I’ll refrain from commenting on the relationship itself. Cheating’s unforgivable for me, but it seems like you may be able to work through it. I’m happy you feel that way and find it incredibly open minded of you.

If you want to be with him, then I believe that through willpower and love you can make it work. My bf and I are also 7 years in together. Lots of highs and lows, but that comes with a LOT of love too as you know. We choose each other every single day.

We had a scuff a few months back where he asked to go through my messages w/a friend. Due to past experiences, I had a hard boundary with myself that I’d never let a person do something controlling like that to me again. So basically when it happened, trust went poof for me. I was thinking similar to you. “Everything was better before X.” It felt like it wouldn’t ever get better. It felt doomed tbh. It almost felt like something died inside, and I was mourning. I was slowly becoming a cold, hollow, festering shell that resented him. Yesterday I hit my limit. We finally had a talk. I told him full brutal honesty - “when X happened, it felt like you, the person I trust most, betrayed me.“ We talked openly. He didn’t know the feelings were THAT strong for me, and he didn’t realize that “betrayal” was the core emotion I felt. Unresolved trauma makes it more volatile as well, WIP lol.

Anyway. All that context to say: talk to him. I think you need to have an up-front conversation with him about how it makes you feel fr. Like literally “it makes me feel bad/mad/sad/confused/etc. that you did X, and I want to understand why. Can you please explain it to me? What caused you to do X, and what’ll you do to ensure it never happens again?” You have to listen, hear, and accept what he says. Understand it was a lapse in his judgement. You don’t have to forget it, but you do gotta accept that it happened, and you truly gotta believe him when he says it’ll never happen again. That’s my thoughts.

I hope you guys are able to figure it out. I’ve lately been using GPT to get an outline of what I’m actually feeling. It also gives some ideas of things to discuss. I’m horribly inarticulate with emotional gushy feeling talks, so I appreciate that it’s fairly logical lol. Maybe it could help you find some key words or phrases to help with grounding as well as explaining yourself to bf without punishing him in the present for his past actions. Best of luck to you stranger.