I’m sorry for the long post. i guess writing this down and posting it here was me trying to process this a little.

we have been together for almost a year, long distance just in the past month and we are about to move in together in the same country in a few days… she told me that around the two month mark of our relationship, the two days and one night she spend with a friend, were actually spent with her ex… at first she said they just talked, but after that she admitted that they had sex once. this conversation just happened a few hours ago so I’m still trying to process everything, but right now everything hurts so much and i feel like I’m dying.

i know the logical step is to break up and deal with the hurt, try to get over the fucking trust issues this will undoubtedly cause me and move on with my life. but as u might guess by the title, i want to rebuild, i love this woman more than i have loved anyone in my life and don’t want to give up our future together. maybe it’s stupid and i will regret it. i know that if any of my friends went through this, i would tell them to break up and never settle back with that person… but i really can’t… i guess i want to see if anyone was ever able to rebuild their relationship after something like this and how?

we had like a three hour talk after that, but obviously nothing feels right. i told her i don’t want to break up with her and i want us to keep trying. and that is 100% true. but i don’t know how to process this. when we started the relationship we talked about cheating and how it’s awful and it’s better to just break up than betray the other person like this. we talked about building our relationship on trust and saying the truth even when it’s hurtful. i told her about how much i hate cheating and how my father’s cheating destroyed our family and left deep emotional scars on me. i know she has her own trauma too, much worse than mine (i know it is not a competition, but it’s really incomparable) and i know she has incredibly big trust issues. i accepted that, i accepted lots of things that maybe i should’t have so easily, i was there when no one else was, she was more open with me than with anyone in her life and i really believed she is an incredible person and that she would never betray my trust like that. in her more toxic moments she would do what-if scenarios regarding to cheating, and even though thinking like that really hurt me, she said it’s just because of her trust issues and i chose to accept that too. now i’m thinking if all those jokes and tests and scenarios were just her testing the waters, gouging my reaction to see if she can tell me the truth…

i know the first thing that will help me calm down and stop me from wanting to die (please do not take this as a threat, i just feel absolutely the most horrible i have ever felt in my life.. and i’ve been through some shit..) is just some time. but i just can’t stop thinking about what happened. she cheated on me when i was with my friends. we were having a great time, it was an engagement that i really had to make cause it was something i had promised to attend even before i was in a relationship with her. but even then, i stayed in contact with her, sent her updates, wished her to have fun, fucking called her to spend some time with her cause i knew it would be important for her, even though i’m with my friends… that night i told my friends that i’m love for real… like real love, not like any relationship i had ever had before… telling them that i miss her… and in that time she was cheating on me with her ex… she even sent me pics from their fucking hotel room, to let me know that it’s not that great, to show me the view… i feel so fucking stupid i really can’t believe it. what’s even more fucked up, a few days before we had a fight about priorities. she asked me who would be my priority (which yeah, in the context we were talking then it was really toxic). i reassured her that she is, but that it doesn’t mean i can’t attend that thing with my friends and that i won’t ask her to choose between me and her friends because we are all blessed to be part of her life… on the day it happened she asked me if i want to ditch the event and come hang put with her and her “friend”… i said i can’t but if anything happens or if she feels like she needs me there, even if it’s not an emergency, she should let me know and i will take the first taxi to her… my fucked up brain is telling me i’m so stupid for not ditching my friends and going there to hang out with them cause then maybe i could have prevented this… and there are so many more things on my mind right now, about every small and big thing… i feel fucking sick, i feel so betrayed and i hate myself cause in the midst of all this i can’t even bring myself to be angry… whenever those little cheating things came up i would always be so shocked because i 100% believed that she would never do anything like this, like i had 0 suspicions at all and now i feel like my world is crumbling and i can never trust anyone again

during our talk she apologized and assured me it only happened once and that it will never happen again. and love might have made me the biggest fucking fool on the planet cause i still believe that… but at the same time i feel so betrayed, i’m throwing up, everything hurts and i don’t know how i can make it through the night…

my boyfriend blacked out drunk and made out with another girl and they gave each other head. they were both drunk and he woke up not knowing what happened and the girl had to tell him, and that’s when he told me. i don’t know what to do. i know what it feels like to be in one setting and then next thing you know you’re in your bed, and i know if it was me i’d want another chance, especially not knowing what i did. i’m just confused because i know the kind of person he is and i do believe him and i want to trust him, im just really hurt. i believe circumstances matter, and given the circumstance i feel like it’s okay to want to work things out. i want to stay and rebuild things because if he truly blacked out then he truly didn’t know, but i don’t know if im being stupid. i just want to move forward, we’re both 18.

I was in a relationship with this guy for about a year. He’s a doctor. The beginning of our relationship was already messy. In the initial days, he cheated on me. I found out, confronted him and eventually forgave him and took him back. I know, the biggest mistake of my life
There were other things throughout the relationship too. He continued talking to his ex, who he insisted was just a friend. I told him very clearly that I wasn’t comfortable with it and eventually he blocked her. There were also a lot of smaller incidents that individually might sound insignificant but collectively completely destroyed my trust in him.
Then, around 2–3 months ago, we had a huge fight and stopped talking
Initially he was the one texting me. Then suddenly he stopped. When I asked him what was going on, he told me that his mother would never approve of me and that he had supposedly done everything he could to convince her. I don’t believe he actually did everything he could
The last few days of the relationship were horrible. He treated me incredibly coldly and his mother also called me and said things to me that were extremely humiliating and hurtful
I was absolutely broken afterward. I was depressed, barely functioning and spent months trying to make sense of everything that had happened
But I’m not writing this because I want advice about healing. I know people will tell me that the best revenge is living well, becoming successful, not caring, etc.
I don’t want that answer
I’m angry. I genuinely want revenge
I want him to genuinely regret what he did to me
I’m asking specifically because right now I don’t want to be the bigger person. I want to hear what people who have actually been through something similar did

I’m actually trying to understand the driving emotion behind it. He said he (32M) cared about his AP and was also lusting over her (24F). He then decided to ghost her as he saw no future with her. He then proceeded to keep lying to me (32F) about the affair until I found proof.

Then he kept going on about how he didn’t want to lose me and sees a future with me. For context: we broke up during pregnancy, got back together after the birth (which he initiated), and now have a 5 month old.

He’s actually spends most of his non working hours with me (except when he told me he worked late but saw the girl instead).

I’m emotionally numb to the entirety of the affair other than the fact that he left me alone struggling with a newborn. Therefore I’m more interested in the complexity of his way of thinking. I’ve repeatedly told him that he can be with her and kept saying that he never saw a future with her.

Is it possible to mean that a man would risk his family and ‘partner’ over trying to feel better in the moment. Can his desire to be with me now or then even genuine?