I F’d up with the person I love
I’m in a really bad place mentally right now and I need honest advice.
I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for the last few months and we were planning to get married later this year. I genuinely love her and always imagined spending my life with her.
But over the past couple of months, I started feeling emotionally exhausted in every part of my life.
My work situation has been extremely stressful and I’ve basically had to act out of character every single day just to survive professionally. On top of that, in my relationship I also felt like I was constantly filtering myself because my girlfriend is very sensitive about certain topics and discussions. A lot of conversations would turn into hours-long emotional discussions or family-related stress. It started feeling like there was no emotional lightness left anywhere in my life.
She’s also going through financial struggles, which I never judged her for and always tried to support her through. But over time, certain patterns started affecting me mentally — self-pity, sleeping and waking very late, constant heavy conversations, emotional intensity all the time, etc.
I never properly communicated how overwhelmed I was. Instead, I made a terrible decision.
A few weeks ago, I downloaded Bumble for literally 2 days and talked to a couple of girls. Nothing physical happened, there was no plan to meet anyone, and honestly I think I was looking for escapism more than anything else. I deleted the app quickly afterward.
But one of the girls somehow found my girlfriend on social media and sent screenshots of our chat.
Since then, everything has fallen apart. My girlfriend is deeply hurt and I completely understand why. I betrayed her trust and I hate myself for it.
At the same time, this situation has forced me to confront the fact that I’ve been emotionally burnt out and unable to express myself honestly for a while.
I don’t know:
• whether this relationship can realistically recover,
• how to rebuild trust,
• how to talk about my emotional suffocation without sounding like I’m blaming her,
• or whether this incident exposed deeper incompatibilities we ignored before.
I really do love her and don’t want to lose her, but I also know apologies alone won’t fix this.
Has anyone been through something similar — either as the person who broke trust or the one who got hurt? What actually helps rebuild something like this, and when do you know it’s beyond repair?