it was just the alcohol making him feel attracted to her again. I guess I can't blame him, because after being with someone for two years I would probably unleash my emotions in the same way if I were drunk and with them. He told me about it about a week after it had happened, mind you, we had seen each other the entire week as if nothing were wrong, but he finally said the four worst words in the english language "we need to talk". He said he felt sick to his stomach and could not stop crying once he told me. Of course I was angry so I left his house but we didn't break up. Slowly, I got over it and wanted to forgive him. He promised and promised he wouldn't mess up again because he was so thankful to still have me in his life. However, things get a little messy over the next several months of our relationship timeline. He had started hanging out with a girl that was part of our group of friends. Sometimes he would hang out with her alone, sometimes with me, and sometimes with a group. There was something really off-putting about the girl. She was weird, reckless, unstable and creepy to be honest. I didn't like her, but I tolerated hanging out with her because I knew she was friends with all of my friends. Things got really weird when my boyfriend started to sort of stay the night at her house but not "sleep" there. He would call me sometimes at 5 or 6am to let me know he was with her, but that he was awake and they weren't "sleeping over" at each others houses. After finding out about him cheating on me with his ex, I was not okay with him hanging out with her and I told him that. He seemed to comply and say "okay, okay, you're totally right, I won't hangout with her alone anymore". Even so, he continued to hangout with her when I wasn't around. I think it was because I was young, I was still in high school and they had both graduated so they could stay up late together on week nights. I would always go to bed early because I was still in school. It seemed like nothing more than a convenient friendship, but there were aspects of it that really weirded me out. Like the fact that she never wanted to talk to or acknowledge me. It was very privatized which isn't really okay in any romantic, monogamous relationship. Anyways, eventually their friendship ended because one night they were hanging out and he said she "tried to do stuff" with him and he said no. She confessed feelings she had for him and he didn't want the inappropriateness of their friendship to continue. I was happy about this because 1) she was never really a friend to ME and 2) I was always suspicious that something was going on, or I at least knew she was really attracted and interested in my boyfriend. We continued with our relationship for almost another entire year without any problems, until I got an anonymous message on tumblr. I was receiving messages that said "keep an eye on your boyfriend". I finally replied to one asking who the anonymous person was. Then I get an even worse response saying that my boyfriend had slept with her countless times and I was the only one who didn't know about it. Naturally, I freaked out and called my boyfriend immediately to confront him about it. I was so upset that he was just trying to calm me down, and told me that someone was just messing with me and that none of it was true. Again, we continued on with our relationships for a few months with no more problems, not even on the internet. However, the question still bothered me. The fact that I was always suspicious about her and then someone tells me something DID happen between them was really unsettling. Finally, one day I decided to text the girl a hateful message saying that she was never a good friend and that she really messed up our relationship. To my surprise, she replied with a confession that the rumors were partially true. That my boyfriend had been cheating on me with her until I finally met her (which was only a couple months into our relationship, which made it easier to get over). So, to summarize all of that, basically my boyfriend and I started dating in January of 2011. He cheated on me with his ex around February of 2011. He continued hanging out with the other girl for a few months, but I finally met her sometime during March or April 2011 which is apparently when the cheating stopped, although they continued to just hang out. However, I didn't find out about any of this until April of 2012. So instead of just telling me he cheated way back then, he was afraid of hurting me and tried to hold it in for a very long time until it seemed more appropriate. Honestly, if he had told me back when it happened I might have left him for good. But the fact that it was so drawn out and I found out at a time where we had been dating and everything was going well for so long, I didn't want to leave him. It didn't seem worth it to trash a year of love and companionship over something that happened so long ago. It's been hard for me to trust him ever since, even now that we are almost a year from me finding out about the second series of cheating on me. It's hard for me to trust him especially when he goes out to drink, even though he doesn't really get drunk or out of control. I'm afraid of posting my story on here because I know people will criticize me and tell me to leave him. But he's not a "cheater" that takes pride in being with multiple women. Back then he had just come out of a very manipulative relationship and was feeling very low about himself. Even though he knew what a grand prize he had right in front of him (me) he searched for attention and a self-destructive companion in this other girl. He was also heavily medicated at the time because the stress of his previous relationship gave him depression and anxiety. He took medication that made him act like a completely different person. I remember nights where he would act very manic and angry (never abusive or anything) because of his medication. Now, he is much better and deals with stress like any other average person. I decided to write this post because I recently "lurked" the blog of the second girl he cheated on me with. I don't know why, I guess I wanted to see if she still lived here or what she was doing with her life. Fortunately, I've discovered she is quite the low-life who doesn't have a job, eats excessively and smokes pot all day. Nothing to be jealous of or compare myself to, whatsoever. However, to my surprise, there were some eerie things she had written that were definitely about me and my boyfriend that really freaked me out. It's sort of like poetry that she writes with tons of references to the friendship she had with me and my boyfriend. It sickens me, because there are plenty of posts about her feelings about him, as if she still has feelings about him and posts of memories about him that seem very romantic, as if they were in love. As far as I understood, my boyfriend kind of used her and didn't really care about her. But her retrospective writing seems she interpreted his relationship with her completely differently. At this point it shouldn't matter to me, I know my boyfriend doesn't think about her and I definitely know he never loved her, at least not like he loves me. Their time together was so short, and he was always in a relationship with me, so how could they have been serious? I'm pretty sure it was just a series of sleazy hook ups when him and I hadn't really fallen in love yet and became serious about each other. Anyways, looking at her blog really upset me. I'm very haunted by this girl. I have violent dreams about hurting and killing her even though I wouldn't do that in real life because it wouldn't change what happened. If anything, I'm writing this because I want advice on how to continue being happy with my boyfriend, despite such an ugly, horrible, hurtful past. He feels very hurt because of it to. Whenever I bring it up I don't even cry because it doesn't effect me anymore, but he does, because he still feels guilty. We haven't talked about it in a very long time, so there's no need to bring it up now. However, I need to learn how to completely forgive and forget him if I really want to stay with him and be happy with him. I want to know if someone else has been through something similar with their boyfriend or husband and how their relationship progressed. Sometimes I think well, yeah I could leave him, and I have plenty of reasons, but it seems like it would be just to make a point or to conform with society's belief of a perfectly monogamous relationship or the common claim that "once a cheater, always a cheater". In this case that's definitely not true, and I'm not lying to myself. My boyfriend was going through a very transitional period in his life and perhaps wasn't ready to settle down. Now that we have settled down, he talks about marrying me everyday and tells me he loves me so much that I can't even keep track of how many times a day he reminds me. One thing I do want to improve is my trust in him. It's been two years now and he hasn't made any mistakes since those two awful situations. I feel like he's earned my trust so that when he goes out to bars or parties that I should just know he's not interested in any other girl and wouldn't drink enough or make another stupid mistake like that. I believe he made those mistakes because he was emotionally unstable and he was getting involved with girls who were emotionally unstable. Fortunately, I was there to be the girl who showed him what a healthy relationship could be like and that I wasn't going to manipulate him or encourage self-destructive behavior. He's now very successful and lives in a nice town house with his two best guy friends who have been very supportive of our relationship (in fact, they're jealous of how happy we are together). So yeah, sorry this is so long. But I need help forgetting this girl and moving on in order to accept the love and commitment that my boyfriend can now provide. Sometimes I feel so haunted that I want to break up, but I feel like I would be more sad to live without him and try to be happy with someone else that it is more worth it to forgive him and just let myself be happy with a guy who loves and adores me and tells me everyday that he doesn't want anyone else. Also, should I talk to him about all of this? Or would it just upset him again like I'm throwing it in his face?

you need to tell him. you can not be happy if you still think about it and if he does feel this way about you then he will have no problem letting you talk through your feelings and working it out with you.

Hi, sweetie, I just hope you choose to leave him and find the strength to do so. I know its hard, I am here because I can't do it for myself. Good luck