A Beautiful Machine Reader Writes:

Disclaimer: Jealous or Justified? is Beautiful Machine Magazine’s reader driven advice column where people share real life situations and ask our readers for their opinions. Relationships are messy and emotions are complicated. Sometimes people are completely justified in how they feel. Other times fear, insecurity, or misunderstanding may be influencing their decisions. Each month we present a dilemma and ask one simple question: Are they jealous or justified? You decide.

My fiancé and I were together for five years before I called off our engagement.

Five years.

Five years of holidays, vacations, family cookouts, and endless conversations about our future. We had picked baby names, discussed where we’d retire, and even argued over paint colors for a house we hadn’t bought yet.

I thought I knew this man.

Then one random Tuesday night turned my entire world upside down.

We were sitting on the couch laughing about college stories when he casually said, “College was wild. There was also that one time I experimented with a guy.”

Excuse me?

Naturally, I assumed he was joking.

He wasn’t.

As I sat there trying not to choke on my wine, he explained that it happened during a camping trip with one of his college buddies. Apparently, what was supposed to be a weekend filled with fishing, cheap beer, and sleeping under the stars somehow turned into what he called “a moment of curiosity.”

A moment.

That’s the phrase he used.

According to him, by the time they packed up the tent and drove home, the experiment was over, never to be repeated or discussed again.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop thinking, “Exactly what kind of camping trip was this?”

Needless to say, Smokey Bear did not prepare me for this conversation.

The truth is, I don’t necessarily judge him for what happened. College is where people make questionable decisions. Some people come home with a tattoo. Some come home with student loan debt. Apparently, some come home with stories that should probably be shared before an engagement ring is involved.

My biggest issue wasn’t what happened.

It was that I found out after five years.

For five years, I thought there were no major surprises left between us. Suddenly, I discovered there was an entire chapter of his life I knew absolutely nothing about.

And then came the thoughts I couldn’t shut off.

What if this wasn’t just a one time thing?

What if ten years from now, after we’re married with children and a mortgage, he decides he still has unanswered questions about his sexuality?

Maybe that’s unfair.

Maybe it’s fear.

Maybe it’s insecurity.

But marriage is forever, and I couldn’t walk down the aisle carrying that much uncertainty.

I still love him. I still think he’s a wonderful man.

But eventually, I realized that if I had this many doubts before the wedding, I wasn’t ready to say “I do.”

So I called off the engagement.

Am I Jealous or Justified?

Did I throw away a five year relationship because I couldn’t get past something that happened long before we met, or was I justified in questioning a marriage after discovering a secret that changed how I viewed my future husband?