u/Upset-Row1648

I (29F) dated Ryan (31M) for almost four years. We were talking about marriage, and I genuinely thought he was the person I’d spend my life with.

About six months ago, he ended things completely out of nowhere. His exact words were, “I need someone who’s more on my level financially.” I was devastated because I’d supported him through grad school, covered rent when he was unemployed for almost five months and never once made him feel guilty about it.

A week after the breakup, I found out he was already been seeing a woman from his office. They made their relationship public almost immediately.

What hurt even more was that he kept making little comments online that seemed aimed at me. Things like, It’s amazing what happens when you stop settling and Some people are anchors disguised as partners.

Mutual friends confirmed he was talking about me.

I blocked him everywhere and spent months rebuilding my life.

Fast forward to last week.

I woke up to a bank notification showing that someone had transferred me $8,400.

At first I thought it was fraud, but the sender’s name was Ryan.

About twenty minutes later, my phone started exploding with calls and texts from unknown numbers. Apparently he had meant to send the money as the down payment for a condo he was buying with his girlfriend. He accidentally selected my name because my account was still saved as a transfer recipient.

Ryan finally emailed me because he realized I had him blocked.

He apologized not for how he treated me but for the banking mistake.

He asked me to immediately transfer the money back because the seller was waiting and he’d lose the condo if the payment didn’t go through that day.

I didn’t respond.

Instead, I called my bank to ask what I should do. They told me not to spend the money and not to move it until the bank completed its investigation, since reversing an electronic transfer isn’t always straightforward and they needed documentation from both parties.

So I left it alone.

Ryan somehow got my mother’s phone number and started calling my family, saying I was stealing from him.

His girlfriend even messaged me saying, If you’re still bitter over a breakup, just say that.

That irritated me enough that I stopped feeling any urgency to help.

I simply replied with one sentence:

I’m following my bank’s instructions.

Over the next three days, Ryan missed his closing date and lost the condo. According to mutual friends, he also lost several thousand dollars in deposits and fees.

Yesterday, the bank finished investigating and reversed the transfer themselves.

The money left my account exactly as I expected.

Now Ryan is telling everyone I intentionally delayed things to punish him. My sister agrees I should’ve ignored the bank and just sent it back immediately because it’s the decent thing to do.

My argument is simple, if I had transferred the money myself and something went wrong, I could have been responsible for thousands of dollars. I wasn’t about to take financial advice from the same man who publicly mocked me after I supported him for years.

I didn’t spend a single cent. I didn’t hide the money. I literally followed my bank’s instructions.

AIO?