I (23M) don't know if I should try again with my ex (21F), or if too much trust has already been broken.
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**TL;DR:**
I accidentally met my first girlfriend through a wrong-number text, and we quickly became extremely close. Early in the relationship I made a mistake by not telling her I'd gone to the movies with an old female friend before we were officially together, which hurt her trust. Later, she crossed much bigger boundaries by becoming physically intimate with one of my closest friends, and after another argument she admitted she intentionally sent that same friend nude photos to hurt me. I forgave her because I loved her, but after we broke up she also admitted she'd lied about important parts of her sexual history and past HPV treatment. She now wants to get back together but says her ex will likely always remain in her life because of the support they gave each other during her illness. I'm in therapy trying to work through everything, but I'm struggling to know whether trust can realistically be rebuilt or if I'm holding onto a relationship that's become unhealthy.
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I know this is long, but I really need an outside perspective because I'm feeling emotionally drained and I'm not sure if I'm thinking clearly anymore. I'm using some help to summarize and better structure my thoughts. But if I need more details, I can provide them in response to clear questions.
About six months ago, I accidentally texted the wrong number. That mistake ended up changing my life. We started talking almost every day, playing games together like Minecraft and Roblox, watching movies online, and eventually spending entire days on voice and video calls. We became each other's favorite person without even realizing it.
At that point we weren't dating. We were simply two people getting closer.
Around Valentine's Day, an old female friend I hadn't seen in about five years asked me to go to the movies. I accepted because I genuinely thought it was just two old friends catching up. Nothing romantic happened. She actually left halfway through the movie, gave me a bag of candy, and disappeared from my life again. That same night, the girl who would later become my girlfriend called me crying because another guy she was interested in at the time (I'll call him L) had cancelled plans with her after an argument. We stayed on the phone all night. That was the moment I realized that she was the person I wanted to be with.
Eventually we met in person for the first time. We clicked immediately. Not long after, we shared our first kiss, and later we officially started dating. She became my first relationship, my first kiss, my first sexual partner, and the first person I genuinely imagined marrying someday. I fell deeply in love with her.
One of the biggest mistakes I made happened early in our relationship. I never told her about going to the movies on Valentine's Day because, in my mind, it wasn't important and nothing had happened. Months later, one of my closest friends told her about it behind my back. She felt I had intentionally hidden it from her. Looking back, I understand why she felt betrayed, and I take responsibility for that mistake. I apologized and accepted that I had damaged her trust.
Unfortunately, that same friend later became one of the biggest problems in our relationship.
He had recently gone through a painful breakup, and my girlfriend wanted to support him as a friend. One day she told me she was taking him food because he wasn't doing well emotionally. I admitted I wasn't comfortable with it, but she promised me she would simply drop the food off and leave.
Instead, she disappeared for almost two hours.
A few days later, both of them admitted she had gone inside his house and into his bedroom. However, their versions of what happened were different.
He admitted that they were lying together on his bed, that there was mutual sexual touching, and that both of them got carried away before stopping themselves.
She admitted they had been alone in his bedroom and that there had been physical flirting and mutual arousal, but insisted that she stopped everything before they had sex because she suddenly realized how wrong the situation had become.
To this day, I don't know whose version is completely accurate.
The hardest part wasn't only what happened.
It was that the person involved wasn't a stranger.
He had been one of my closest friends for years. Someone I had always supported, trusted, and considered like family.
I felt betrayed by both of them.
Despite everything, I chose to believe her because I loved her.
Months later, during another argument, she believed I had disrespected her after seeing something on my phone that she interpreted as inappropriate. Instead of talking to me, she unblocked that same friend—the one involved in the bedroom incident—and intentionally sent him nude photos because, as she later admitted, she wanted me to feel as hurt as she did.
That completely destroyed me emotionally.
I ended the relationship at that point, but she came to my workplace every day asking me to forgive her. Eventually I did, because I loved her and wanted to believe we could rebuild what had been broken.
Unfortunately, there were still things I didn't know.
She had another ex-boyfriend (I'll call him L) who remained in her life long before we met. Throughout our relationship, she told me that their sexual relationship had been minimal, always protected, and that she had never really felt comfortable with him.
After we broke up, she finally admitted that this wasn't true.
They had actually been in a very sexually active relationship and frequently had unprotected sex.
Before dating her, L had visited a brothel and had also had unprotected sex with another woman. At some point, he transmitted HPV to my ex. She underwent several months of treatment in private clinics, including medication and medical procedures, while he paid for most of the costs because he had infected her.
Her treatment ended several months **before** we started dating, and according to her doctors, she had recovered and no longer had visible lesions before we became sexually active.
My issue is not that she had HPV.
My issue is that she told me an entirely different story during our relationship. I made decisions based on what I believed was the truth, only to discover much later that important parts of our history had been hidden from me.
After our breakup, we had one final conversation where we tried to be completely honest with each other.
She told me she still wants us to try again.
However, she also told me something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
She said L will probably always remain part of her life.
Not because she loves him romantically.
Not because they're having sex.
But because they went through a very difficult period together during her illness, he has always been available whenever she needs help, and he lives very close to her while I work long hours and live much farther away.
I honestly don't know what to do.
I still love her deeply.
She's the first woman I've ever truly imagined building a future with.
I've started therapy because this breakup made me realize I have a deep fear of abandonment, and my psychologist believes this relationship has become emotionally unhealthy for me.
At the same time, I can't stop wondering if love is enough when trust has been damaged so many times.
I don't hate her.
I don't think she's an evil person.
I know I made mistakes too, and I'm not trying to paint myself as the victim.
What hurts me isn't that she had a past.
What hurts me is realizing that so much of that past was hidden from me or told in ways that weren't true.
So I genuinely want to ask:
* Is it realistic to rebuild trust after this many lies and broken boundaries?
* Would you be comfortable staying with someone whose former partner remains an important part of their life because of everything they went through together?
* Am I focusing too much on the past, or are my concerns reasonable?
* If you were in my position, would you try one last time, or would you finally let go?