My girlfriend (23f) and I (26m) have been together for 2 1/2 years and she cheated on me 3 days ago.

Edit: Thank you for responding, everyone. We've been talking back and forth all day and while I've been constant on wanting to make things whole again she has even back and forth about if she thinks it's even worth fixing because she doesnt know how. I'm not sure what to tell her. What would be the first steps?

I'm not sure where to even begin, as the weight of it all is finally hitting me. My girlfriend and I have been dating since March of 2016. We hit it off and things were amazing for the first year or so. Little things popped up afterwards when we moved and she began to get homesick, she moved 2 hours from where she's lived her whole life a little over 4 months before she and I got together, and things started going south.

After some rough patches, finding out she wanted to move back home through messages to her friends (without specifying she wanted me to come with her) we talked about her happiness and she said she wasn't as happy as she wanted to be, living where we live now and expressed some concerns she had with my part in the relationship.

I've since worked on those issues, I spend more time with her, less with games and help out around the house more than I used to. I've always been bad with dishes and laundry but am now usually the one taking care of them (we do laundry together) while she cooks most often.

The other night we had made a pot roast and she took some to a friends house because his fridge had broken overnight and they lost all the food they had in it. I was worried something was going on because of some behavioral things I'd picked up on the previous nights when we had all 3 been at the gym together. I asked her what was taking so long for her to get home (he lives only 5 minutes away and it had been almost an hour.

She told me she stopped to get gas, talked with her crazy friend on the phone for a bit (who called her because she didn't respond to a Snapchat message fast enough) and had to wait for him as he was in the bathroom when she arrived.

I've had trust issues in the past, both in previous relationships and with her because of her lying about wanting to move away and being happy with me. I asked her about it and expressed my concerns. She showed me a receipt for gas as well as her call log showing that her friend did in fact call her during the time she was gone. I let it go, blaming my own paranoia and fear and we went to bed. This morning ( these events happened this past Sunday evening) I went through her phone (I know, it's bad, don't do it, you're breaking her trust, etc. etc.) before I could stop myself and I saw messages saved between her and this guy.

I'll skip the details of the messages, needless to say I confronted her and she admitted to making out with him and to him having his hand down her pants. She cried, I cried a while after and am unsure if I've stopped since. She's at work as I write this. I've since asked her if she would have told me if I didn't find out, and she said probably not. She followed up by saying she didn't know when I asked if she would have let this happen again and get further.

She's said that she wants to make things right but doesn't know how, that her unhappiness has made her into something she's not. But she doesn't really know why she's unhappy (beyond not living back in her hometown with her friends). I'm at a loss myself as to what to do. I love her, even after this, whether that's a mistake or not remains to be seen. I want to move past this and forgive her but I know it won't be easy, for either of us. She has said the same to me, that she still loves me, doesn't know why she did it and wants to try and fix things.

What should we do? What are the most successful options? And what can I do to ease this pain..

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

tldr: girlfriend cheated, expressed remorse and we still love each other but the trust is gone. How can we bring it back and make things between us better again?

Submitted October 31, 2018 at 08:50AM by BananaNut6 https://ift.tt/2qiWhBe