AIO for wanting to end my engagement after finding a deleted text to my fiancé’s ex? (Context included)
Long story short: I got engaged to my fiancée last year after meeting her the year before. She has two children with her ex, who lives in the same town, and they alternate weeks with the kids. I know this is long, but I think the context matters because the issue I’m asking about isn’t really one deleted text—it’s a pattern of things being kept from me.
Earlier this year, my fiancée and I were having financial problems. I tend to prioritize saving and financial security, while she is more comfortable spending money before she has it. We split expenses, with me covering groceries and various bills while she handled her car and the house. One night, we came home from dinner with her family. I had paid for everyone, and there was a tow truck waiting outside. Her car was being repossessed. The next day, I told her we needed to figure out how to get it back and took off of work so we could spend all day looking for the vehicle and a way to reclaim it. She insisted that I take out a loan against my 401(k), which I refused because we were already considering leaving our jobs and I didn’t want to put myself further in debt. I had also previously taken out several loans to help pay off credit cards belonging to her and her ex that had gone to collections. Then I found out that the house was in foreclosure like 2 days after the car repo. After I refused the 401(k) loan, she asked her ex to take an advance against their joint HELOC (on his house) to help with the situation. He refused, and I found out about the conversation later. She never told me that she had asked him until I confronted her about it. I understand that she needs housing for the kids, so I was sympathetic. I just felt like it should have been discussed as an option first before she asked him.
A few months later, the company her ex worked for went out of business and he was looking for work (they announced they were going under and he would need to find a new job a year earlier). My fiancée went behind my back a month or two before the company went under and told him that the company both of us work for was hiring a well-paying remote position and encouraged him to apply. I don’t necessarily have a problem with her wanting the father of her children to have a job and be able to support them. What bothered me was that she did this without telling me. It’s the principle, you know?
Then one of the kids got head lice from school. She knew about it because she and her ex had discussed it five days earlier, but she didn’t tell me. All weekend while she knew they had lice, we had all been on the couch and hanging out (which is so gross in hindsight). The worst part is that she mentioned the child having lice at dinner after I had gone to get a haircut earlier that day, and she only mentioned it because her ex was texting her a bunch of comments about her not being fit to parent. Thankfully I didn’t get lice, but I was pretty upset that I wasn’t given the opportunity to make my own decision about exposing myself or my barber to it.
Her ex has always had a habit of showing up at our house to pick up the kids or drop off their tablets without her telling me beforehand. Technically, I can see when he arrives because we have a Vivint camera, but that’s not really the point. I wanted my fiancée to simply communicate with me.
One night, he came to the house while I was working late. My fiancé and I argued about it afterward. The next morning, a coworker who knows both of them (and none of the drama) walked into my office and asked why my fiancé’s ex had been at my workplace with the kids. I had no idea what she was talking about. She then told me he had gone to the back to talk to HR. Later that day, I found out that he had been hired by the same company we work for. He doesn’t work in a branch like we do, but he can now communicate with my fiancée through Google Chat at work. I was furious. I packed my things and seriously considered leaving.
Afterward, my fiancée created a group chat with her ex and me and said that all communication about the kids would happen there going forward. After she made the group chat, she and I talked about everything that had happened up to that point, and she brought up the fact that I still had old selfies with my ex from seven years ago saved on Snapchat. She said she had deleted all of her old pictures with her ex, except pictures involving the children, which I have absolutely no problem with. I agreed that keeping old pictures of my ex wasn’t exactly fair, so I deleted mine. I have absolutely no attachment to any of my exes and never deleted them because I kind of just forgot about them, tbh.
During this conversation, I noticed that her ex had messaged her. I didn’t say anything because I wanted to see whether she would acknowledge it herself.
She didn’t. I also checked the social media accounts she said she had cleared out. They weren’t cleared out nearly as much as she had told me. At that point, I told her that I almost left and that I didn’t trust her. I also told her that we disagree about a lot of things (parenting styles, transparency, finances), but that transparency was something I needed if this relationship was going to continue, and we could work on the other stuff.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. Our wedding is approaching. Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to has told me to run or shut up and deal with it. I’m probably the idiot here because I’ve continued looking for reasons to stay. I know checking her messages wasn’t healthy, and I’m not claiming to be completely innocent. But I got curious and looked again. Most of what I found was minor. There was one message where she referred to her ex as “my husband” and then corrected it (pictured above). She calls me that, too, so I could easily believe it was a mistake. But then I noticed something that bothered me. On her ex’s birthday, she sent a message and then unsent it. I’ve never seen her unsend a message to him before.
I realize that a deleted message by itself is not necessarily suspicious or malicious. If this were the only thing that had happened, I wouldn’t be considering ending my relationship over it. But this isn’t the only thing. Over the past several months, there have been multiple situations where I’ve found out important things after the fact, particularly things involving her ex, finances, and communication.
I don’t want to leave my fiancée because of one deleted text. But I also don’t want to convince myself that I’m overreacting when this may simply be the latest example of a much larger pattern.