u/ThrowRA_LycheeS

Reposting from a throwaway account because my original post was removed.

I (27F) met a guy on Hinge last year while I was seeing my boyfriend (32M). My boyfriend and I had been in a casual relationship for almost 2 years at that point. I wanted a serious relationship with him and told him that multiple times, but he kept deflecting and didn’t want a commitment. We eventually became officially committed in March of this year.

Because we weren’t committed, I was talking to the Hinge guy on and off. We flirted here and there and I met him for a few dates, but I never got intimate with him because honestly, I still wanted to be with my boyfriend. The Hinge guy genuinely meant nothing to me and I never saw him as someone I wanted a relationship with.

At the same time, my boyfriend was also on Hinge until February. He says the difference is that he was honest with me about his past, while I wasn’t honest with him because I never told him about my conversations with the Hinge guy.

And honestly, I didn’t tell him because I never cared about this Hinge guy enough to consider it significant. To me, it was just nothing.

In January this year, I messaged the Hinge guy saying I didn’t want to hook up, but that if he wanted, we could go for a drive and smoke. He asked when, and I said “now?” He said he was busy. After that, I never replied to him and nothing happened. Later, my boyfriend found those messages and focused on the fact that I was the one who asked him to meet. He said that if the guy hadn’t been busy, I would have gone. I told him honestly, “yeah, maybe,” because I don’t want to lie about it. But I didn’t go, and I never pursued him afterward.

My boyfriend says he feels betrayed and hurt by this and that ever since he found those messages, he has “checked out.” He says he can’t trust me anymore. He also says that when I don’t text or call him, his mind immediately goes to “where is she?” and that he feels like this will eventually become toxic.
And he wants to breakup for this very reason.

I understand why seeing those messages hurt him, and I’ve told him I regret asking that guy to meet. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t asked, especially because I knew I wanted my boyfriend.

But this is the part I genuinely struggle to understand: how can he feel betrayed by me when we weren’t in a committed relationship?

I had repeatedly asked him for a serious relationship and he repeatedly told me he didn’t want one. He was still on Hinge until February. He had met and hooked up with someone from Hinge in the past, and even met her for coffee in May. Again, I’m not saying his actions make mine automatically okay. I’m saying I don’t understand why there seems to be such a different standard.

He says “the context doesn’t matter. The thing is, you asked him. That’s the problem.” And I understand that part, I did ask him, and I can admit that it was a mistake. But how am I supposed to understand the level of guilt he’s putting on me when there was no commitment between us at that time?

He says I should have told him about this guy, while I genuinely didn’t think there was anything meaningful to tell him about. I never hooked up with this guy, never pursued anything serious with him, and after he said he was busy that day, I never followed up.

I can accept that I made a mistake. I can accept that my boyfriend was hurt by seeing those messages. But I don’t understand how that mistake makes me fundamentally untrustworthy or why it should erase all the context of what our relationship actually was at that time.

And I also don’t know how to reconcile his reaction with the fact that he was on Hinge too and had his own history with someone he met there.

I love him and I don’t want this to become toxic. I’m willing to put in the effort to rebuild trust, and I’m not trying to invalidate his feelings. But I also don’t want to carry guilt for something that, at the time, happened when we had explicitly not agreed to be exclusive.

Is it reasonable for him to feel betrayed even though we weren’t committed, and is it fair for him to say he can never trust me again because of this? Or are we looking at the same situation with completely different standards?

Update- Another important context is that this happened in January, during a huge fight between my boyfriend and me. The fight was again about me wanting commitment and him not wanting one, and he blocked me for about a week. During that fight, he verbally abused me and called me a whore and what not.
It was the first time I experienced panic attacks, and I was genuinely shaken and mentally exhausted from constantly feeling like I had to prove my worth to him. So when I messaged the Hinge guy, this was the emotional context I was in, we were not committed, we were actively fighting about commitment, and he had blocked me.