WIBTA for ending my 6-year relationship with the father of my youngest child because I finally realized that staying isn’t the same thing as choosing someone?
Hey Reddit. This is going to be a long one, so hold on to your fucking hats.
I (38F) have been with my boyfriend (40M) for a little over six years. We have a 3-year-old son together, and I have three older children from previous relationships.
I’m seriously considering ending our relationship, and there isn’t one single incident I can point to and say, “That’s why.”
It’s six years.
Six years of love, children, moves, financial problems, lost jobs, lost vehicles, lost housing, cheating, arguments, good memories, terrible memories, starting over, forgiving each other, hurting each other, and somehow continuing to wake up next to each other.
And before anybody gets to the bottom of this and asks me why the fuck I stayed this long: fair question.
That’s actually part of why I’m writing this.
Because this isn’t a story about one affair, one argument, one shitty birthday, or a man who doesn’t buy me flowers. It’s six years of me repeatedly choosing a relationship through things that individually probably could’ve ended it, and now I’m wondering whether I confused my willingness to keep choosing us with evidence that he was doing the same.
So… buckle up.
Early in our relationship, I went through a severe depression. During that period, we also made the incredibly difficult decision not to continue a pregnancy because of my mental health and our circumstances at the time.
During that same period, he cheated on me.
We didn’t properly work through it. We basically swept it under the rug and kept moving.
And I stayed.
Eventually we made a major move together with two of my children from previous relationships.
Things became rocky again after another woman entered our lives. I’m deliberately skipping an entire side quest because this post is already going to require snacks, but after that relationship went south, he cheated on me with her.
And it didn’t stop there.
He continued cheating and continued communicating with other women.
What made that especially damaging wasn’t only what it did to me. My children were living with us and knew what was happening. His actions damaged his relationship with them too, and years later, that relationship has never truly been repaired.
And I stayed.
Eventually I became pregnant with our son.
During my pregnancy, he lost his job.
I worked throughout my pregnancy while he remained unemployed.
When I delivered our son, I actually left the hospital against medical advice because I was terrified of losing my job. I had a newborn baby, I was the only person working, and I felt like I didn’t have the luxury of prioritizing my own recovery when our household depended on my paycheck.
And when we needed transportation home from the hospital with our newborn, he suggested asking the same woman he’d cheated on me with—and was still involved with—for a ride.
Yes.
You read that correctly.
Somehow, I still stayed.
Eventually, with me carrying the financial load, we lost our apartment.
My mother lived several states away and agreed to let me and my children move into her home. Getting my boyfriend included in that arrangement was absolutely not automatic. There were very legitimate reasons my family wasn’t exactly rolling out a red carpet for him.
I essentially had to advocate and beg for him to be allowed to come with us.
I did it because despite everything that had happened, I was still choosing the relationship and trying to keep our family together.
So we moved.
And because I don’t want to write one of those Reddit posts where OP somehow remembers every shitty thing their partner has ever done while conveniently developing amnesia about their own behavior, I have contributed to the dysfunction in this relationship too.
I have gone through his phone.
I’ve had difficulty trusting him.
I’ve been defensive.
I’ve handled arguments badly.
I’ve said things in anger that I could have communicated differently.
He has repeatedly told me that I don’t listen to him, and there have absolutely been times when he felt unheard by me.
There are things he can point to and truthfully say, “You did this, and it hurt me.”
I don’t get to invalidate those things simply because he’s also hurt me.
One of his longstanding complaints is that I damaged our trust early in the relationship by going through his phone when, according to him, he hadn’t yet given me a reason to believe he was doing anything wrong.
He’s allowed to feel violated by that.
Going through someone’s phone without permission isn’t healthy, and I own that.
What I’ve struggled with is what happened afterward.
Because instead of it becoming, “Why don’t you trust me? What’s going on with you? What are you afraid of? What do you need from me, and what do I need from you so this doesn’t become our relationship?” it became defensiveness, blame and another wound that we carried forward.
And eventually he did cheat.
Then he continued talking to other women.
Then he cheated again.
So now, years later, we have this bizarre chicken-and-egg argument where he can point backward and say, “You never trusted me,” and I can point forward and say, “And eventually you repeatedly gave me reasons not to.”
Neither makes the other okay.
Me violating his privacy wasn’t healthy.
Him cheating wasn’t an inevitable consequence of me violating his privacy.
And honestly, that might be our relationship in miniature: two people hurting each other, carrying the hurt forward, and continuing the relationship without ever properly repairing what was underneath it.
We’ve also had a ridiculous amount of financial instability over six years.
We’ve lost multiple vehicles for different reasons—financial constraints, an accident, and other circumstances. We’ve lost housing. We’ve moved states. We’ve lived with family. We’ve both made financial decisions that, in hindsight, could’ve been better.
I’m not laying every financial problem we’ve ever experienced at his feet. That wouldn’t be truthful.
But what matters to me is the pattern of what happened during those crises.
When he lost his job while I was pregnant, I kept working.
When I gave birth and believed my job was in jeopardy, I left the hospital against medical advice because I believed keeping that income was necessary for our family.
When we lost our apartment and my mother offered my children and me somewhere to live several states away, I fought for him to come too, despite everything that had already happened.
After we moved, I found work.
I kept that job for two years.
I was promoted twice.
I moved into management.
I worked nights, weekends, holidays and overtime. I did what I needed to do to keep money coming in.
Eventually, though, I realized I was paying for that stability with something I couldn’t get back: time with my children.
My daughters are seniors in high school now. This is their last year before adulthood, and I realized I had spent so much time working nights, weekends and overtime that I was missing pieces of their lives I would never get another opportunity to experience.
So I made the decision to leave that job and look for work that would allow me to actually be present for my family.
And to his credit—and I genuinely mean that—he supported my decision.
I need that included because this man isn’t a cartoon villain.
He’s bought me gifts. He’s done kind things for me. He’s supported me at times when I needed support. We’ve laughed until we couldn’t breathe. We’ve created memories I genuinely treasure. We have a child we both adore.
There are reasons I fell in love with him.
There are reasons I stayed.
There are reasons I’m still struggling with whether to leave.
But currently we’re under financial strain again. I’m between jobs after making that decision, and he currently isn’t working either.
That financial pressure has dragged years of unresolved resentment back to the surface.
And one of the things he comes back to when we talk about our relationship is:
“But I never left you.”
He’ll say that he could’ve left when I was driving him crazy.
He’s also told me that during the first period when he cheated, he actually was done with me. He was looking for another woman because he intended to leave our relationship.
But he didn’t.
And lately I keep finding myself thinking:
Then why the fuck didn’t you?
And I don’t mean that sarcastically.
If you were done with me five years ago and ultimately decided you weren’t going to leave, when did staying become choosing me?
Because I’m realizing those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Recently I came across a Facebook discussion based around the phrase, “If he wanted to, he would.”
Normally I roll my eyes at overly simplistic relationship advice because human beings are more complicated than a fucking slogan.
But I started reading comments from women describing the things their husbands and partners do that make them feel loved.
And none of it was extravagant.
One woman’s husband writes her a love letter every week.
Someone else’s partner regularly brings home flowers or something sweet.
One woman talked about how her partner cared for her when she was gravely ill.
Another said her boyfriend told her he intended to marry her and, a few months later, bought her an inexpensive promise ring. He specifically told her that wasn’t the ring she’d eventually end up with; he just wanted her to have something tangible showing that he was serious about what he’d told her.
And reading those comments didn’t make me think:
“Why doesn’t my boyfriend spend more money on me?”
It made me think:
“Holy shit. I just want someone to be intentional about loving me.”
That’s it.
I don’t need expensive jewelry.
I don’t need vacations.
I don’t need somebody spending thousands of dollars proving they love me.
Write me a fucking note.
Bring me my favorite candy because you happened to see it and thought of me.
Plan something for us occasionally without making me coordinate it.
Remember something I told you.
Follow through on something you said you were going to do.
Notice when I’m drowning and take something off my plate.
Be curious about what’s happening inside my head instead of only becoming defensive about how my behavior affects you.
If I do something completely out of character and you genuinely believe you’ve done nothing to cause it, don’t just ask, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Maybe sometimes ask, “What’s going on with you?”
I want to feel considered.
I want somebody who occasionally thinks, “That’s my person. What can I do today to make sure she knows that?”
And suddenly his “I never left you” argument started hurting differently.
Because neither did I.
I stayed after being cheated on during one of the darkest periods of my life.
I stayed when it happened again.
I stayed when my children were hurt by his actions.
I stayed while pregnant and financially supporting our household.
I left the fucking hospital against medical advice after giving birth because I believed keeping my job was necessary to keep our family afloat.
I fought for him to remain part of our household when my family had very legitimate reasons to tell me no.
I stayed through unemployment, financial instability, losing housing, losing vehicles, moving across states and starting over.
I don’t want a medal for any of that.
Because staying doesn’t automatically make me a good partner either.
But if merely remaining is evidence of commitment, then I’ve been here too.
And that’s where I’m stuck.
Yes.
You stayed.
So did I.
What did we do while we were here?
Because staying while continuing to cheat isn’t repairing.
Staying while continuing to talk to other women isn’t rebuilding trust.
And staying while I continued behaviors that hurt him wouldn’t magically make my behavior okay either.
Physical presence isn’t the same thing as active participation in a relationship.
Maybe our relationship hasn’t survived six years because we’ve spent six years continually choosing each other.
Maybe it survived because neither one of us ever actually ended it.
And those are very different things.
One of his best friends has suggested couples therapy.
I’m not inherently against therapy. What makes me hesitate is that the problem we have isn’t simply that we talk and can’t find the right communication technique.
When I bring up old wounds that still affect me, I often hear some variation of:
“Why can’t you just get over it?”
“You’re never going to forgive me.”
“Are we going to be doing this for the rest of our lives?”
“I don’t want to keep talking about this.”
And that’s exactly the problem.
I don’t keep bringing things up because I enjoy being miserable or because I want to punish him forever.
I keep coming back to them because I don’t think they were ever repaired.
I don’t want to pay someone to referee the same argument while one of us is waiting for the therapist to declare a winner.
If we went, I’d need us both to be willing to hear uncomfortable things, take accountability without immediately counterattacking, and actually change behavior outside the therapist’s office.
Maybe that’s possible.
I genuinely don’t know anymore.
We have six years of history. We have a young child. There has been real love here. There have been good times. There have been things worth remembering.
And I have absolutely contributed to the damage in this relationship.
But I’m tired.
I don’t want “Well, I’m still here” to be the standard for the rest of my life.
I don’t want somebody who simply doesn’t leave me.
I want somebody who intentionally chooses me.
Someone who’s curious about me.
Someone who considers me.
Someone who repairs things with me.
Someone who plans with me.
Someone who follows through.
Someone who can hear “You hurt me” without automatically translating it into “You’re a terrible person.”
And I’m beginning to wonder whether I’d rather be single than continue confusing the absence of a breakup with the presence of a relationship.
So Reddit, after all of that:
Would I be the asshole for ending a six-year relationship with the father of my youngest child—not because one final catastrophic thing happened, but because after everything we’ve survived, I’ve finally realized that “I stayed” isn’t enough anymore?
Or is this something you think is actually repairable if both people are willing to do the work?
Because at this point, I genuinely want perspectives from people who don’t know either of us.
What do you see when you look at this relationship from the outside?