Should I tell his girlfriend about us?
I need honest outside perspective because I genuinely don’t know what the right thing to do is here.
A guy from work and I had history before he got into his current relationship. Back then things were briefly physical, but once he got together with his girlfriend, nothing physical ever happened again between us.
What makes this messy is that when the relationship started, I didn’t actually know there was a girlfriend. He never talked about her, never made it clear, and acted very ambiguously. Looking back now, I know the timeline was that he got together with her after things between us became physical, but at the time I had no clear idea what was going on in his personal life. I could maybe suspect there was someone eventually, but he never openly told me or established boundaries.
Months later, while he was fully still with her, he came back into my life knowing I had feelings for him. At first it was subtle flirting, but over time it became months of emotional intimacy, constant conversations, sexual tension, late night talks, mixed signals, emotional dependency, etc. He also started asking me for pictures pretty frequently, almost daily at some points.
I didn’t give in at first, but after a few months we ended up exchanging a lot of pictures and videos back and forth. Again, nothing physical ever happened while he was in the relationship, but it very obviously stopped being a normal friendship a long time ago.
There was also a lot of emotional investment from him in general (gifts, food, attention, constant contact) the kind of behavior that honestly made the whole thing feel way more emotionally involved than casual flirting.
I’m not pretending I’m innocent in this. Once I started realizing there probably was someone serious in the picture, I should’ve stepped away earlier than I did. But at the same time, he continuously engaged with me in ways that clearly crossed relationship boundaries.
Eventually I cut contact because I felt guilty all the time and emotionally drained by the whole situation.
Now I found out through coworkers that apparently he’s planning to propose to her soon, and that’s what’s making me spiral about whether I should tell her.
The reason I’m conflicted is because I genuinely do not want revenge on him. I don’t want him back, I don’t care about ruining his life, and I’m not trying to “win.” If anything, I feel embarrassed and guilty for even being part of this situation.
But at the same time, I feel horrible for her because if I were about to get engaged to someone, I would want to know if that person spent months emotionally investing in another woman behind my back, especially someone he knew had feelings for him.
At the same time, I know people define emotional cheating differently, and part of me wonders if telling her now would only be selfish and destructive.
Would you tell her, or leave it alone?