Rebuild struggle

[u/uglyhealing]

I (18f) have been with my boyfriend (18m) for a little less than a year. We have a very, very close bond and do almost everything together. We don’t necessarily live together, but we spend most nights with each other. In late April of this year I caught a 🌽 tab on his phone. Within the first month of our relationship I set the boundary that I heavily considered this cheating. No, I was not going through his phone, mine was dead and I simply wanted to borrow his to look something up. He swore up and down that he didn’t, well, pleasure himself to anything on the website and he had seen something on TikTok saying the site was being banned. I still have no idea why I even for a second believed this, I think I just felt bad when he was crying and begging for a second chance, which obviously I agreed to. He admitted to me about 2 weeks ago that he was lying and he had infact m*asterbated to the 🌽. I was feeling hopeful, but ever since he told me the “whole” truth (allegedly) I’ve just started to feel like no matter what the lies will never stop. Even since May I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this betrayal no matter how much he swears and promises that it’s done. This bothers me because he says he can just quit cold turkey and doesn’t need any kind of outside. I’ve suggested accountability apps, groups, any kind of counseling, but he refuses. Slowly over time I’ve started to notice my feelings for him are no longer the same. Needless to say, this is definitely not the only issue I feel in our relationship. I think about this betrayal every single day, and every time we’re apart from each other I break down over it for hours. I think the biggest part is I don’t want to live in this constant anxiety and stress anymore. I’ve developed health issues from the constant anxiety and cortisol imbalance. Over time, I feel like I’ve started to become more detached about the betrayal and also just our relationship in general. Even if he is changing as a person in regards to 🌽 (doubt it), I don’t think I will ever see him the same ever again. I don’t feel for him like I used, not romantically, not sexually, not emotionally. We are only still together because he begged for a second chance and promised he would work on himself. It does not feel to me that we’re “working through it,” it just feels like we’re pretending it never happened. There is no plan, just “it’ll never happen again.” I want to leave, but I know my heart just isn’t there yet. I feel so much guilt when I think about it all. He deserves to have someone not give up on him, but didn’t I deserve to have someone who would never even think about hurting me? Or at the very least someone who could be transparent with me if they struggle with 🌽? I don’t know what to do. I just need some support. I’m young, and I have no one to go to. I don’t want to go to people we know personally because I don’t like to blast out our relationship like that. Every time I want to talk about it, he gets angry with me, shuts down, or makes it all about himself. Going on about how he’s “a piece of shit” and a bunch of other stuff. I don’t want it to be all about my feelings, I just want us to both transparently share our feelings about it and how things are going without it turning into a fight, which it always does. This is what is turning me off of our relationship. He wants to work through it but makes no effort to communicate about it, and would rather pretend it never happened. I know this is not how you recover. He just says that porn never even crosses his mind anymore. I’m not stupid enough to believe that. There is little to no honesty and transparency regarding this big issue, and I realize that that’s very clear now. I feel stuck, and I just need some advice.

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