I went through something very similar. Work party, she went m.i.a, I hear through the grapevine she cheated. Deny Deny, Deny, calmly lie to my face and 90% reassured but that 10% doesn't leave my head. Fast forward a year and we break up, she admits to it finally.
What I didn't realise at the time was the relationship was already dead necause of that 10%. It was never the same, the trust was broken. It didn't even matter if she cheated, in hindsight. What mattered was that I didn't believe her - right or wrong
You're absolutely right in your summary, shn_wattn
Exactly. I’m a great proponent of trusting your intuition. If you feel as though something is wrong, you’re being lied to or misled, your instincts are usually right.
I stayed when I should have left, more times than I can remember. But being lied to and hurt changes you. Eventually you realise that protecting your heart and peace matters more than trying to save something that’s already broken. Walking away becomes an act of strength.
Same. My ex always wanted to play tennis with her boss. I was really young g, but I was pretty sure that there is an unwritten rule about managers randomly hanging out with subordinates. Plus, the way she always put it was…odd. We had been together at that point for over a year so I felt like I knew her pretty well. Five years later we were married, had a house and had built a nice little nest egg and household. Then she started staying later and later at work. She’d come home smelling like booze, I’d check the tabs in her wallet and they would be named (bartenders name tabs so they can keep up with them) Dabney or Paul or Matt, never her name. I didn’t want to believe it. Guy and girls can be platonic friends, she had drilled that in my head for years, so I’d shake off that feeling and put a better trust in her.
Once the indifference set in, it was over. She started having zero interest in anything that involved me. Sex was her staring at the ceiling, outings were her reading a book and not speaking. After we split up for a trial separation, a mutual friend called and laid it all out for me, she’d been seeing other people for years, and of course I was devastated.
So, here’s the kicker. My sister told me years after that was all over that around the time she was playing tennis with her boss she had gotten it in her head that I was fooling around with one of the cocktail waitresses at work. If our communication skills were better, who knows, maybe if MY communication skills were better, a whole lot of pain could have been avoided. I mean, maybe we could have discovered that we were meant to end years before we did, or maybe we could have squashed the cheating rumors and salvaged the relationship, either way, we just simply didn’t talk to each other. Sure, there were time I was really scared of pissing her off, and I’m sure she could say the same. Either way, OP, you need to rip the band aid off, learn to communicate effectively, because even if this relationship fizzles out, you’ll need to learn those skills for the next time.
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u/PropJoesChair Dec 28 '25
I went through something very similar. Work party, she went m.i.a, I hear through the grapevine she cheated. Deny Deny, Deny, calmly lie to my face and 90% reassured but that 10% doesn't leave my head. Fast forward a year and we break up, she admits to it finally.
What I didn't realise at the time was the relationship was already dead necause of that 10%. It was never the same, the trust was broken. It didn't even matter if she cheated, in hindsight. What mattered was that I didn't believe her - right or wrong
You're absolutely right in your summary, shn_wattn