Ok, my question is this...what should I do in this relationship? Stick it out, keep it going, and make it better...or quit while I can?
My girlfriend and I have been dating for 7 or 8 months now. I'm 20 and she is 19. I love her and she loves me, but a bunch of mistakes have led us down the road of jealousy, possession, and not trusting each other.
The first 6 months of the relationship were amazing, nothing ever went wrong, no suspicions of anything at all, and it was all sweet love and all that jazz. Then I read her phone one night on a whim and she had sent a bunch of messages to a guy she had actually told me kept hitting on her and that she thought was really weird flirting with him like mad and making it seem like she really wanted to sleep with him and cheat on me. He called her but she didn't pick up but she had said "yea I think I'll be alone at that time...if not call me again later..." and that same night I went out to a club and danced with a girl and told her to call me later with no intentions of seeing her again or cheating.
So I found out about these messages she had sent a couple days later and told her it was over and then the tears started flowing and she started explaining that she had been hurt really badly in the past by a cheating boyfriend and that she only did it for attention and that that is how she responded to guys because of insecurity issues (which I know she indeed does have) and that she wasn't planning on cheating on me...I later found out about a bunch of other messages like this flirting with a bunch of random guys...anyways I told her I could forgive her but for the next 2 months insecurities ate me alive and I yelled at her while she cried and I said a lot of really mean things and told her probably 50 times that 'if you've ever cheated on me I need you to walk away from me right now and not talk to me again'...after 2 months of emotionally abusing her I told her that I danced with a girl and told her to call me later the same night she sent her messages. At this point she walked away from me and everything flipped on me. She told me that she has never let another guy touch her body since we started dating and blah blah...I asked her why she had never told me this about never letting another guy touch her body all those times I had asked her if she had cheated and she said she 'wasn't about to give me that compliment while I was accusing her of untrue things'...but we got back together and things got even crazier...we got really drunk on a beach together and I somehow ended up holding the hand of a girl that I used to hook up with at the same time I was hooking up with my current girlfriend (before I said we should stop seeing other people)...my girlfriend saw this, punched me in the face, and ignored me for the rest of the day.
Against all odds we're back together again, but can it work? It has been good for 3 days with only a few minor problems, but can we build the trust back? And how am I supposed to know she has never cheated on me? There have been rumors spread that she has cheated on me and rumors spread that I have cheated on her. I know the ones about me aren't true and she believes me, which makes me inclined to believe her (I feel like she wouldn't believe me so easily if she had really been cheating), especially since she has been hurt so badly by cheating in the past and actually does care for me (even though she gave me a black eye :P)
I love this girl, I want to help her, she wants to help me, but I don't want to stick it out with her if she has cheated on me or will most likely cheat on me. I know I'm not going to cheat on her but she doesn't...she says she doubts my intentions sometimes...I'm just not sure what to do or what to believe...
Anyone with some good relationship experience care to throw in their 2 cents? And can any females give me some advice? All the male advice I get is basically 'this girl is crazy bro leave her' but I don't know the nuances of the female psyche and I have heard that girls crave attention as much as guys crave sex...if she really wanted attention from that guy and not sex it's all good but if she really was going to hook up with him I want out...
Ahhh! Help me out please :) Peace and love...