Title: Please Help me

By: livingwithregret

Hi. i need help. for the past couple of years i have been living with regret, sometimes not even being able to breath. my fiance and i have been together for 9 years, and for the last six we have been blissfully happy and got engaged two years ago. a little more than six years ago, i cheated on my boyfriend and i told him about it right away. i felt terrible, we talked about it and he forgave me and i thank god every day for that. but the problem is that it happened not just one time but a few times after that. i have had serious self confidence and self worth issues due to a minor physical handicap (that has healed in the last decade) since i was very young and have felt ugly for most of my life. in the begining of our relationship he understood that but yet he made a lot of mistakes during the first three years of our relationship to make me feel unappreciated and undesirable. so when someone who thought i was incredible and sexy came along, i used him to make me feel better about myself. it did help, and after a few times my confidence had built up i stopped seeing him. i felt beautiful on the outside, but ugly in the inside. so i did some self evaluating and sought god's help, which help me realize that i was ready to devote myself to my boyfriend and start a new relationship with him. since then, we have had no problems and we are so happy together. we are getting married soon, bought a house together and are ready to spend the rest of our lives together. i know that there is no excuse for cheating but i do have a sincere explanation and the last six years have made me realize how much this man means to me and how i would never hurt him ever again. i realized that back then, i did not know what love was. but now i do.
my problem now is i do not know whether i should revive the past and tell him the whole truth. on the one hand, i believe that i should because then we can start on a clean slate and that he has the right to know if he is going to marry me. on the other, i do not want to reopen an old wound to hurt him again and i do not want to hurt the beautiful thing that we share now. i know that we love each other the way we do today because of the last six years, after everything happened, so i am not sure what telling him will do. i am terrified every day at what will happen - both if i tell him or if he finds out somehow. while i have faith in our love and that he will not leave me, i am sick to my stomach thinking that that might be possible. i also hate hate hate myself for who i was and what i did. if only i could erase the past. please help me - what should i do?