Twice Bitten

Twice Bitten By Wayne and Tamara My fiancée cheated on me. We dated in college and broke up because she cheated on me and I found out. That was five years ago. Since then we’ve been together off and on. We are best friends to the core and love spending time together. We got back together last December and got engaged in April. A quick engagement, but we know everything there is to know about the other and can’t imagine not being in each other’s life. We are both 27 and, I thought, ready for marriage. Well, three weeks ago she went to an environmental conference in France. We emailed each other every day until last week. Since then I’ve received two emails, both short and missing her normal upbeat tone. I knew something was up. So I went into her email account yesterday, which was completely wrong of me. I couldn’t help myself. From a heart-wrenching note to her best friend, I learned she cheated on me with a 35-year-old Englishman at the same program. She is not sure she loves him but has serious doubts about marrying me. I love her, but at the same time I am absolutely furious. The worst part is I must wait another week to see her. Her family loves me and will be so upset with what she has done. Can this be fixed? Can we move past this and stay engaged? Anthony Anthony, when you notice a mole changing color and shape, you go to a doctor to see if it is malignant. That’s what you did when you went into your fiancée’s email account. You had reason to be suspicious, and you discovered your suspicions were correct. Five years ago you were offered a chance to learn a lesson. If you had mastered it, you might be married to the right woman now. But as an old cliché says, when we don’t master a lesson in life, it keeps coming back at us until we do. Wayne & Tamara Marshmallow Man I made a big mistake. I’ve been with my girl for awhile now, but on vacation a week ago I got caught up in the excitement with my buddies. I ended up playing a game of strip poker with two of my guy friends and two girls they know. Nothing happened other than the game itself. I refused to have physical contact with either of the girls, and over the course of a few days I came clean with my girlfriend. I have so much remorse and would never do anything like this again. Is this repairable? Is what we had lost forever? Holt Holt, in a famous experiment 4-year-olds were shown a marshmallow and told if they waited 20 minutes before eating it, they would get a second marshmallow. Then their behavior was recorded. When the children turned 18, researchers checked to see how they were doing. The children who waited were discovered to be more confident, trustworthy, and reliable, and they had much higher test scores. The lesson? Impulsivity often forecasts a grim future. Your girlfriend knows when someone is in a relationship with a person they love, that person walks with them wherever they go and whatever they do. Now she is trying to decide whether an experiment with 4-year-olds forecasts her future with you. Wayne & Tamara