u/Character_Willow_492

Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/1taw66n/am_going_crazy_or_is_my_boyfriend_gaslighting_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

UPDATE: I confronted him and found out he was cheating

After reading a lot of your comments, I realised I had been shrinking myself for weeks because I was afraid of the reality.

He was cheating.

And not in a “this happened a long time ago” kind of way. He was actively cheating while I was sitting there trying to convince myself I was just anxious, insecure, or connecting dots that weren’t there.

He had deleted a lot of messages. The only reason I found one of the chats was because it reappeared after a girl sent him a reel. It was flirty, and that alone made my stomach drop. What made it worse was that the chat was basically empty, but she was muted. So this was clearly someone he had been actively speaking to, and he did not want her notifications suddenly popping up.

When I confronted him, he denied everything with so much force. He told me, “I know what you saw makes me look guilty, but I promise it’s just talking. Nothing ever happened. They’re all just people.”

Then his story shifted.

Suddenly it became, “Okay fine, you’re right, the message you saw was my ex. I was just really embarrassed.”

The more he spoke, the more I realised he was not going to give me the truth. He was only going to give me whatever version he thought I could not disprove.

So I investigated by myself.

Credit to my memory, I remembered a girl I had seen on his Instagram and reached out to her. I honestly expected either no response or for her to tell me I was mistaken. Instead, she shared screenshots with me.

In one of them, she had asked him if he was in a relationship. His response was:

“I’m not really interested in relationships, for now at least.”

And we all know that was probably just the door opener. I am sure there was more. But that alone was enough. He was presenting himself as available while he was with me.

When I showed him the screenshots, he realised there was no escaping it anymore. That is when he admitted this was not the first time he had done something like this. He also admitted he had met up with this girl a few times while I was at work, as recently as a few days ago, and that they had made out.

That part broke something in me.

Because while I was agonising over our relationship, wondering if I was being paranoid, wondering if I was unfair, wondering if I was imagining things, he was literally meeting another woman and making out with her. Then he would come home and kiss me.

That has been one of the most gut-wrenching parts of this. Not just the cheating, but the fact that he could come back to me after doing that and act like nothing happened.

I am not going to lie and pretend I handled it well. I did not. I cried. I bawled my eyes out in front of him. I begged for answers. I was battling so much hurt, and to be honest, I still am.

Yesterday was another eye opener for me.

I came home after work and went for a jog, hoping I would exhaust myself enough to sleep. Later, he showed up at my doorstep and started arranging a few things around my house that were disorganised. For some reason, that felt like such a stab in the guts. Like he could still come into my space and do these familiar, domestic little things after everything.

Then he announced that he was going for a few drinks.

When he left, I broke down and sobbed. He came back, kissed my forehead while I was crying, and still left again.

And I think that moment made me realise something I was still trying not to accept.

This is him.

Not the version I loved. Not the version I kept hoping would finally reassure me. Not the version who said all the right things. The actual him. The one whose actions kept telling me the truth long before I was ready to hear it.

For all intents and purposes, I know I am done. But emotionally, I am struggling. I am vulnerable, and I do not want to pretend I am in some instant “glow up and move on” stage. I am not. I am hurt. I am disappointed in him, but also in myself for still hoping for comfort from the person who hurt me.

So I guess what I am asking is: how do you detach from someone like this?

How do you leave emotionally when the logical part of you already knows you have to?

Because I know I need to leave now. I just need to learn how.

I (25F) have been with L (25M) for almost nine months. Things were fine at first, but recently I’ve noticed situations that bother me.

It started when we met one of his coworkers. I hadn’t known she lived in our building, and L had never mentioned her before. When we ran into her, they clearly had some kind of inside joke. When I asked him about it, his first response was to mention her boyfriend.

I then asked why I’d never been introduced to any of his friends. That turned into a confession: he said he didn’t really have any true friends, and that I was his only best friend.

A few days later, I woke up from a nap and found him gone. When I stepped out of the apartment, he came downstairs alone, from where that coworker lives, and said he had been helping one of his “boys.” I noticed alcohol on his breath (he quickly added he’d “obviously taken a few shots”).

I told him, “You know you can go have fun, right?” But instead of just agreeing, he joked, “Why are you trying to chase me away?” [for context: I could clearly see he wanted to go, and I’ve never been the type to control him]. The conversation turned into me reassuring him that I had no issue with him going out. He eventually left and came back three or four hours later, obviously drunk.

Afterward, he gave me a speech about how he doesn’t actually enjoy parties and prefers when we have a few drinks alone together. To me, that sounded like overcompensation. Though maybe it was just my brain being passive‑aggressive about all these events I’ve started connecting.

Things became even more dodgy when there was an event at his job that, according to him, demanded he go in for a full‑day shift instead of his usual 4‑hour one. He was gone the entire day and only texted me toward the end with things like “I miss you” and “I’m so tired.”

Since I knew he’d been gone all day, I said I’d make him a meal. When he came home, I noticed alcohol on his breath. My rationalizing brain told me, “This is fine, it was an event, maybe he had a drink.”

After showering, he rejoined me and said, “Babe, I forgot my charger so I’m gonna walk to work real quick to get it.” His workplace is only a 5‑minute walk from our house, but he was gone for almost an hour [for context: this should have been a quick errand].

After all that, he went on a tangent about how he’d need a few days off work because he was so exhausted. But the very next day, he casually mentioned that apparently at work they were saying there weren’t that many people there, I kid you not Verbatim that's what he said, followed by “Maybe I’ll just go there for a shift since I’m bored.”

The issue is that it just kept going. That work event turned out to have been organized by a mutual friend, a fact L only mentioned after it ended. He could have told me beforehand, or maybe he was scared I’d show up? And then the questions keep dragging in my head: do I embarrass him? Are we even in a relationship, since this goes beyond just being private?

I had a conversation with him recently where I told him I was miserable. I don’t want to be the person who overthinks and tortures themselves. He said he was sure we could work this out, but his way of “solving” things is to think about them and then never bring them up again.

And the pattern continues:
“Maybe I’ll just go do a shift since I’m bored.”
“I’m gonna talk to my family, I’m on a walk.” [for context: he didn’t even tell me he was going for a walk, he just left and told me after].

He’s very protective of his phone. That “walk” lasted almost four hours, and when I asked to see the call log, he said it was a Google meeting and his phone didn’t show the log. I was humiliated and hurt because I’ve never been the type to ask about his phone or whereabouts, I don’t do the whole “who were you with, where were you” thing. And yet, it begs the question: have I lost the entire plot? Am I imagining things? Is this all in my head?

We’ve even broken up before, and it was because he refused to show me his phone. The entire issue again stemmed from the fact that this “private” relationship feels more like “hidden.” I know asking for your partner’s phone is wrong, but I don’t know why I felt that would reassure me. (and its totally contradictory since I said I don't do the whole where were you who were you with, I promise that was the first and last time id ever asked that of him)

And now you must be wondering, didn’t he offer a solution? YES!, yes he did, His solution was that we could invite friends over and have a dinner. That was his answer to my entire issue. I’m left wondering: am I being unreasonable? If I say no, it sounds like I don’t know what I want. If I say yes, he can just selectively invite whoever he wants, as if to shut me up.

Beyond all this, I recently started a new job, and with school on top of it, I basically have zero free time. I wake up early for work, come home late after classes, and I’m exhausted.

What do I do here? Am I confused, insecure, and imagining problems? Or am I actually onto something? Someone help me figure this out.