Dear Prudence

Help! My Boyfriend Cheated on Me—but We Were on a Break.

Dear Prudence answers more of your questions—only for Slate Plus members.

Every week, Mallory Ortberg answers additional questions from readers, just for Slate Plus members.

Q. Moving forward: My boyfriend of five years and I recently finished a six-week break from our relationship so that he could work through some of his personal issues and decide whether to take the next step and get married. In a previous conversation, we discussed the difficulty of sexual monogamy, and I mentioned that I would consider letting him sleep with a random stranger once every year or five years to make things easier.

Well, during this break, he did just that. Now he says it was a bad experience, he never wants to do it again, and he wants to get married. He apologized for doing it without telling me, and after the emotional stress of this break I just don’t have it in me to be angry at him.

My gut is telling me to forgive him, trust him when he says it won’t happen again, and move forward—but I’m not sure I should trust my lack of anger at the moment. Can you help me think through this? We live together and extending the break is not really an option.

A: I side with your boyfriend and Ross from Season 3 of Friends on this one: If you and your boyfriend were on a break, you were on a break, and neither of you were bound by the terms of your relationship. That doesn’t mean you have to feel good about what happened, or that you shouldn’t continue to have serious conversations about your expectations and various feelings about monogamy. But if you declared a break from your relationship in order to reevaluate what you each want, you can’t also insist that he remain monogamous during the break. He slept with someone else and has decided he’d rather be with you than single; if you want to be together, take him at his word and move forward.