My boyfriend cheated on me, and now he’s friends with the girl who was involved
Sorry that it’s a long story!
My boyfriend is friends with one of the girls he cheated on me with again, and I don’t know if I’m overreacting
I’m going to try to explain this as objectively as possible because I genuinely want outside opinions.
I’m 18F, my boyfriend is 18M, and the girl involved is 18F. My boyfriend and I have been together for almost two years. We’re both still in high school, and for the most part, he has been someone I’ve considered my best friend as well as my boyfriend.
Earlier this summer, I found out that he had cheated on me.
The cheating started around June 26, and I found out about it on July 17. It involved three girls who I had previously considered friends. These weren’t random girls. They were people I knew and trusted, which made the whole thing hurt significantly more.
There were multiple things that happened during that period that I didn’t know about at the time. They were talking to him during important moments for us, including his birthday, our anniversary, Fourth of July, and my grandmother’s 80th birthday. At one point, he apparently FaceTimed one of the girls for around five hours and even hung up on me to play Roblox with her. (I know, childish.)
There was also a point where he had apparently told ChatGPT that he was thinking about breaking up with me because he was unhappy. At the same time, he was telling me that he loved me and wanted to stay with me.
When I found everything out, I was absolutely devastated. I felt humiliated, angry, confused, and honestly just really insecure about myself. I kept wondering what I had done wrong and why people I trusted had done this to me.
Despite everything, I decided to stay with him.
He told me he wanted to make things right, and I wanted to see whether we could actually rebuild the relationship instead of immediately throwing everything away. Since then, he has made efforts to regain my trust, and I do believe he has been trying. I’m not saying he has done nothing to rebuild things.
The problem is the girls.
Recently, my boyfriend and one of the girls became friends again.
That has been really difficult for me because she isn’t just some random girl from school. She was involved in the exact situation that caused me to lose a huge amount of trust in my boyfriend in the first place.
I have told myself that if he is going to be friends with her, I need transparency. I don’t want secret accounts, hidden conversations, disappearing messages, or some friendship that exists completely behind my back. He has a main Snapchat account that I have permission to access, so I’ve basically told myself that as long as things aren’t being hidden from me, I can at least try to accept it.
But emotionally, I’m struggling with it.
I don’t necessarily think he is currently cheating again. I don’t have proof of anything happening right now. That’s actually part of why I’m confused.
I just have this really strong gut feeling that something is wrong.
And I mean REALLY strong.
It’s not just me thinking, “I don’t like that they’re friends.” It’s this weird pit in my stomach that I can’t shake. The reason it scares me is because the last time I had a really strong gut feeling that something was wrong, I found out the next day that he had been cheating.
So now my brain is basically screaming, “We have seen this before.”
There are also school events where him and her could be around each other, which makes me more aware of the situation.
I don’t want to become controlling. I don’t want to tell my boyfriend that he’s never allowed to speak to another girl. I also don’t want to spend every day checking his phone and assuming that every interaction means something.
But at the same time, I don’t think I should have to pretend I’m completely comfortable with him rebuilding a friendship with someone who was involved in betraying me.
I feel like there are two competing thoughts in my head:
“He is trying to rebuild my trust, and I should judge him based on what he’s doing now.”
and
“She was involved in one of the worst things that has happened to our relationship, so why are they friends again?”
I genuinely don’t know where the reasonable boundary is here.
So Reddit, am I being unreasonable for feeling uncomfortable with this friendship?
And after someone cheats with a specific person, is it actually reasonable for their partner to expect that friendship to stay over, or is it possible to rebuild trust while that person remains in their life?
I want honest opinions about whether my discomfort is justified and what a reasonable boundary would look like.
UPDATE: A lot of people are asking why I’m still with him, so I want to add some context about our relationship
I’ve read a lot of the comments on my original post, and I think I left out some important context.
First, I want to be very clear that I am NOT saying I was a perfect girlfriend. I wasn’t.
I’ve made mistakes in our relationship too. There have been times where I’ve been overly emotional, jealous, insecure, argued with him, reacted badly to things, and handled situations in ways that I now know I could have handled much better. I have apologized for those things and I’ve genuinely tried to work on myself.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I did absolutely nothing wrong just because he cheated. I know I had things I needed to improve, and I have taken responsibility for them.
However, one thing that has become really difficult for me is that whenever we have a conversation about what happened with the cheating, he sometimes brings up things that I did in the relationship and the conversation turns into what I did wrong.
For example, instead of the conversation staying focused on something he did and how it affected me, it can become, “Well, you did ___,” or “You treated me badly when ___ happened.”
And I understand why he has feelings about those things. If I hurt him, he is allowed to be hurt. I don’t expect him to pretend that I was perfect.
But I struggle with the fact that those things sometimes feel like they’re being used to turn the conversation around.
I can say:
“What you did hurt me and damaged my trust.”
and the conversation can become:
“Well, you hurt me too.”
Then suddenly we’re talking about my mistakes instead of the original issue.
I’m not saying my mistakes don’t matter. I’m saying I don’t think two things have to cancel each other out.
I can take accountability for being a bad girlfriend in certain situations while he takes accountability for cheating.
If I treated him badly, he had the right to tell me, set boundaries, ask for changes, or even end the relationship.
I don’t think that makes cheating justified.
And I’ve also tried to make changes since everything happened. I’ve been trying to communicate better, work on my reactions, rebuild trust, and be a better partner. I stayed because I genuinely love him and because I believe people can make mistakes and change.
That’s also why the situation with the girl he cheated with is so complicated for me.
I’m not sitting here thinking, “He cheated, therefore he can never speak to another girl again.”
I’m trying to rebuild trust with him.
But now he is friends with someone who was involved in the situation that caused the original betrayal, and I’m expected to be completely comfortable with that while I’m still trying to heal.
That’s where I’m struggling.
I also want to clarify something from my original post: I don’t currently have proof that he is cheating again. I am not saying that he is.
I just have this incredibly strong gut feeling that something is wrong. The last time I had that feeling, I found out shortly afterward that he had been cheating, which is why this particular feeling scares me so much.
I’m trying not to let my anxiety make decisions for me, but I also don’t want to completely ignore my instincts.
I love him. That is why I stayed.
I’m not staying because I think cheating is okay. I’m not staying because I think I deserve it. And I’m not staying because I think I have to prove something.
I stayed because I believe our relationship is worth trying to repair.
But I’m realizing that rebuilding a relationship after cheating means BOTH people have to be able to acknowledge the ways they hurt each other without using one person’s mistakes to erase the other’s.
So I guess my question is less “Was I wrong for staying?” and more:
Can a relationship actually heal when both people acknowledge their mistakes, or am I making excuses for someone who has already shown me that he isn’t willing to take full responsibility?