You can give up the way he makes you feel, the way those tears in his eyes make you tremble, the way his arms around you makes you feel safe no matter what he's said or done... and you know they do, he wouldn't matter to YOU if you didn't in some way feel safe and content and alive when you're with him.

You can give it up because he made a mistake, because he tested the bounds... or you can teach him not to make the same mistake twice, and keep him, and go on.

Everyone fucks up sometimes. And yes, men really ARE pigs sometimes. But just because he behaves like one occasionally, just because he fucked up once, doesn't mean that the times he said he loves you, that everything he has done for you, that what you mean to him is somehow less.

Of course he can't tell you why he did it. Odds are good he doesn't even know himself... but I can suggest one possible reason that I think might be the one.

Have you ever had a relationship so beautiful, so perfect, that you found yourself doing things that might screw it up, just to reassure yourself that it will last despite them? Trying to prove it's not perfect because you're afraid it will disappear, trying to make it disappear because that's what you're expecting it to do? I think he might be doing something similar... testing you, testing the relationship. YES, he's afraid it (and you) will disappear. He doesn't want you to, he wants you to stay, he wants to be forgiven.

It's a strange instinct and most of us fall prey to it sooner or later, trying to poke holes in perfection.

*shrugs*

He loves you. And he's scared that this wonderful, beautiful, perfect thing he's found with you is going to disappear, that you're going to leave him over something like this... so he tries to make it happen NOW, get it over with.

Don't let it work. *shrugs again* Keep him, if you love him. Make SURE he knows that if it happens again, it IS over. No more chances. But make sure too that he knows you've forgiven him for this mistake, that you did so because you love him and because you know he'll do better.

*amused* The carrot and the stick... for hundreds of years they've been using those to teach horses and donkeys. Reward them when they're good, punish them when they're bad. One or the other doesn't do much good all by itself... you need both. Let your words be his punishment... and your touch his reward. Show him that it's going to be ok, as long as he learns from this.

...and if he doesn't learn?

At that point... wish him well and send him merrily off to hell.