To some extent, I think just the passage of time does ease the pain of having been hurt. As time passes, you have more experiences. As time passes, maybe he does some nice things. Those things will help the memory of hurtful things to fade.

If you find that you trust him less than you did in the past, that may be the natural result of your experience. Our feelings are based on our experiences. You and your bf will have more experiences together. If they are good, your trust will grow. If not, then your trust will not grow. And I think that's what it boils down to.

You can't make things be what you want them to be. You can't force yourself to feel what you want to feel. Things that seem real important right after they happen have a way of becoming less important as time goes by.

Reading that survey was a mistake. It was a mistake for you to want to look at it. It was a mistake for him to make it available for you to look at. This is not how a couple communicates. What was it? Was this a magazine survey? Was he participating in some kind of a study?

You say you went thumbing through this survey in search of reassurance. I don't think that's exactly what was going on. You were already riddled with doubt, and you went poking around till you found something that confirmed your fears. It's a known fact of human nature that we will tend to find evidence for what we already believe.

You spend a lot of time in the post above analyzing your boyfriend's relationship with his former wife. You talk about the wife studying psychology to figure out how to manipulate her husband and hurt him. You describe the emotions she had and that he had. Let what was between them stay between them. In your own mind, you've become an expert on a relationship that you were not a part of. A lot of this is you telling yourself the story you want to believe. You create reasons for your boyfriend's behavior - like saying he turned to drugs to comfort himself in the face of stress from his wife. Any AA or NA group will pretty quickly tell you that it is not your business to psychoanalyze why someone else has gotten involved in worsening substance abuse.

If you have ever participated in AA, Al-ANON, or NA, I would encourage you to get back into that. You're spending way too much time in your own head, churning things around. You are not an expert on your boyfriend's failed marriage, or his relationship with his kids. You are an expert on talking yourself into a very negative way of looking at yourself. The more time you spend rummaging through things that are not really your business and churning things around in your own head, the more you are going to keep coming to the same conclusion - that you are unlovable.

It's like you have the recipe to make only one thing. No matter what might be in the kitchen, when you go out there to cook, you are only going to make that one thing. A lot of this boils down to what you are in the habit of doing.

Look at the user name you've given yourself: "FearsAffirmed." That is the story of how you are living your life. You line up your fears, then you say, "What can I find to prove these fears are valid?" And, of course, you find plenty of evidence. You always will.

I was in a mental health program some years ago where they had a sign on the wall that said something I've come to believe in: "What other people think is none of your business."

Stop trying to figure out what is going on and has been going on in the minds of others. You will never do a good job of that. Stop thinking you know who didn't love who in a relationship that you were not a part of. Stop trying to rationalize your boyfriend's life by coming up with all these explanations for how victimized you think he was.

He let you read something that he knew had a comment in it that was going to be hurtful to you. That was mean of him to do. Don't make it more complicated than that. After 9 months, you have barely begun to know who he is. As is kind of natural when anyone falls in love, you have him build up in your mind as this wonderful person that you hope you are good enough to deserve. Maybe he is not such a paragon of virtue. You've had him on a pedestal as a guy who could do no wrong.

You say your own insecurities have gotten the best of you. No - him doing something hurtful has upset you. That's not being insecure. That's a normal reaction.

He's starting to fall off the pedestal you put him up on. So you want answers to how can you get him back up there. You think that's what love is. It's not. He's no saint. He's human and he's got a bit of a mean streak in him. That doesn't mean he can't love and be worthy of love. But you need to open up to seeing him as he is, not through the rose-colored glasses. He's worked very hard at controlling what you think of him and his past and you just totally buy his narrative lock, stock and barrel.

When he talks about his life with his parents and with his former wife, you need to remind yourself that you were not there. Stop judging his mother and his father and his ex-wife, unless you've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time around these individuals. When you learn to not do that, you will also learn that the value you have is not automatically what he says. In your post above, it sounds like anything this man says to you is like a proclamation of God. Do your own thinking. Stop letting him program you.

You say your insecurity has destroyed your past relationships. Maybe they weren't such good relationships to begin with. Maybe it's not that you destroyed them, but that you couldn't make them into what you wanted them to be.

This guy you are in love with has a history of twice being accused of rape? See if you can quietly get his social security number. Get on-line, when you are alone, and invest a few dollars in doing a background check on him. There is way more to this guy than you have opened your eyes to. And it's not good stuff.