I assaulted my partner after finding out about his infidelity
My partner has repeatedly cheated on me throughout our relationship, and each time I ended up forgiving him and trying to move past it. But two recent incidents have affected me so deeply that I genuinely feel like they’ve changed me as a person and seriously impacted my mental health.
For context, we live in a four-room student flat. Two of the rooms are technically ours, although we mostly stayed together in his room. One room is empty, and the other belongs to a younger friend of mine who moved in with us around a year ago.
The first incident happened one night when my partner didn’t realise I was coming home. He brought another girl back to the flat and walked into our room with her while I was standing there. Seeing something like that in front of you feels completely different from just hearing about cheating, and it honestly left me deeply hurt and traumatised. Despite that, he apologised, promised he would help me heal from it, said he would change, and I chose to stay.
Recently though, I discovered that my junior — someone who shared the same flat, kitchen, and living space as us, literally only a few steps away from our room — had been secretly sleeping with my boyfriend for almost the entire year she lived with us.
When I found out, I completely lost control emotionally. I ended up hitting my partner and damaging some things in his room. I feel extremely guilty and ashamed about how I reacted because that behaviour is not who I believe myself to be at all. It genuinely felt like I snapped, and afterwards I barely recognised myself or the way I acted.
I know what I did was wrong, and I’m not trying to excuse it. I just feel emotionally destroyed, betrayed, humiliated, and mentally exhausted by everything that’s happened. I honestly don’t know how to process all of this in a healthy way anymore.
I would really appreciate any advice on how to cope with this situation and move forward.