u/Extra_Glass2044

I’m looking for advice from men who have been through something similar, particularly older men with a bit of life experience.

A few years ago I walked away from a long-term relationship with the mother of my children. We had been together since we were teenagers and had built a family together.

Looking back, I was extremely avoidant. Family life and emotional closeness felt suffocating to me. I moved out and eventually ended the relationship. At the time I genuinely thought I wanted freedom, space and a different life.
For the next couple of years my ex wanted us to get back together. She never entered another relationship and remained emotionally attached to me, we spoke everyday. I cared about her deeply but every time reconciliation became a possibility I would retreat. Looking back now, I think part of me subconsciously believed she would always be there.

Earlier this year something changed. I started seeing another woman and, strangely, it seemed to bring all my feelings for my ex to the surface. I found myself grieving for the first time. I cried over the pain I’d caused her and the family I’d walked away from. I ended the new relationship and started trying to rebuild things with my ex.
Then I found out something that completely blindsided me.
Around 20 months ago, while we were separated, she slept with a former employee of mine. We were not together at the time and I know, logically, that she was single and free to make her own choices. I was also seeing other women during that period.

The problem is that this was someone I knew well. I’d worked with him, spent time with him and interacted with him afterwards without knowing.
She says it was a drunken one-off, she regretted it immediately, cried afterwards, told him she still loved me and never spoke to him again. I actually believe her.
What I’m struggling with isn’t really the act itself.
It’s the emotional impact of finding out.

Most mornings I wake up and within seconds remember it’s real. Some days I feel like I can understand it and move forward. Other days I feel angry, hurt and unsure whether I can ever completely let it go.
I don’t know whether what I’m feeling is temporary shock, grief, wounded pride, delayed consequences of my own actions, or a genuine sign that the relationship can’t survive.

The hardest part is that I don’t want to make the wrong decision.
I don’t want to throw away the chance to rebuild my family because I’m reacting emotionally.
But I also don’t want to spend years convincing myself I’m okay only to find the resentment slowly destroys the relationship later.

So my question is:
For men who have rebuilt relationships after a painful discovery, did the pain eventually become something you could live with, or did it quietly erode the relationship over time?
How did you know whether you were dealing with temporary hurt or a permanent incompatibility?
Right now I feel stuck between staying and worrying I’ll never fully get over it, or leaving and worrying I’ve thrown away something that could have been saved.

I’m looking for advice from men who have been through something similar, particularly older men with a bit of life experience.

A few years ago I walked away from a long-term relationship with the mother of my children. We had been together since we were teenagers and had built a family together.

Looking back, I was extremely avoidant. Family life and emotional closeness felt suffocating to me. I moved out and eventually ended the relationship. At the time I genuinely thought I wanted freedom, space and a different life.
For the next couple of years my ex wanted us to get back together. She never entered another relationship and remained emotionally attached to me, we spoke everyday. I cared about her deeply but every time reconciliation became a possibility I would retreat. Looking back now, I think part of me subconsciously believed she would always be there.

Earlier this year something changed. I started seeing another woman and, strangely, it seemed to bring all my feelings for my ex to the surface. I found myself grieving for the first time. I cried over the pain I’d caused her and the family I’d walked away from. I ended the new relationship and started trying to rebuild things with my ex.
Then I found out something that completely blindsided me.
Around 20 months ago, while we were separated, she slept with a former employee of mine. We were not together at the time and I know, logically, that she was single and free to make her own choices. I was also seeing other women during that period.

The problem is that this was someone I knew well. I’d worked with him, spent time with him and interacted with him afterwards without knowing.
She says it was a drunken one-off, she regretted it immediately, cried afterwards, told him she still loved me and never spoke to him again. I actually believe her.
What I’m struggling with isn’t really the act itself.
It’s the emotional impact of finding out.

Most mornings I wake up and within seconds remember it’s real. Some days I feel like I can understand it and move forward. Other days I feel angry, hurt and unsure whether I can ever completely let it go.
I don’t know whether what I’m feeling is temporary shock, grief, wounded pride, delayed consequences of my own actions, or a genuine sign that the relationship can’t survive.

The hardest part is that I don’t want to make the wrong decision.
I don’t want to throw away the chance to rebuild my family because I’m reacting emotionally.
But I also don’t want to spend years convincing myself I’m okay only to find the resentment slowly destroys the relationship later.

So my question is:
For men who have rebuilt relationships after a painful discovery, did the pain eventually become something you could live with, or did it quietly erode the relationship over time?
How did you know whether you were dealing with temporary hurt or a permanent incompatibility?
Right now I feel stuck between staying and worrying I’ll never fully get over it, or leaving and worrying I’ve thrown away something that could have been saved.

I’m trying to understand whether what I’m experiencing is part of healing, deactivation ending, delayed grief, or something else entirely.
I ended a 7-year relationship in 2023. We got together when we were 15 and had a child together. Looking back, I think I’d been deactivating for a long time before I actually left.

A year before the breakup I moved out because the closeness felt suffocating. I loved my partner, but I felt trapped by commitment, family life and the expectations of being together. Eventually I walked away from the relationship.
For the next 2 years my ex never entered another relationship. She would reach out from time to time and wanted to reconcile. I would occasionally think about getting back together, but every time I got close to the idea I felt overwhelmed and pulled away. Looking back now, I think part of me subconsciously believed she would always be there, which allowed me to stay emotionally detached.
During those 2 years I felt surprisingly okay. I wasn’t grieving. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t desperately missing her. I mostly felt numb to the whole thing.

Then earlier this year something changed.
My ex had become noticeably more distant for around 3 months and around the same time I met another woman who was avoidant herself. Being with her seemed to surface a huge amount of emotion that I’d been disconnected from for years.
I suddenly found myself crying over the pain I’d caused my ex. For the first time in years I felt genuine guilt, remorse and grief. I ended the new relationship because it became obvious I still had unresolved feelings.
Around the same time I also found out my ex had slept with someone while we were separated. We were not together at the time, but it was someone I know well. That discovery obviously caused its own pain and confusion.
What I’m struggling with is that I genuinely cannot comprehend the mindset I was in for the previous 2+ years.

I remember feeling trapped by closeness.
I remember not wanting commitment.
I remember wanting freedom.
But today those feelings feel completely alien to me.
It’s almost like I’m looking back at a different person.

Part of me wonders whether finding out about the other man has forced me to confront what I lost.
Part of me wonders whether seeing my ex finally becoming emotionally unavailable triggered something in me.
And part of me wonders whether I’m finally feeling emotions that I suppressed for years.
Has anyone else experienced something similar?
Have you ever come out of a prolonged avoidant state and genuinely felt detached from the person you were while you were in it?
Did the guilt, grief and regret eventually settle into something healthier?

I’m struggling with a moral dilemma and would appreciate some outside perspectives.

My ex and I were together for around 10 years and have children together. Our relationship was very unhealthy at times. I repeatedly broke her trust, was emotionally inconsistent, cheated on her during parts of the relationship, and eventually left. Looking back, I know I caused her a lot of pain.

After we split, she spent over two years trying to reconcile. She would regularly tell me she loved me, wanted our family back together and never really moved on. During that time I was doing my own thing, seeing other women and generally keeping her at arm’s length.

Recently we started trying to reconcile properly. Then I received an anonymous message telling me that in late 2024 she had slept with a former employee of mine. My family owns the company and I knew this person. I’d worked with him, socialised with him and even travelled with him after the event without knowing.

When I confronted her, she admitted it. Her version is that she was heavily drunk, had people at her house, everyone left except him, and after initially pushing him away she ended up sleeping with him. She says she hated it, cried afterwards, told him she still loved me, never spoke to him again and spent months beating herself up over it. I found messages to friends and family from that period that seem to support the idea that she felt ashamed and guilty long before I ever found out.

The thing I’m struggling with isn’t actually whether she cheated. We were not together. She was single. I was also sleeping with other people at the time.

What I’m struggling with is that she never told me.

For around 18 months I continued to interact with this former employee without knowing. During that same period she continued trying to get back together with me and never disclosed what had happened.

She says she didn’t tell me because she was ashamed, terrified of losing me forever and a coward. I believe she genuinely regrets it. I also genuinely believe she loved me throughout that period.

But I can’t get past the feeling that she prioritised her fear over my right to know.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that I spent years hurting her, cheating on her and rejecting her while she continued believing in the relationship.

So my moral dilemma is this:

Was she wrong to keep this from me given that we weren’t actually together when it happened?

And if she was wrong, does the context of the relationship and my own behaviour change how I should view that decision?

I’m interested in honest opinions from both sides.

Me [M25] and my children’s mum [F25] were together from our mid teens until we were about 23. We officially got together in 2017 and were together for around 6.5 years. We basically grew up together. We had a child together, and then around the time we split up in 2023 she found out she was pregnant with our second.

The breakup was my decision, and honestly I probably didn’t treat her very well afterwards. Even though we stayed in contact because of the kids, I kept her emotionally at arm’s length. What messes with my head now is that for about two and a half years after we split, she stayed completely devoted to me. She never really moved on properly or got into another relationship.

Then around October 2025 she started antidepressants, and within a couple of months she started seeing another guy casually. From what I know he wasn’t exactly a great bloke, and from what she’s said it sounds like she was keeping him at arm’s length emotionally anyway. I didn’t know about any of this at the time.

When I eventually found out, I didn’t instantly want her back or suddenly panic because another guy was involved. In fact, in January this year I got into a relationship with someone else myself. But as the months went on, I started realising that everything I actually wanted in a long term partner was my ex. The comfort, the bond, the history, the way we understood each other, I couldn’t stop comparing it.

Eventually I told her how I felt, and she immediately ended things with the other guy. I then ended my own relationship within days, and now we’re trying to work things out.

The problem is I genuinely can’t tell whether we’re rebuilding something real, or whether too much damage has already been done over the years. Part of me feels guilty because she stayed loyal to me for so long while I pushed her away, and only later did I properly realise what I actually wanted.

I also can’t stop wondering whether the antidepressants changed something emotionally for her, like maybe they helped her detach from me after years of holding on.

Has anyone else been through something similar where you got back with someone after years apart and after other people got involved? Did it actually work long term, or were the cracks already there?

TL;DR: I left the mother of my children after a 6.5 year relationship. She stayed emotionally devoted to me for over two years afterwards, then started casually seeing someone else. I later got into another relationship myself, but over time realised my ex was actually the person I wanted. We’re trying again now, but I don’t know if too much damage has already been done.