Debating a second chance with ex who cheated while in LDR. (Long story.)

[amber33]

Can you ever rebuild trust after someone cheated and/or left you for someone else while you were away?

 

I know most of you are probably already thinking "move on" right now, but please hear me out on the details as to why I'm even considering the possibility of taking back someone who hurt me. Normally, I would consider cheating the end-all of my relationships, but given the complicated circumstances of what happened and how deeply I felt for this person, I'm truly in an emotional dilemma with myself and would like to talk things through with anyone who has been in a similar situation. I really think talking it through would help me make up my mind, but I don't know anyone who has been through anything like this before.

 

Long story, but here's what happened. I had been seeing someone for four months before I moved abroad to start a graduate program. At the time we got together, he knew that I had been accepted to this program and would be gone on-and-off for the next two years, but it wasn't 100% clear if we were planning on turning our relationship into a LDR when I left. We didn't have a super lengthy talk about it like we should have, but we did express that we'd miss each other and wanted to stay in contact, so we did. Each time I came home to visit (which was every 3-5 months during those 2.5 years), we would hang out and it would feel like I had never left, and my feelings for him only grew stronger as the days went on. One day, during the summer (a little less than a year after I had moved abroad), he confessed his love to me in a long text message and told me his feelings were so strong that he just couldn't wait until I arrived back home again to tell me that. I was happy and our relationship continued to be a great experience for both of us for the rest of that year. My next visit home in the fall went wonderfully, and my Christmas visit, even better.

 

Unfortunately though, in the beginning of the second year, he had started to grow a little distant. He stopped texting me as often while I was gone, and then when I came home for my next visit in the spring, it felt like he didn't want to see me as much as I wanted to see him. I got really sick my first two weeks home so I didn't leave the house much, but once I finally felt better and went to hang out with him one evening, he essentially rushed into sex with me and basically kicked me out afterwards, talking about how he needed to get up early for work the next morning. He had never ever asked me to leave like that (in fact, we used to stay up until 4-5 in the morning sometimes and he said he'd never cared because he enjoyed spending time with me), so this was a big slap in the face for me. I cried my entire drive home and had this gut feeling that it was about to be over, but part of me also wondered if I was just overanalyzing things and overreacting, so I decided to take a little break from contacting him to calm myself down. We had never argued or fought before so I wanted to think everything through first to make sure I could articulate my feelings without being overly emotional when I did bring it up with him. I had honestly felt a little unwanted after being kicked out that night as well, so I figured I'd wait for him to contact me again to hang out. A week came and went and I heard nothing. My emotions got the best of me and I wanted to contact him but I was so sad and unsure of what to say that I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I decided to keep waiting, figuring he'd eventually contact me since he knew how long I'd be home. He never did contact me before that trip home ended.

 

When it got to my last day of my visit home that month, I realized that I definitely needed to have a talk with him, but since I was still so sad and unsure of what to say, I gave myself a couple more days to calm down and sort out my emotions before finally sending him a message. I didn't know what was going on with him, but I was truly head-over-heels in love with him, so I wanted to make sure I could gather my thoughts before coming to him to address and work through any potential issues. After two days abroad, I finally poured it all out, but I did so very calmly and kindly, making sure to not have an attacking or negative tone anywhere in my messages so he knew that my intention was to work through our issues, rather than to end things. He responded and told me that he had been unhappy in our relationship for some time (which was news to me) and thought it would be the best for both of us if we ended things. I was really taken aback by him telling me he had been unhappy, I had no idea that he was unhappy because he never said or did anything (besides growing distant at the very end) to indicate it. I told him that I was sorry that I couldn't make him happy and I apologized for keeping him waiting for me while I was abroad, and he actually assured me that it wasn't just the distance that drove him to want to break up, but he also didn't give me any specific reason why our relationship had to end at the time. I was SO hurt, I really did not see that coming at all since things were going so well up until that last visit home. I replied to his message and told him that I was honestly really confused, but that if this was it, that I was sorry that things ended this way and that I wished him well.

 

I was completely heartbroken. I spent weeks in bed crying, upset, and frustrated. I felt so worthless and confused, and I genuinely had no idea how my relationship got ripped out from under me, without him even trying to rescue it as it fell apart. I tried so hard not to think about it but still kept obsessing over it every day, without fail. I was devastated because he always told me I was the best girlfriend he’d ever had and I had envisioned moving in with him and starting our life together after I finished my program abroad, which would’ve only been 5 months later after our breakup. I was devastated that we stayed together for so long through the distance, only for it to end pretty much right before I was coming home. I had been through some difficult breakups before, but dealing with a breakup via text with the love of my life while being over 4,000 miles away across an ocean really took the cake. Especially since he offered no explanation whatsoever for his "unhappiness." I was left alone, sad, and stuck dealing with everything from abroad, completely in the dark about what happened.

 

About two months went by after the breakup, and I went on my first vacation since it happened. It was to a place I had wanted to see all my life, and while it was beautiful and I did enjoy part of it, it was probably the worst vacation of my life because I still couldn’t get the depression out of the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried. I actually spent two nights silently crying myself to sleep next to my friend and decided I really needed to find closure somehow if I was going to get any better. I decided to send him a facebook message since I thought he might no longer have the app we used to use for free international texting, so I went to his profile and sent him a long and heartfelt message (again in a very positive tone, just explaining how badly I had been dealing with our breakup and how I really wanted closure. I even made it explicitly clear that I wasn’t trying to get him back and I had come to terms with the fact that he wanted to move on, I just wanted to know what went wrong so I could understand the situation and move forward). for whatever reason, I decided to scroll down on his Facebook page after I sent that message and saw a photo of him with this girl that I had seen in a previous photo that was posted in the spring, a month before we broke up. When I saw that first photo of the two of them while we were still dating, I initially wondered who the girl was, but I eventually forgot about the photo and didn't think too much of it. My memory never fails to remember details though, and this time, after seeing the second photo of them, I had thought back to that night I saw the first photo, and it was the same time that my boyfriend had started to grow distant with me. I looked back through my messages and matched the dates up, confirming that the night the first photo of them was posted together, I had messaged my boyfriend and didn't hear back from him until the next day, with the excuse that his phone had died. At the time it happened, I didn't really think he was out cheating, but after seeing the second photo and piecing things together, it all started to make sense, though I was still in denial at the time. Part of me didn't accept the reality because I just really wanted to hear what happened from his perspective because I truly wasn't given any sort of explanation when it ended.

 

I kept checking our message thread for his reply constantly, knowing he takes forever to read messages, and I wasn't even sure he'd give me a response but I kept waiting for my message to at least be marked as read. It never was (until a few months later), but over time, I started thinking about it less and although he would still cross my mind, I finally started to feel a bit better and get back into a normal routine. I was doing better for about a month or so, and then my summer visit came, my last visit home in my time abroad before I would go back to finish my degree and finally move back home a few months afterwards. It was also my first visit home that we wouldn’t be together for and it proved to be more difficult for me than I anticipated. From the time my plane landed, I was already watery-eyed. I walked through the airport with watery eyes and went home with watery eyes. I looked up at the painting we made together that was hanging in my mother’s living room with watery eyes. I truly missed him and even thought maybe I’d try to reconcile with him during my visit home because these feelings were so overwhelming for me and I truly never wanted to end things in the first place. I figured it had only been a couple of months (we broke up in May and my visit was in late July) and I thought that we could still work through whatever issues we had. Since I was getting closer to moving home too, I knew that the distance would soon no longer be an issue for us, so I really wanted to talk to him. Within 24 hours of arriving home, I was completely overwhelmed with my feelings and determined to get the love of my life back. That is, until the next day, when I found out from his cousin (a long-time friend of mine) that he had apparently cheated on me and started dating the girl he cheated with (the one who I saw in those photos that I tried to convince myself I was being crazy about).

 

In the blink of an eye, I went from dreaming of getting back with the love of my life to resenting him, resenting myself, and spiraling back into a deep depression. I spent my first week of my visit home curled up in bed crying, wondering how he could do this to me. I was so deeply hurt, especially since I had thought of reconciling with him immediately after I arrived at home, only to find out my worst fear had come true. I managed to gather myself for my birthday with my friends, and I even managed to sleep with someone else that I had a bit of a crush on one night, but I was so deeply hurt and upset that he lied to me when he broke up, telling me he was unhappy in our relationship and not offering an explanation of why, when in reality, he was cheating on me and didn’t have the guts to tell me.

 

After about a week of crying in bed and being upset, I finally messaged him. This time, I was NOT nice or positive like I had been before. In fact, I was pretty aggressive and blunt with how I felt. I basically chewed him out for cheating on me and told him F-you. I told him how terrible he made me feel leaving me in the dark about what happened, and told him I couldn’t believe that he couldn’t just be honest with me and end things amicably. (I know it would've hurt to hear that my boyfriend wanted to leave me to try out someone else, but if he had just told me that, I could've at least understood his reasoning and moved on, instead of being so hung up on not knowing what happened.) He responded that he understood where I was coming from and he apologized for how he handled things and confirmed that he was indeed dating someone else, but at the time, he denied that he had cheated on me with her (he said they had only hung out in groups before we broke up). I ultimately ended up apologizing for initially dropping a few F-you's at him in a moment of anger but told him that I knew I needed to move on and I had no desire to speak with him any longer. I was crushed and lost hope of getting back together because he was evidently already involved with someone else and I figured he was over me. I told myself that was it, that I was done with him and needed to get over him.

 

About two weeks later, during my last week of my visit, he sent me a text to tell me that he had just saw the messages I sent to him on facebook while I was on that vacation before my visit home. He told me he felt bad for what happened between us and that he didn’t want for me to feel so hurt and he went on to ask me if I’d like to meet up to talk. I said no and I told him that since I already tried talking things through with him when we broke up and it got nowhere, that I didn’t think this time would be any different. I told him I didn't think I could handle seeing him and that I knew I needed to work through things on my own. I got a little drunk and texted him again later that night to tell him I really didn't understand why he was so unwiling to talk to me when we broke up, and even before then, since he claimed to have been unhappy for a while despite never telling me. I didn't drop any F-bombs but you could tell I was angry with him from the text I sent. The next morning, I felt bad for coming off slightly harsh so I sent him one last message to apologize and explain that I was drunk and upset, and I accepted that I needed to move on. He told me I didn’t need to be sorry for anything and he seemed like maybe he was starting to regret what he did, but I had started to come to terms with the fact that I needed to move on somehow. I left the next day to return abroad for my last 3-month stretch of my degree.

 

When I arrived abroad, I was still torn up about what happened. I continued to be upset for quite a while too, as I would keep seeing photos with him and his new girlfriend tagged together on social media, out with his family and friends. (I didn't even actively go looking on his page for these photos, but would see them in my feed because I am still friends with some of his family members, one of whom I have known long before we even dated, so cutting them off for the sake of avoiding seeing these photos wasn't an option to me.) I fell into a depressive hole for a couple of weeks, thinking he was out there living life happily with his new girlfriend, while I’m still abroad, in bed, confused and crying over what happened. I felt worthless. Things eventually started getting better though.

 

Fast forward to last November, 6 months after the breakup, I moved back home. By then, I was doing much better again and already moving on to thinking about what may happen with this other guy I had a bit of a crush on. My ex definitely still crossed my mind sometimes, but not as bad as before. I think that by then, I had accepted the fact that he moved on and decided it was best for me not to hang on to something that wasn’t there because even if he would have me back, I didn't want to be with him if he’d been spending all that time involved with someone else, unconcerned about how I felt.

 

Then, a few days after I had moved back home, I got a long text from him telling me that he’d realized what a big mistake he made and that he felt bad for hurting me and would give anything for me to give him another chance. I sat down and cried when I got his message because I honestly felt conflicted. The majority of me wanted to tell him to leave me alone and never talk to me again because I resented him for leaving me for someone else, while a part of me still loved him and wanted to tell him I’d give him another chance. I went with my gut instinct and decided to tell him that although I missed him and still had feelings for him, I had no desire to give him another chance and couldn’t see myself being happy with him again after what had happened. It hurt to tell him that because I knew I still loved him deep down, but I thought I was doing what was right to protect me and my feelings. I let him down very kindly and told him I wished the best for him and hoped he’d find someone who’d make him happy one day. He never responded to that message, but he contacted me again a couple weeks ago.

 

He sent me a message two weeks ago, telling me that he deeply regretted how things happened between us and that it was the biggest mistake of his entire life. He went on to say that our relationship was the best thing that had ever happened to him and that he was so stupid to just throw it away like he did, and he said he had been unable to stop thinking about how terribly he handled things. He also explained to me why he said he had been feeling unhappy for some time when he left me. It turns out that he was really upset that we had been together for almost two years and I hadn't introduced him to my mom (long story short on that one, my mom is a bit crazy and I wanted to wait until I moved back home to introduce him to her, but I tried my best to let him know why at the time) and it had been eating him up inside since I had told him that I didn't want him to meet her yet on the New Year's Eve before he started growing distant with me. He told me that it made him feel worthless or like he wasn't good enough for me, having been a part of my life for two years and still not meeting my mom yet. I understood where he was coming from, and I gave him a lengthy response explaining that it wasn't personal that he hadn't met my mother, but instead, that I had wanted to wait until I got home to introduce them because my mom is a bit mentally unstable and I didn't want her to do or say anything that would negatively impact our relationship or my life while I was abroad and already unable to control a lot of variables in our relationship.

 

We exchanged a couple messages where he clarified a few things for me, and I him, and he asked me if we could meet to have a talk. I was a little hesitant to agree to see him, but I did, with the intention of hearing him out and hopefully gaining a better understanding of what happened between us. I met with him at his apartment last week and we talked through a few things and he admitted to me that he did in fact cheat on me with the girl he left me with. At first, when I asked him about it, he started to say "I can't remember the exact timeline," but then I looked him in the eyes and told him "you can just tell me, it's not going to change what happened, but I would rather hear the truth from you than to speculate based on things I saw on facebook" and he came out and said "well, I guess if you had saw something with the two of us on facebook while you and I were together, then yeah, I guess I did." He confirmed what I had a feeling happened all along, he told me he "wasn't thinking at the time" and that he'd never meant to hurt me, but he realizes now that keeping his feelings from me did a lot more harm than good. Then a minute or so later, I actually conveniently got a family emergency call from my mom and told him I needed to leave to take care of things. He walked me to my car and asked me if he could have a hug as I left, so I gave him one and I began to cry as soon as he wrapped his arms around me. I only let one tear stream down my face before I was out of his sight, but I cried the whole drive home and I cried the entire night that night.

 

When he had asked me to meet that day, he had intentions of getting back together with me. He told me that he'd do anything for another chance with me, and that his feelings for me were stronger than anything he'd ever known, and when I got to his apartment, he told me that seeing me again only confirmed that for him. Truth be told, I still have strong feelings for him to this day as well, but I'm still hurt inside from the way that he chose to emotionally check out of our relationship and begin another one before ours even properly ended, all while being thousands of miles apart. All of this could have certainly been avoided had he just told me how he felt, but at the end of the day, we cannot undo what has already been done, so I chose to focus my thoughts on how things might go moving forward. When I left his apartment that night, he told me he understood if I couldn't tell him how I felt about getting back together right away, so I knew I had time to think things through if I wanted to, but after crying all night that night and only being able to think of the worst possible outcomes, I messaged him to tell him that I didn't think I could handle getting back together with him and wondering whether he'd leave me for someone else again. I told him I wasn't ready to get into a relationship with someone who'd rather run and escape their problems rather than addressing them head-on even when it's difficult. I cried as I typed the message because I didn't want to have to say those things to him, but I was feeling so sad and so hurt that I was convinced there'd be no way I could take him back.

 

Funny thing is, somehow I regretted that decision almost immediately. The next morning, I woke up and began thinking about our entire situation. I thought about things from his perspective and how it may have been extremely difficult for him to deal with the distance and think of a way to end things with me when he realized he might want to see someone else while I was living abroad. (That doesn't mean I'm okay with the fact that he did that, but I at least had an understanding of the reasoning behind what happened.) Then, at the end of last week, I left for a vacation to a city that is ironically one of his favorite places (not intentionally, I had planned this trip with friends a few months ago). My flight there had a layover in the same airport I had always had layovers in when I would fly home to visit from abroad. Memories came flooding back to me and I remembered how great our relationship was before it fell apart and I felt this urge to contact him and I wondered if I had made a mistake in dismissing the thought of getting back together so quickly. He knew I was going there because I had mentioned it when we met to talk too, so I first sent him a casual text asking what place he said I should visit while there, and after he immediately responded to that text, I sent him another telling him I'd like to give talking things out one more chance after my return home since I had to leave so abruptly for a family emergency when we last met. He said he'd like to talk again too, so we agreed to talk again sometime this week but I have yet to choose the specific day yet because I'm trying to settle some things in my mind first.

 

A huge part of me wants to take him back knowing the circumstances have changed a bit now with me being back home again, but I am nervous about how to proceed, and of course, I don't know if things will ultimately work out. I really don't want to make the same mistake again, but I also don't want to shut him out completely knowing that I do still love him and that this may have been an unfortunate one-time occurrence as a result of our prolonged distance and a lack of communication on his part. I know that if we got back together, I would have to deal with some insecurities and I would need to rebuild my trust for him, but I think I may be willing to try if he is sincere about his feelings for me and his desire to make things work this time around. I would need him to work on expressing his feelings to me, and I think I would really need to feel assured that he really does want ME and not just a security blanket until he finds the next best thing that crosses his path. I know that there's a possibility that the "once a cheater, always a cheater" saying might be true, so I know I would be taking a risk in getting back together with him, but part of me can't help but consider it, knowing that it could be possible that this was something that just happened out of the circumstances at the time. Now that I am back home and the distance is no longer there to strain our relationship, I feel like we may somehow be able to make things work and move past everything if he is willing to be open and honest with me about his feelings going forward. I know it won't be easy, but if he's serious about how he feels for me, I can't help but consider giving it a chance as I still have strong feelings for him that never fully went away. I have truly never felt so strongly for anyone in my life. I have dated one other guy that I liked since the breakup, but the same sort of "spark" just wasn't there, so I ended it after a few dates. When I saw my ex last week, I knew I still had feelings for him but I also knew I have a lot of other feelings to be addressed if we are going to attempt to work things out.

 

Am I insane for even wanting to consider giving someone a chance after they left me for someone else? Do you think that trust can ever be rebuilt in a situation like this? Is it a stretch to think it might be possible to talk things through and potentially give the relationship another chance? Do I need to state the obvious and tell him that I am only willing to forgive him because of the circumstances, but that if anything like this were to happen again, that I will leave the relationship without thinking twice? (I have never forgiven a cheater before, and I absolutely will NOT tolerate cheating if it happens a second time.) I know that my partner cheated with the woman he left me for but I didn't ask any details about it, do you think it's necessary for me to know more about what happened with the "other woman" to move on with (or without) him? Have you or anyone you known been in a similar situation where your partner gave in to the "grass is greener" syndrome during an LDR and came back to you after a few months, realizing he made a huge mistake when he left? Or have you ever been in a situation where your partner wasn't the best at communicating his feelings but somehow grew to be better at it? What would you do if you were in this sort of situation? Would you consider attempting to work things through if your heart is telling you not to let go? Or would you just accept the pain that you've endured thus far and do your best to move on from this person? Which is the bigger mistake to make--to give someone you loved another chance and potentially set yourself up to be in the same hurtful situation again, or to write that person off and not know for the rest of your life if another chance would have worked out?

 

Of course, I don't expect an answer to all of those questions, but these are just some of the things going through my mind right now. I would really appreciate anyone taking a second out of their day to talk to me about this, I just don't want to discuss it with my close friends yet because I have a lot of mixed feelings and I'm hoping to hear from someone who has gone through anything even remotely similar (which none of my friends have) while I decide if/when I am going to meet him again to talk in attempts to reconcile. Anyone out there feel like helping a fellow heart out?

 

Signed,

conflicted and in desperate need of an internet friend right now.

Edited June 18, 2018 by amber33
removed typos, added minor details for clarity

[ItIsNotMe]

I think you should give him a chance because if you don't do it, you would regret later, asking yourself "what would happen if I've given our relationship a chance". But if you see even 1 sign of disrespect or being interested interested in another girl, leave him forever.