Partner of 10 years cheating for 3

Dear Annie: My boyfriend and I have been together for 10 years. Everything was good until three years ago when a woman contacted me to tell me that she’d been seeing him. She apologized to me for it. After we got off the phone, I found her on Facebook and realized that they’d been “liking” each other’s posts for years. She even posted a photo of them together, and someone had commented making a sexual joke about them. They’d both replied and laughed.

So, I confronted my boyfriend, and he stopped — or so I thought. Then, six months ago, I found charges on his credit card statement for some local hotel! I confronted him, and he brushed it off, said it hadn’t been him.

We have smart security cameras at our front and back door, and ever since I confronted him about the middle-of-the-night hotel charges, he’s disabled my ability to access the camera feeds from my phone. But I can always tell when he’s with her because he won’t answer his phone. (Otherwise, he always answers his phone.) I just hate the thought that the last 10 years were for nothing.

— Had It Up to Here

Dear HIUTH: Make decisions based on your future, not on your past. You’re caught up in the sunk cost fallacy — continuing your current relationship just because you’ve already spent so much time in it and don’t want it to have been a waste. The thing is, it wasn’t really a waste. Consider the good moments you’ve had, even with your boyfriend. Consider the tough, character-building moments, too.

It’s all added up to a meaningful period of growth and lessons you can take into the next decade — after leaving this lecher in the last. Which you must do, pronto.,

Dear Annie: In response to “In a Quagmire,” the gentleman who had difficulty using a computer: Computers confound me to no end. I enjoy my games and texting on my phone.

I tweet a bit. But when it comes to any task where I’m expected to have the least amount of computer skills, it’s incredibly frustrating — as frustrating as not being able to get a “real” person on the phone to help me.

I graduated high school summa cum laude but that has no influence on my computer skill, and “In A Quagmire” needn’t question his smarts. I just accept it as a place where I need help. Self-professed computer geeks are usually willing to step in and help. And in this day and age, if you have a child, grandchild, niece or nephew, they’re often able to help. — J. Mac

Dear J. Mac: I heard lots of sympathetic feedback for “Quagmire,” including the following practical tip for adults who have struggled to get the hang of computers despite years of trying and lessons.

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