To forgive DP

Honestly, I think you have anything to worry about. If you did, he wouldn't have told you straight away 'in bits'. Sounds like he's scared himself.

A lot of my friends did drugs when they were younger. And a few (blokes!) try and cling on to the idea they can still be wild/fun/crazy once in a while. The majority don't but this sort of reunion is just the sort of place where some of these guys reappear. By all means go mad at him when he gets home and say how inappropriate you think it is/won't stand for it etc. But sounds like your DP is in that mindset himself already.

I'd forgive it this once because he is very remorseful and he has told you but you need to be firm that forgiveness for this type of behaviour applies to this once. If it's something he does a second time at that point I'd leave.

There is zero evidence that he's cheated on you and even less evidence that he went to a brothel, and I think a lot of Mumsnetters really need to calm the fuck down instead of egging someone on to end a relationship by gleefully positing the worst case scenario.

He got hammered, took some coke, ended up at some random's house with his mates and now feels like shit. If that's something that's put you off him so much after two years together that you can't get past it, of course you are completely entitled to have that as a deal-breaker, but there is nothing that suggests he's cheated on you and it would be a strange choice to dump him just on the basis that a bunch of people on Mumsnet started saying 'Ooh, he must have been to a brothel' and telling you he can't have had a blackout period while on coke - he obviously drank a ton of booze as well as taking coke and in any case, nobody ever really knows exactly what's in whatever they're snorting so it's completely plausible that he can't remember large chunks of the night.

I'd be very pissed off about the drugs and I'd be having a serious chat with him about because I'd want to make it clear that if it happened again it would be a deal-breaker for me, but I wouldn't end an otherwise great relationship over one out of character substance abuse fuck-up two years in. Obviously if the relationship wasn't that great, or if it happened a week after we started dating and I wasn't invested, I absolutely would ditch him, but not if it was basically his only transgression and I'd been happy with him for two years.

Maybe his mates can clarify where he was and who he was with. Ask them separately .... see if the stories tally!
It is important to know. If he has had sex with someone you need to protect yourself

Hi

Speak for yourself!

It doesn't really work like that.

Well it never for me and friends back in the day.

I would forgive him but then this is not the kind of thing that would bother me.

But presumably it can keep people up later and longer, meaning they drink more - leading to amnesia.

Oh I think brothel is a huge and unnecessary leap!

Yes and no. More alert at the time but less likely to actually store the memories. You're alert but you probably don't remember much of it.

Sounds completely plausible. I used to end up in this sort of situation regularly when I used to take coke (long ago, thankfully, nasty stuff). Never cheated on a partner.

A mixed sex party would not bother me. Are you sure he actually smells of perfume and that isn't you overthinking things. I can't imagine someone else's perfume lingering on someone hours later unless it was actually sprayed on them.

Jeezo. Me and my mates took coke in our 20s and never once did anyone visit a brothel. Fuck sake 🤣

Look, he's been pissed, took the coke and then was chasing more. I honestly don't believe he has cheated. Its just hard to be reasonable and stop drinking and go home when you're on gear. Because you want to stay and take more! There were 2 women there so that's the perfume smell but it doesn't mean he cheated.

If it helps, the ending up somewhere random sounds pretty standard too. And rarely sexual!

Drunk people tend to be all over each other (and I don’t mean sexually) so I think the perfume is a red herring given that you know women were there. My husband doesn’t smell of my perfume even when we do have sex, because I don’t wear strong perfume. However, our daughter smells like she’s drowned herself in a bath of Sol De Janiero, so he often smells like that if he’s so much as been within 50 feet of her…

I wouldn’t put up with this behaviour BUT I have experienced it once, in our very early days (no smell of perfume but I didn’t sniff him! No drugs, but he was still serving and subject to testing) - absolutely off his head drunk after what should have been a few drinks and ended up at some after party with god knows who until 6/7am. I don’t believe anything sexual happened at all, however we weren’t actually together so it’s largely irrelevant to me. However, after witnessing the behaviour, I said to him that we were not going anywhere but would love to stay friends (we started as friends and he wanted us to be more around the time this happened). He said he was done with it and wouldn’t do it again (large pinch of salt taken from my side!). It was 15 years ago and he has never so much as mentioned going out with army friends again (I have never stopped him, but he knows I wouldn’t be with someone who behaves in that way, and it is pretty standard behaviour for his army friends - he’s now ex army - so he just completely removed himself from that social setting). I’d give your partner time to reflect on it and see what he says first.

Coke does not make you forget chunks of the night, or make you off your face in such a way that you don't know what's happening or going on.

He's either taken something else aside from coke, or he's hiding the actual truth from you.

If he can’t remember it’s going to be because of the alcohol.

I wouldn't be bothered by this. I don't take drugs myself, wouldn't be with a regular user but a one off is no big deal.

I’m genuinely not sure how I’d react to this. I think you need a lot more information about exactly what he did. Not an immediate deal breaker IMO, but it might be if the extra information turns out to be worse.