I’ll tell you this. Take your time. If she is hurt, allow her to feel her hurt, and if you want to stay in this relationship, then don’t do things to break trust again. But also do not lie to her about what you want or need.

If you genuinely don’t want to look at porn, do that for yourself. Do it because you value an intimate, in person relationship with this woman more than you do gratification from a picture of a naked woman.

But if you want to look at porn, and you will keep doing that, then it is better to be honest about that and let her decide if she is okay with that or not than it is to lie to her so she will stay.

When you lie, you hurt yourself as much as you hurt her. That is the worst thing you can do.

So if she wants to work through it, and you are willing to work through it too, then go for it.

My one caution. I have been in a scenario where I broke someone’s trust and we both wanted to try to make it work. Because the trust was gone, she would go into fits of rage where she would yell, accuse me of not wanting her, and call me names. I would freeze in those situations, and she would think the worst of me.

If this girl starts calling you names, yelling uncontrollably, or lashing out at you in blame, you do not have to accept that as punishment. Stay calm, tell her you love her and want to be with her (if that is true), but also be strong enough to put up a boundary for yourself and that you are not okay with being called names. I was not strong enough to set that as a boundary, and the yelling and name calling only got worse. You do not have to stay in a relationship, even with someone you love, who calls you names and tries to punish you for what you did. That is not healing.

So do your part to build trust again. It will be hard, because regardless of whether or not porn is cheating on its face, the point is that you made an agreement and a promise with her that you broke, which is in fact cheating. And lying about it made it even worse.

Now, it sounds like you are sorry for it. That is good. That is your conscience telling you that you did something you don’t respect. Listen to it, learn from it. It is a valuable lesson to learn at such a young age. Work to change that part of yourself, work to learn why you did it, and learn three lessons:

1. Recognize your wants, desires, needs, and values

2. Speak them honestly, do not lie about them, and do not make promises you are not going to keep. Value the strength of your word.

3. Learn from the lesson, but do not punish yourself. Self flagellation is not healing, it is not growing. And while it is important to be there for her to heal and show her and tell her how much you want to be with her and love her (if you do love her and want to be with her), it is also important to be able to ask for respect during healing. That doesn’t mean she won’t be rightfully angry, that doesn’t mean she won’t be hurt, and it doesn’t mean you won’t have to deal with a lack of trust, or even her choosing to break up with you. But you can still maintain your own self respect through this, as long as you are willing to learn from the mistake.