u/Normal-Snow-2388

My ex and I were together for six years. We lived together and were genuinely best friends. He was incredibly caring toward me and helped me through some very difficult periods. He was my person and my home.

Looking back, he had been having doubts about our relationship for 1–2 years. But around the end of March, he became involved with another woman. She is married, has two children, and is now going through a divorce. Her husband is extremely angry about the situation, which doesn’t help their relationship, especially since 2 little kids are now involved.

They developed feelings while we were still together, repeatedly said they should stop, but continued. He kissed her while still with me and still telling me he loved me. He hid the affair and initially denied anything physical. I eventually found out through her husband. We broke up a few months ago, and he is now with her.

Today I collected my last belongings from our old apartment. I had lived there for six years. Seeing the completely changed apartment and even her underwear in the laundry basket made it painfully real that he is already building a new life with her.

And I keep wondering:
How can someone go from six years of love, friendship and shared life to simply moving on? Did I really mean so little? Will his get the backlash later? How does this work????

I understand that he had doubts and is extremely infatuated with her, but I cannot imagine that six years can just disappear emotionally. He really seems to genuinely not care, and is only focused on telling his side of the story, while I am left with scars and trauma.

My ex and I were together for eight years and lived together. We broke up about a month ago, but I only found out about the affair about three weeks ago.

He had developed a very intense connection with another woman while we were still together. What I’m struggling with most now is that he still lies to me about what happened, seemingly to protect her.

For example, he has told me that they did not get physical, while I have since learned that their physical involvement was actually acknowledged during a weekend away. I’ve also found out that some of our mutual friends already knew about their kiss more than a month before I did. Apparently they confronted him about it quite strongly. Meanwhile, during that same period, he was still telling me that he loved me, missed me and wanted our relationship to work.

What makes this even harder is that he apparently lied to his friends about the situation as well, for months. Some of them confronted him, but he still continued to minimize or deny things.

Now he seems completely focused on this new woman and barely seems to feel any guilt about what happened to me. If anything, he seems angry with me because I sent a photo to the man in her life, who I didn’t realize was genuinely threatening/unstable at the time. He describes my actions as a “witch hunt,” and I feel like that has somehow completely displaced any guilt he previously felt about the affair.

I’m struggling to understand how someone who was extremely loving, caring and devoted to me for eight years can now lie so extensively, protect the affair partner, and seem almost completely emotionally detached from the damage he caused.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Why would someone continue lying even after the relationship is already over, particularly to protect the affair partner? And is it possible that the anger toward the betrayed partner becomes a way of avoiding guilt?

I’m not looking to get back together with him. I’m mostly trying to understand what is happening psychologically, because the contrast between the person I knew and the way he is behaving now is incredibly difficult to process.

I’m two weeks into a breakup after finding out about an affair in my 6-year relationship, and I honestly feel completely blindsided. He has feelings for the other girl and tries to pursue her.

I never saw this coming, and I’m struggling to process how quickly my life changed. I’m currently staying with my parents, which I’m grateful for, but everything still feels awful and unreal.
We also have a lot of mutual friends, and no one is really taking sides, which I completely understand, but it makes the whole situation even harder.

For those who have been through something similar: how did you get through the first few weeks/months?

What actually helped you cope, accept what happened, and eventually start feeling like yourself again?
I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have been through a long-term breakup after infidelity. Right now, I’m just trying to get through one day at a time.

I hate you. I genuinely hate you right now. And at the same time, I miss you so fucking much.

I miss you as a person. I miss our bond. I miss your face, your love, the way you did so much for me. I miss our little routines, our stupid jokes, the constant texting throughout the day. I miss having my person.

After six years together, living together and basically doing everything together, you were my home. You were the person I wanted to come home to. You were my safe space.

I had doubts about our relationship. A lot of them at times. I didn’t always do things right either. I made mistakes, I hurt you, and I’m sorry for that. But we also had so much good. Amazing friends, beautiful trips, so many stupid and funny memories. Six years of our lives together.

And I fucking hate that you did this to me.

You were the person I least expected this from. You were my best friend. You knew everything about me. Seen me at my lowest. You knew what I’ve been through. You knew how much I trusted you.

And I still cannot understand how you could do this.

It wasn’t just one kiss. It was a full-blown affair behind my back. You even kissed her at a festival while I was there. I was literally there.

How could you look at me and then do that?

You weren’t thinking about me. You weren’t thinking about what this would do to me if I found out. You were thinking about yourself.

And you were too much of a coward to end things with me. You let me take the blame. You let me think I had destroyed the most beautiful thing in my life. You watched me drown in guilt while you were already involved with someone else.

You were never going to tell me. I had to hear it from her husband.

And even after that, you kept lying. You kept pretending you were still doubting us, while apparently waiting to see what would happen with her.

And now you’re continuing with her. After six years together, after living together, after everything we built. You’re building a relationship with the person you betrayed me with.

I feel so fucking betrayed. I feel empty. I feel completely alone.

And the worst part is that I still miss you.

I miss my best friend. I miss my person. I miss the life we had.

I hate that I can miss someone who hurt me this badly.

I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that the person I trusted most is the person who did this to me.

It still doesn’t feel real. It feels like I’m going to wake up from this.

Hi everyone,
I’m a woman in my early thirties, and about a week ago my partner of six years ended our relationship. I’m completely heartbroken and honestly don’t know how to get through this.

Over the years, our relationship slowly became unbalanced. We went through several difficult life events (serious illness in my family, work stress, anxiety), and I gradually became too dependent on him. He carried more and more of the emotional and practical load while struggling to set boundaries himself.

He encouraged me several times to seek therapy, but I didn’t take action soon enough. Looking back, that’s one of my biggest regrets.

At the same time, I want to be honest. For several years, I also had doubts about our relationship. I sometimes questioned whether we were fundamentally compatible and whether he was the person I’d eventually have children with. Those doubts hurt him.

Ironically, over the past year those doubts had become much smaller. I genuinely felt we were in a good place and believed we had a future together.
About three weeks before we left on a 2.5-week overseas trip, he told me he didn’t think things could continue the way they had been. I even asked if we should cancel the trip because I didn’t want it to become some kind of relationship test, but he reassured me that wasn’t the case and wanted to go.
The trip went well. We enjoyed ourselves, didn’t argue, and I honestly thought we would work through things together.

When we came home, he finally explained how unhappy he’d been for a long time. That was the moment I truly understood how serious things had become.

I immediately contacted my doctor, arranged therapy, and became completely committed to changing.
But he told me it was too late.
He said he had slowly lost hope over the past year and no longer believed our relationship could recover. He also admitted that he struggled to set boundaries and that our dynamic had become unhealthy for both of us. He told me he hopes I put all the energy I’m spending trying to save the relationship into working on myself instead.

What makes this so confusing is that only two months earlier he was still telling me things like, “I love you so much,” “You’re so important to me,” and “I want us to succeed.”

I feel like we realized the seriousness at completely different times. Just as I finally understood how much pain he had been carrying and became ready to do everything I could to change, he had already emotionally reached the end.

Now I’m left with overwhelming guilt.
Part of me feels like if I had sought help sooner, appreciated him more, and become more independent earlier, we might still be together. Another part of me wonders whether we had simply reached a point where he no longer believed things could change.
I miss him terribly.
I miss our home.
I miss our routines.
I miss our shared friends.
I miss the future I thought we were building.
It honestly feels like I’ve lost the life I thought I was going to have.

My questions are:
Has anyone experienced something similar?
Can someone genuinely lose hope before the other person fully understands the seriousness of the situation?
If you’ve been in his position, what made you feel there was no way back?
If you’ve been in mine, how did you deal with the guilt without blaming yourself for everything?

And most importantly: how did you survive the first weeks?

I wake up every morning in shock. I barely sleep, I cry constantly, and I honestly feel like my world has collapsed. Right now it feels impossible to imagine ever being okay again.

I’m not looking for people to tell me that he’s wrong or that I’m completely to blame. I’m looking for honest perspectives from people who have experienced something similar and, hopefully, some reassurance that this pain won’t always feel this overwhelming.

Thank you for reading.