I’ve been in a committed relationship for 3.5 years with this woman. She wanted me to propose so this past spring I mustered up the courage and a fair chunk of cash to buy her a ring. Things had maybe gotten a little stale between us but it wasn’t bad. We still kissed. We talked extensively every day. We still had sex every now and then. We still said we loved each other.
Then on Saturday she went on a date with a guy and spent the night in his hotel room. She said she only kissed him which I do believe and she was very apologetic at first and so I told her we could work through it and she agreed. Now she seems a lot less keen about working through it though.
I’m a wreck. I love this woman. I’d do just about anything for her. I wanted to get married and have kids with her. She said she wanted these things too but now she doesn’t know. What do I do?
Edit: I’m going to give her until the end of today to agree to couples therapy and if she won’t then we’re done. Thanks everyone. I guess I’ll try and figure out how to build my life back.
Edit 2: I grew a spine and told her to get fucked. We’re done.
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Edit 2: I grew a spine and told her to get fucked. We’re done.
Congrats, comrade
I think it’s over comrade 🫂
Going on a date and to a hotel room is premeditated. I think it’d be different if she was like drunk at a club and felt up on some guy but this is blatant disregard for the relationship you have built together. She’s bored and didn’t have the maturity to communicate and find ways to reconnect.
My partner and I have been together seven years. We’ve been through really rough spots, times where we couldn’t even touch because the idea of physical affection with me specifically was gross to her. Times where we didn’t have sex for months and the love we had for eachother wasn’t much more than friends with the memory of something stronger. She never did this. She told me how she was feeling, we worked to reconnect, we went to couples therapy. You deserve someone who will do that for you. Someone who loves enough to claw their way back into seeing you romantically and sexually.
I remember her crying in my arms that she couldn’t see a future with me and that she thought of other people sexually but couldn’t see me that way anymore. Yet, she never hurt me like you have been hurt.
Wishing you the best 🫂
I have to agree. And add that every time an ex cheated on me once, it happened several times until I was just done.
Also, commending couples therapy. When both people are willing, it shows both respect the relationship enough to try, knowing that couples therapy may end in a breakup.
You tell her to give the ring back. Are you kidding?
She’s clearly bored with your relationship.
The whole point of engagement is to find out if you’re 100% certain. One of you clearly is not, and you don’t sound exactly like you’re over the moon. It sounds more like you’re hurt so you’re talking up how much you want to be with her to punish yourself more, but the description of your relationship in the first and last paragraph are quite different.
Then on Saturday she went on a date with a guy and spent the night in his hotel room. She said she only kissed him which I do believe
I mean, it’s not impossible. But let’s be real comrade, that’s a big fucking lie. This shit is beyond over, completely unsalvageable. Don’t give in to the sunk cost fallacy, the only way forward is to completely separate your lives as quickly and cleanly as you possibly can.
You’ll find someone who doesn’t treat you like this. This one ain’t it.
if you learned all of this from her own admission without you noticing anything, it is somewhat more likely she is saying the truth. but it changes nothing still. your love blinds your judgement. she does not deserve your trust
she wanted me to propose
she went on a date with this guy
I have a bad feeling about this friend. It’s 2026, she could’ve proposed to you and she could’ve talked about opening the relationship, and the fact that she did none of it likely indicates that her relationships are built on power and not cooperation. Don’t get engaged to a patriarchal person who views your couple as a social necessity and a place of dominance.
Exclusive relationships should be driven by a genuine desire to commit to someone, if that’s not the case it’s a relationship of mutual control, or worse, unilateral control. Don’t get in there.
I’m so sorry 🫂
It’s highly unlikely one only kisses in a hotel room, though the exact acts are typically immaterial at the end of the day. In all honesty, in contravention to what a lot of people would say, in your shoes, I personally would’ve considered still giving it a go… up until this sentence:
Now she seems a lot less keen about working through it though.
That’s it, unfortunately. I truly believe cheating doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of a relationship, but that person has to be consistently 110% dedicated to making things work from there on. She is not. The sooner this is over, the better for both of you.
Sending love and support, comrade.
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Come on. Romantically involved adults don’t spend the night alone in a hotel room and “just kiss”. If a close friend had told you this about their partner’s infidelity, you’d say the same thing. She’s doing a thing cheaters do called “trickle truth”.
The reality of your situation is clear. She felt the relationship dying. She thought a proposal would reignite the spark. It didn’t. Now you are an safe port while she navigates the storms of the dating market. You deserve more than to be “plan B”, comrade.
You need to move on. Start separation. Distance yourself. Realize your codependencies and begin to sever them. Grieve the loss of your romance with this person. That part is big and important. Also, go to therapy. Not couples therapy. Just therapy for yourself. To heal.
As a side note: while we are talking about infidelity remember kids - if you cheat on your partner and then later have sex with them, that’s assault. Consent is timely and informed. If you are knowingly withholding critical information from someone in order to trick them into sex with you then you don’t have consent.
edit: HOLY SHIT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT CONSENT IS ON THIS WEBSITE.
remember kids - if you cheat on your partner and then later have sex with them, that’s assault.
Say it louder for the people in the back
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There are many forms of assault. You are justifying assault. I’m 100% serious. It’s gross. Do better. Sex without consent is assault and consent is INFORMED and TIMELY. This is not a debate. This is how consent works. Please learn it before you harm someone.
You’re making a very a black-and-white statement about a very messy and complicated issue.
Obviously, if there is a risk of physical harm (eg STDs) then yes absolutely. Beyond that - feel free to call it immoral, wrong, gross, etc, but I’d be extremely reluctant to say it is “sex without consent” to fail to disclose all your sexual/romantic/emotional involvements that the other person wouldn’t approve of.
You cannot, by definition, get consent through deception. Period. It is black and white in that regard. Holy shit what is wrong with you? Please internalize this because you are going to harm someone!
The question is at what point something becomes deception. I’d recommend checking out the thread @none started https://hexbear.net/post/9963088
I tried not to reply in that thread because that person is extremely bad faith and is mad they got called out on their nonsense.
That’s not even the question. We know what deception means in this context. If you are hiding it from your partner then you know you are deceiving them. If your relationship has rules that breaking them could end it (or stop your sexual relationship at least for an extended period of time) and you hide it to continue the relationship, that’s deception. Obviously. If you don’t understand this, then please do everyone a favor and wait to be in a relationship until you do so you don’t traumatize someone. Generally speaking.
There are people there really telling on themselves too by trying to find the “deception loopholes” on exactly how much they can lie to their partner without it being SA. Lying to your partner is reactionary in the most vulgar way. Revolutionaries practice radical honesty. That applies to monogamists and polyamorists alike.
The question was about consent and the assertion that sex without consent is always a form of SA. It is. Some people seem to think this devalues somehow the violent and extremely traumatic forms of SA. It does not. Denying this does, however, devalues and delegitimizes the more manipulative forms of SA. We need to recognize those victims, too, especially as leftists and advocates.
The person who made that thread doesn’t even attempt to bring that up in their post. They don’t touch consent at all because they know they’ve lost the plot completely on it. So instead they try to rhetorically appeal to vibes. “Yeah, it’s non-consensual but does it feel as icky as like something that’s forced violently,” type BS. Then they try to pre-empt anyone pointing out their framing as “apologia” by painting them as people against free and fair discussion. It is apologia for SA, though. Plain and simple.
Some people pointed out how cheating as an exit strategy can be valid in cases of domestic abuse and so on. I can understand that and can see it in certain situations, for sure. I’m sympathetic to those and understand the complex situation victims of domestic violence and control can find themselves in. In such cases, I would argue that those victims aren’t themselves giving consent to their abusers in the first place, because that “consent” is obtained through violence and manipulation which is obviously and fundamentally not a form of actual consent. Seeing as they aren’t giving consent to their abusers in the first place and are themselves SA victims in this regard, what they are doing outside of their abusive relationship in order to exit it can be seen as a form of valid self defense. I don’t see a moral quagmire or double standard in this position.
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Call off the engagement if she isn’t 100% about it. You deserve someone as committed to you as you are to them.
Friend, get on the righteous self-respect train ASAP. Detach from what may be a codependency. Things will only get worse if you act like any of this is simply acceptable. And if you were to ever have a relationship going forward you should make peace with the idea that your partner has been cheating on you for longer and more than they have told you. If that is an intolerable violation, stop entertaining the idea of a relationship.
I’m saying all of this because you can save yourself a lot of pain by being your own best ally.
What do I do?
Demand that the cheater give you back the ring for one.
Then on Saturday she went on a date with a guy and spent the night in his hotel room. She said she only kissed him which I do believe and she was very apologetic at first and so I told her we could work through it and she agreed. Now she seems a lot less keen about working through it though.
So she views you as someone beneath her and with such disdain that she shat out some bullshit lie thinking you’re such a chump that you would fall for it. They have obviously known each other for a while now and have obviously done more than kiss, which shouldn’t even matter honestly as far as violation of trust is concerned.
- Save every single admission and piece of evidence she gives you
- Start taking contemporaneous notes. Today.
- Change every password you have, including your phone pin and computer password.
- Do you live together? Come daylight, book a consultation with a lawyer on how to kick her out of your house legally. I sure hope the place wasn’t in her name.
- They fucked in that dingy-ass hotel room and you need to accept that it is over
- One day this will all be over and you will be in a better place mentally and physically. Don’t give up.
Change every password you have, including your phone pin and computer password.
This.
Why?
Opsec stuff. A belligerent former partner is one of the last people you want getting into your phone and stuff.
Get the ring back and move on, you deserve better
Dont go to couples therapy just throw her out. The relationship is over for all you know this is the first time she got caught
I’m so sorry comrade. It is over, I’ve been there, even if it doesn’t feel like it is, it’s done.
I’ve been through this before and stayed and stuck around longer than I want to admit. Part of it is is that sometimes it won’t matter how much concern others may show for you and asking you to get out, something in you is probably going to be begging you to stay.
In the coming months you’re going to experience a lot of pain and a lot of heartbreak, this won’t be the end of it, harden your heart.
Please read the book Blind to Betrayal by Dr. Jennifer Freyd. I’m not sure if it will be important for you, but it was a very very important book for me. Please read it, especially if you don’t normally read books. Here’s the EPUB you can grab at any time
Also, /r/SurvivingInfidelity will be your best friend. Don’t get too sucked in for too long, as you can be lost in a torrent of pain if you’re not careful, but it was very therapeutic to see others experiencing a similar thing to what I was (and feeling the pain).
