My (23f) boyfriend (26m) wanted me to stop crying after telling me he has a kid

Hi, I'm 23 and my boyfriend is 26. We've been together for about a year, and he's basically told me everything about his life from now and before we met. Well, the last part isn't true anymore because he dropped a massive bomb on me yesterday. He has a kid, a daughter from a former girlfriend. He told me they weren't in contact, the kid knows the guy isn't her father and that she has no idea where he is. He doesn't even know where his kid is. None of that was a problem. <br><br>What bothered me was that he didn't tell me sooner, especially when we met his family. A lot of them are unaware of his child because of the circumstances. <br><br>Then he asked me to calm down and not break down crying because it was hard for him to see it, and we need to have the conversation about why he never told me. I was too busy to ask him all the questions, and I was too heartbroken to talk. I was crying so much that all I could get out was "How could you keep this from me?"<br><br>He eventually calmed me down, and we talked. He said he didn't tell me because he wanted to keep his past hidden away. He wanted to have a different life, and I was part of it. He wanted to tell me when we were on the same level, like engaged or something. He added that he also didn't want me to see him differently. He didn't want me to know that he has a child he abandoned or that he got a woman pregnant when he was 17. He wanted me to see him as the man he is now, not the man he was back then. <br><br>While I understood that and his need to keep it private, all I could think of was that he lied to me for so long. I was taken aback when he asked me to stop crying because he was in pain. In my eyes, he has no right to be hurt when he hid such a massive secret from me. <br><br>While he eventually explained that he needed me to be calm so we could have the conversation, I'm still reeling from how good he is at hiding such secrets. He hid it from me for so long and didn't give me any indication of it until yesterday. <br><br>I can't help but wonder what else he is hiding from me; I've lost faith in him, and I don't know how to get it back. I can't trust him enough, and I don't know how to believe he isn't hiding anything else. I'm too much of a mess to process this properly, and I can see us breaking up because of this. <br><br>How can I trust him again? Is there anything we can do to heal from this? I'm on the edge of leaving him because I doubt I can ever trust him again.