Don't know what to believe any more about my BF and incriminating emails

• I am going through a major dilemma right now. I am not sure if I can continue with my relationship with my boyfriend, due to a very incriminating set of emails I saw in his inbox. My question is, do you think this is something to break up over? Or can I believe his story and give him the benefit of the doubt? See more details inside. First of all, our almost 3-year relationship before this was great. We lived together and were discussing long term plans. He was the best guy I ever dated – was very thoughtful, kind, funny. We were in love. He was the kind of guy I could count on to be there for me in hard times. Still love the person he is, even after all this. Here is some background specific to the situation: My bf is very much into kinky p0rn and has been this way for our entire relationship of 3 years. I would often participate in these kinds of acts with him. It was never my “thing” but I enjoyed making him happy, so I went along with it. He would watch that kind of p0rn and it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me how often he watched it. I never had any suspicions or worries about his usage because for the most part, I consider it a healthy, normal part of relationships. I have always had trust and insecurity issues in relationships. Not only with him but with all boyfriends before me – so I think it’s my issue. So the other day I went through his email and found a string of emails over 4 months that he had been sending to a p0rn star from the site that he frequents. I found the website where he obtained her email, which is clearly an ad she placed for setting up bookings (photo/video) with her. She says in the ad “fly me out to where you are, I love to travel”. The first email he sends to her is “how much is a shoot?”. She says something like “I don’t do photo shoots any more but can do a video” and he responds saying that he is an “independent” and will pay for airfare to fly her out to either of two locations near us to do [insert multiple kink acts here]. It looks like she has only responded the one time asking for details, and then stops responding while his multiple emails keep coming. This doesn’t sound like him, doesn’t sound like something he would actually do. But the evidence is clear in front of me. He insists, over and over, that he was not ever going to actually meet up with her, that it was exciting for him but he was just fooling around. He asks me to look at his character – is he the type of guy who would pay thousands to fly out a p0rn star and pay to do a shoot? I think “no, that’s not you” but I don’t know anymore. Also to give him the benefit of the doubt – if he had really met up with her, how would that have possibly worked? Not only would he have to pose as a legit photographer and convince her of that, but he’d probably be IN the shoot, and I believe he cares enough about his professional career to put it at risk like that. I found the email chain on Sunday and honestly, I don’t know what to think anymore. We’ve talked about it excessively at this point. I can’t eat, I think I’ve lost about 10 pounds this week already, and I can’t think about anything EXCEPT this. My head is spinning and I feel extremely conflicted. Do I believe this person that I’ve spent close to 3 years with and thought of marrying, or do I believe the email chain and what it implies? Is there even a SLIM chance that this is not something he actually thought of doing – just a fantasy that he would never have acted on? I don’t know. I go back and forth with either “he would never actually do this” to “the email chain says it all, don’t be an idiot”. Please tell me what you think, and what you would do if you had the same experience. I don’t want to throw everything away over an assumption that he was going to cheat on me, but I also don’t want to be a fool and stay with someone who would do this. I want to believe him so, so badly that this was just an innocent thing, but my alarm bells are going off. Is his story even half plausible? Or is his story bull and I need to move on? Thank you.

• Answer:

  Your whole body is telling you what your brain refuses to acknowledge. It doesn't really matter what he would have actually done, had it come right down to it, he sent the emails. That means that at a minimum he was trying to have a dialog with this person. Which he did. Some couples have a "free pass" in a joking kind of way. You pick out a high-profile person, that you'd never in a million years be able to get close to, let alone have a fling with, and for each person that's the "free pass." So for me it would be Vincent D'Onofrio and for Husbunny it would be Kate Bush. Okay, never going to happen, but we laugh about it and that's the end of it. In this case, your BF explored the possibility. Even if he didn't have the means to follow up on it, he went there. What this tells me is that he has an issue with boundaries. It's possible that the person he was corresponding with picked up on it and stopped responding, which says a lot about the creep factor involved. The fact that he won't own up and be honest about it is a problem. You might be able to sort it out in couple's therapy. These aren't binary things, either ignore it or DTMFA. You can decide that it's a HUGE issue for you and that you need to process what happened and you need him to own his part in it, including what he was REALLY after. You don't have to decide right now, but in this instance, I'd start looking for the exits because what he did violated your trust and he doesn't seem to get it.