My LDR boyfriend of 5 years who proposed to me just dropped a massive bomb about a layover with an old long-distance crush?
I honestly feel sick to my stomach writing this and I really need some outside perspective.
I'd like to think I'm a very open-minded and honest person. I have a guy best friend in real life, so I am completely fine with platonic male-female friendships.
My boyfriend (35M) and I (35F) have been long-distance for 5 years. We have met before, obviously, and it's been great. He finally came to visit me in my home country because of an emergency trip I had, and he immediately packed and booked a flight to see me which I found extremely sweet. The trip has been an absolute dream so far, he extended it to stay longer, he listens to my boundaries, and he is incredibly sweet. He keeps telling me how amazing I look even though I’m currently bloated and dealing with a terrible eczema flare-up under my eyes. He even asked to meet my parents so we could officially get engaged. I was over the moon.
Then, two days before he is supposed to fly back home, today, he drops this bomb.
On his way back, he is staying a whole day in a city he claims he absolutely hates before taking a train to his city. He booked an Airbnb there to see a woman he used to tell me was his "best friend" when we first started dating.
As our relationship progressed, I found out the truth about this "best friend": They have actually never met in real life. They’ve only been long-distance friends. They used to have a mutual crush on each other years ago (he claims it was 15 years ago, they tried to meet multiple times but it went nowhere). She used to mentor him on spiritual things, and he thinks she is incredibly smart.
I never made an issue of it before because I have a guy best friend, too. But I actually know my friend in real life, and we have never had feelings for each other.
He told me that she can't leave her house to meet him because she is "training her dogs" so he is going directly to her private house. This will be the first time they ever meet in person. He claims she is in a long-term relationship and her boyfriend is in the army, but then said he "isn't sure" about her whole relationship status.
The excuse he gave me for why he needs to see her is that he wants to ask her about "psychology stuff" to help my career, because I work with kids and she works in psychology (I have a degree in Educational Psychilogy, she has a degree in...Psychology). She completely hates kids and has never worked with them, her degree is completely different than mine so I have no idea what useful information she could possibly give him. On top of that, I don't speak his mother tongue, and he claims he wants her advice to help me find a job if I ever move to his country.
To make matters worse, we have a history with this kind of stuff. A while ago, we had a massive fight because he was up late texting another girl (a friend of ours). He was explaining to her why he said something that upset her and apologizing, when I asked him about it, he got incredibly defensive and said he doesn't need to justify anything to me. He told me that by questioning him, I was "teaching him never to be honest with me again." I forgave him back then, but now I feel like he learned he can just slide things past me maybe?
If I confront him now, I feel like he will just say, "Fine, I won't go" and then do it secretly anyway because I'll never know from thousands of miles away. Am I overreacting about this LDR long-time crush, or am I justified to feel this way?
TL;DR: LDR boyfriend of 5 years came to visit and asked to meet my parents to get engaged. Two days before leaving, he reveals he booked a day-long layover and an Airbnb to visit a woman at her house whom he had a mutual long-distance crush on years ago. He claims it's to get career advice for me, but the details don't add up. We have a past history of him being shady over text and turning it on me. AIO?How do I handle this?
Edit: For context, I will add that we have met multiple times before, but not enough in a 5 years span. I understand why the timeline looks offputting from the outside. Tbh I’ve never been very interested in dating in general. In my culture, suitors are the norm, and I’ve had men proposing to me since I was 21, but I never got along with or connected with any of them. I have so much in common with this guy, and where we are different, we are highly compatible. The long-distance aspect gave me room to breathe, and the intellectual and emotional connection we built over those years was something I had never found with anyone else.