Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend and I have been together for eight years. We also have a child together. For about four or five years now, our relationship hasn’t really been that great. He’s been uninterested, careless, selfish, disrespectful, and just completely emotionally unavailable.
Honestly, I feel like this started a little while after we had our child (seven years ago). I have always communicated with him how this makes me feel and told him what he needed to do to fix it. Sometimes he’d change for a week and it was great. Other times, it was like he never even heard me. Because of this, I’ve been seriously thinking about leaving him, which I’ve also told him many times. I think, over the years, my threats lost their meaning because I’ve never followed through on them. But I (think I) really mean it this time. I don’t want to be with someone like this anymore.
A couple months ago, I met a man who’s a bit of a player and extremely attractive. He’s expressed interest in me several times even though he knows about and has even met my boyfriend. This man also has to report for a nearly 10-year prison sentence in five days.
He says he really wants to “hang out” with me before he goes. I know that all he wants is to have sex, no strings attached, which is something I wouldn’t mind. I find him very attractive and I kind of really want to have sex with him, but I won’t cheat on my partner.
So now, I don’t really know what to do. Should I break up with my boyfriend and have this one-night stand before the man goes to prison? Or should I put this lust away and just stay in my current relationship? Should I throw away an eight-year relationship with the father of my child? Am I a bad person for even having this dilemma?