I've been dating my boyfriend now for about three months.
He's the friend of a friend's brother whom I met a little before I graduated college this past spring. He'd just got out of the military and living in a new town, so he didn't know a whole lot of people. At first, we talked a lot about acclimating to the "real world" and trying to find jobs and all that. He's a really nice guy; mild-mannered but he makes me laugh, in good shape, laid-back, smells nice.
There's just one problem. Recently I spent the night at his place. This was only our second sleepover, and, well, I hate to be one of those girls that gushes about sex with her boyfriend, but it was really good. Great, even. The next morning he got up to go get coffee and I got on his computer. I swear I wasn't trying to snoop or anything; I just wanted to check my email and whatnot until he got back. While surfing, however, his browser did an auto-fill for a popular white-nationalist forum. My curiosity got the best of me, so I went to it, and not only does he have an account, but he has thousands of posts on there. I was heartbroken. I am SO not into that; I'm not very political, but I'm pro-choice and I voted for Obama, so in his world, I'm a heathen…I think. I can't believe he believes in this white-power/Aryan-nation nonsense.
Now I don't know what to do. He's a great guy apart from this, and it doesn't seem like something he's eager to talk about. I kind of figured he was more right-wing than me, but I just chalked that up to him being former military and being "harder" than me about stuff. But this is just weird. I told my mom I don't even think I'm technically supposed to know about this side of him, so it feels strangely wrong to judge him on it. She said at the end of the day, this is who he is regardless if he told me about it or not, and now I have to decide if I can overlook it. Gee, thanks, Mom.
Anyway, I'm curious to know what you think I should do.
Sincerely,
Nicole
Dear Nicole,
…You know what I think you should do. You know there really is no "apart from this." He's a racist, and not the "soft bigotry of lowered expectations" kind, or your older relative who still says "Oriental."
I'm sorry that there probably isn't a good explanation for his presence on that forum, a justification that would let you keep having great sex with a sweet-smelling man and not disrupt your social circle by dumping him. Hey, maybe he did just embed himself, for lack of a better word, with the separatists in order to argue with them and their revolting worldviews. But: he didn't. You mention the thousands of posts he's accumulated; you don't mention that any of them take a contrarian stance.
You can't unknow this, and you can't tolerate it either. You have to tell him what you found, and you have to tell him it's a dealbreaker.