My longtime boyfriend cheated on me, but I don't want to leave him. What should I do?

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I was one of your kids. My parents were about your age when they split up.

My mom told my father it was over and threw him out of the house. She told me she could have dealt with the drinking, it was the cheating that she couldn’t handle. He was an alcoholic. She eventually remarried a guy in the military and they got out of the state.

He was verbally abusive and controlling. To hear my mom speak of it, they loved each other but couldn’t get along. He would only buy cars that had a standard transmission and wouldn’t teach her how to drive them. The real reason was because he didn’t want her to catch him philandering.

He was devastated after they split up. His alcoholism kicked into high gear and he had trouble holding down a job after that. Before he was what they call a “functioning alcoholic”. In his thirties he finally found AA and it changed his life. He’s miserable, but not doing too bad.

You can throw him out if you really want to. You make the decision, and God finds a way. When my mom threw my father out, she knew with a dead certainty that it was over. She wouldn’t ever take him back no matter how much he tried. She had no idea how she would support us or what it would do to us in the long run to grow up without a father.

I think she made the right decision. Of course, it’s just hindsight, I have no idea what my life would have been like if they’d stayed together. Maybe better, maybe worse. Watching my mom wither away under the thumb of the horrible person my father was back then, would have probably made me miserable too. I would have probably picked up very bad habits from him too.