Dear Pastor,

I am a female living in Canada who is involved in a long distance relationship with a man who lives in Jamaica. The thing is I was really in love with him. Actually, I am still in love with him but the problem is that I cannot trust him. We have been talking for a year and a half. We continued to talk on the phone every day after I came back home.

Everything was good until he started asking me about having a boyfriend, which I didn't. So, I started asking him if he had a girlfriend which he denied, of course. Eventually, we started arguing for no reason at all on many different occasions, and then I decided to do some investigation of my own. I told him a lie in order to get the truth, and after I told him I was married (that was the lie) he decided it was best for me to know then that he has a woman.

I honestly blame myself for his having another woman because I was the one who told him he could have sex with other females because I was not there to give it to him. He was to do that under one condition, whenever I ask him if he was having sex all he had to do was tell the truth, which he could not do.

Anyway, we broke up for four and a half months and then we got back together. When we got back together everything was good but then he made the mistake of telling me that if he was to have sex with someone else there would be no way for me to find out.

My question to you, Pastor, is: why would he tell me that if he is not cheating or hiding something? I honestly think he is up to his old ways again even though he says otherwise. I do not trust him and I need to know if you think this relationship is worth another try because I really do love him and hope this is something we can both work through. I await your fatherly advice.

M.J., Ontario, Canada

Dear M.J.,

You encourage your boyfriend to go with other women and now you are behaving as if he is the beast. You shouldn't have told him that he was at liberty to have sex with other women.

What he is trying to tell you now is that he has discovered that it is better for you not to know certain things. You don't trust him anymore and a relationship is built on trust.

In the meantime, don't stay in Canada and fret over this man. Your fretting will not solve the problem. If he wants to play around, he will.

And if you insist that he will tell you everything, he will lie.

Pastor