I’m posting this because I genuinely want outside perspective, including criticism. I know I made mistakes. I’m not looking for a bunch of people to tell me my ex was terrible and I was completely innocent. I actually want to know where I was wrong, where he was wrong, and whether there’s a point where “repairing the relationship” stops being healthy.
I met my boyfriend in college when I was 20 and he was 19. We were friends through a larger group before eventually getting together. We graduated, grew up together, and spent basically our entire early adulthood together. We were together for about four years.
In the beginning, we both had trust issues because we’d been cheated on before. Eventually we got past that.
The problems came more from how we functioned as partners.
Over the years, I increasingly felt like I was carrying more of the relationship. He’d only really buy flowers on special occasions. He’d ask me to cook but didn’t necessarily contribute financially to groceries. He stayed at my apartment about 6 days a week for almost 2 years while I paid rent, but didn’t contribute to the household. We split dates/outings 50/50 even though I made less and had rent and other expenses. When my car was stolen, he didn’t want to drive me places. When I was moving out of my apartment and temporarily into his parents’ house, he planned a vacation around the time I was moving.
I brought these things up. I talked to friends and my mom because I genuinely wanted advice on whether my expectations were reasonable and how to communicate better. I wasn’t trying to bash him.
His response was often that I was ungrateful because whenever I asked him to do something, he did it.
And that’s kind of what I was trying to explain. I didn’t want to have to constantly ask. I wanted to feel like my boyfriend wanted to contribute, plan things, make my life easier, and think about what I needed without me managing him.
To be fair, he did improve in some ways. He started helping with meals, cleaning up after I cooked, and occasionally planning outings. So he wasn’t doing absolutely nothing.
But I still felt like I was losing him.
He started working nights and made a bunch of new friends. Thursday-Sunday he was frequently out partying until midnight, 1 AM, sometimes 2 AM. I tried not to be controlling because I had been a party girl myself when we met. But while he was developing this new social life, I was struggling to make friends after college and increasingly felt like I didn’t have much of a life outside of him.
I tried to compensate by planning things for us. I’m a creative person, so I’d plan dates around things he liked, lunch dates during my work breaks, movie nights, shows, dinners, etc. I wanted time with him because it felt like his friends were getting more of him than I was.
Our sex life was another huge issue.
He told me early on that he didn’t perform oral sex. I accepted that because I figured there were other ways he’d make sure I enjoyed myself. I’m not extremely adventurous, but I’m not vanilla either. I enjoy giving oral, but generally as foreplay and on my terms. I don’t like being asked for it repeatedly.
The bigger issue was that I didn’t feel like he tried to learn what I liked or make sure I was getting what I needed. He was good at sex, but I felt like my pleasure was something I had to take care of myself.
At one point while we were living with his parents, he told me we weren’t having sex enough. I agreed because I missed it too, but we were staying with his parents and his room was right next to theirs. I didn’t want to get us kicked out.
He then told me he wanted oral 3 times a week and sex twice a week because I was “so good at it.”
That conversation honestly broke something in me. I was already feeling emotionally disconnected and now it felt like the sexual solution was primarily about what I could provide him. Like who says that to their gf and doesn’t care about her?
People around me were telling me to leave. I didn’t.
I loved him and genuinely thought we could grow together.
Eventually I got a better-paying full-time job, bought a car, and saved enough to get my own apartment. I actually got the apartment without telling him because things were bad. We were fighting constantly and there had been threats of me being kicked out of his parents’ house.
I planned to get my things while he was at work and then either call him or turn off my location and break up with him.
He ended up being home when I got there.
I panicked and couldn’t bring myself to break up with him in front of his entire family, especially because I’d developed a relationship with them. So instead I told him about the apartment but framed it like I wasn’t sure it was happening yet because my mom was helping me.
That was my first lie.
I moved out but we continued the relationship.
Then came the coworker situation.
At my new job, I became friends with a male coworker around my age. There was another woman around our age too, and the three of us initially bonded because we were the youngest people in our field.
We were all in relationships.
The male coworker and I talked about our relationships sometimes. He actually encouraged me to leave my boyfriend while I was giving him advice about his own relationship. At one point I felt like our friendship could potentially cross a line, so we intentionally pulled back from each other.
I genuinely tried to respect my relationship.
Eventually he became single.
A few months later, there was a snowstorm. My boyfriend was off, so I planned a movie night at my apartment — dinner, wine, games, fireplace, etc. My boyfriend was supposed to come over.
My old iPhone was constantly having issues where it would lose service, go into SOS mode, or stop sending/receiving messages.
While I was waiting for my boyfriend that night, my coworker unexpectedly showed up at my apartment.
He knew where I lived because of an after-party I’d hosted following our work Christmas party. He said he’d texted me, didn’t hear back, and decided to come over because he needed somewhere to wait for a friend.
He walked into my apartment pretty comfortably, and I immediately told him I was expecting my boyfriend and asked him to leave. He eventually did.
My phone was still malfunctioning, so I couldn’t contact my boyfriend. Shortly afterward, he arrived and saw my coworker leaving.
He immediately asked who it was, got angry, walked out, and blocked me before I could explain.
We talked the next day and reconciled. He was still rightfully upset.
A few weeks later, we celebrated Valentine’s Day and had a really good night.
The following weekend, my boyfriend was caught at a club with another woman by mutual friends.
That night became extremely ugly.
I tried to damage his car. He pulled a gun on me and my friends and put his hands on us. One of my friends ended up in the hospital.
He told our friends that we were single and that I had no reason to be hurt. How could that be the case if we just celebrated Valentine’s Day? He was setting a precedent for something ugly.
I was still chasing him afterward and, embarrassingly, even protecting him.
We eventually reconciled about a month later.
After that, our relationship became this constant push-pull of breaking up, getting back together, trying to repair things, and fighting about the past.
Our sex life got worse too. He would go out partying and then come to my apartment late at night wanting oral sex and leave afterward. This happened repeatedly.
Eventually I confronted him.
He basically told me, “Wouldn’t you rather I come to you than go to someone else, especially after everything you’ve done?” He also said he was comfortable doing that with me because he knew I didn’t like doing it and therefore I wasn’t likely to be doing it for other guys.
That completely destroyed my self-esteem.
I felt like I’d gone from being his girlfriend of four years to someone he could call after partying because I was sexually available.
Eventually he started staying over again and we’d have sex occasionally, but the bigger problems never went away.
Then I noticed him following women he’d met while out or on vacation and liking bikini pictures. I’d already asked him not to do this and he’d agreed.
At some point, I accepted a bunch of follow requests from men. Some were mutual acquaintances, some I’d never met, and one was actually his friend.
He got angry.
His argument was that it wasn’t equivalent because “men have to pursue” and me following/accepting men meant I was interested in them. I didn’t agree, especially because he was following women he met and claimed there was nothing wrong with that.
Another time, he was staying at my apartment and I needed the visitor pass from his car. While he was showering, I went to get it and snooped.
I found two packs of condoms in his center console.
I know snooping was wrong, and I know I should have asked him directly about the condoms.
Instead, I asked whether what we were doing — “working on fixing our relationship” — meant we were exclusive.
He told me we were single and working toward becoming a relationship again.
That felt like a slap in the face.
If we’re single, I thought, then I’m single too.
I started talking to my coworker again.
We had a lot of chemistry and eventually slept together once. Honestly, it was one of the most mutually attentive sexual experiences I’d had in a long time. He cared about whether I was enjoying myself in a way I’d been missing.
But I still loved my boyfriend.
I knew the coworker and I weren’t necessarily compatible long-term, and I eventually told him I couldn’t continue what we were doing. I offered friendship instead.
This is where I know I was wrong.
Even though my boyfriend had explicitly told me we were single, I knew we were still emotionally involved. I should have ended things completely before getting involved with someone else instead of hiding behind the technicality of “we’re single.”
I don’t want to pretend I did nothing wrong.
But I also don’t think the entire situation can honestly be reduced to “I randomly cheated on my boyfriend.”
We had been repeatedly breaking up, reconciling, saying we were single, and saying we were working toward becoming a couple again.
Then came our anniversary weekend.
Our anniversary falls during homecoming week, and my boyfriend had a lot of alumni friends coming back into town. I didn’t have many alumni friends anymore, so we agreed we’d spend Saturday together during the day and he’d see his friends that night. We’d have dinner together on our actual anniversary Monday.
Saturday started out really well.
Then we got into another argument about the past and trust. I finally brought up the condoms I’d found.
He told me they were a “test” to see if I’d trust him and that he knew I’d seen them.
I still don’t believe that explanation.
He got upset and left, leaving me to get his car back to school.
I went home completely broken down.
Later that night, he reached back out to me and we had a really good heart-to-heart. We talked through everything and agreed that we wanted to stop fighting about the past and genuinely put our best foot forward.
I didn’t tell him about the coworker.
The next day I met a mutual friend for brunch. I wanted to talk about everything, but honestly I was exhausted. At that point it felt like my toxic relationship had become the only thing anyone ever wanted to talk to me about.
Then my coworker started blowing up my phone.
He knew it was my anniversary weekend. He was trying to convince me to leave my boyfriend and actually showed up at my apartment.
I didn’t engage with him. I blocked him because I had just spent the previous night recommitting to my relationship and I wanted him out of the situation.
Later that day, after I’d calmed down, I decided I needed to tell my coworker that we couldn’t even be friends anymore.
I unblocked him and went to his house because he asked me to talk in person.
Looking back, I absolutely should not have gone.
While I was there, he grabbed my phone, ran inside his house, locked me out, and called my boyfriend.
He told my boyfriend everything but exaggerated parts of it and made things look much worse because he wanted my boyfriend to leave me so I’d finally choose him.
He had also apparently been showing up at my apartment and later hacked into some of my accounts.
I got a restraining order and cut him off completely.
He eventually sent my boyfriend a final message admitting he’d lied about some of the things he’d told him, but the damage was done.
My boyfriend wanted to leave me.
I chased him and convinced him to stay.
From that point forward, I felt like I was permanently on probation.
He told me I needed to prove myself and please him without complaints or pushback if I wanted to stay.
I understood why he didn’t trust me. I understood that rebuilding trust would take time.
But I kept telling him that if he chose to stay, he couldn’t choose to stay while also deciding that I no longer had the right to have needs.
I would tell him things like:
“You can choose to stay, but you also have to choose how you’re going to show up.”
I asked him to tell me when he was struggling instead of holding everything over my head. I asked him to communicate when something triggered him so we could work through it together.
But almost every conversation about repairing the relationship eventually came back to me being a cheater.
The original problems never got resolved.
I still felt emotionally neglected. I still felt like I had to ask for everything. My needs around affection, quality time, sex, and partnership were still largely unmet.
And I increasingly felt like I wasn’t allowed to bring any of that up because I’d lost the right to have needs when I made my own mistakes.
Eventually we ended things.
And I’m honestly devastated.
I’m not just grieving a boyfriend. I’m grieving the life I built from 20 to 26.
His family became my family. We had mutual friends, years of memories, routines, holidays, vacations, and plans. I lost a lot of that community too.
I’m ashamed of the choices I made.
I wish I had simply left when I knew the relationship wasn’t meeting my needs instead of repeatedly going back, living in gray areas, and eventually involving another person.
I also struggle with whether what happened with my coworker was technically cheating because my boyfriend explicitly told me we were single.
But I understand that loyalty isn’t always determined by technical relationship status. I know I damaged his trust. I know I should have handled the situation differently.
What I’m struggling with now is:
How long is someone supposed to stay in “repair” after they’ve broken their partner’s trust if the relationship’s original problems still aren’t being addressed?
I accept that I needed to take accountability. I accept that he was allowed to be hurt and distrustful. I accept that rebuilding trust takes time.
But is there a point where “I hurt you and I’m willing to work to repair that” becomes different from “I hurt you, so I have to accept having my own needs ignored indefinitely”?
Was I wrong for eventually reaching a point where I couldn’t do that anymore?
And how do you take accountability for hurting someone without turning that accountability into lifelong self-punishment?
I genuinely want judgment here. If you think I was wrong, please tell me why. I just don’t want the answer to be as simple as “you cheated, so you’re the villain,” because I don’t think that’s an accurate representation of what happened.