AITAH for hooking up with my ex after my boyfriend broke up with me?
So for context, my boyfriend and I were together for about 9 months. We were long-distance from start to end and never met, although we did have plans to. I’ll call him C.
I feel like I need to give some background because I think my past relationships affected how I handled this one.
My first relationship was when I was around 12–13. I was cheated on. It was only a 1–2 month relationship, but it affected me because of how young I was. I’ll call him T.
Then, when I was 13–14, I got into my first serious relationship. I’ll call him D.
D was emotionally abusive and controlling
-Wouldn’t let me wear tank tops, jeans, or revealing clothing.
-Threatened to leave me if I dyed my hair.
-Wouldn’t allow me to get any other piercings besides my nose.
-Didn’t want me going out with friends.
BUT, he was also extremely emotionally vulnerable. He’d often cry to me and tell me he was seeing things. I don’t feel bad that we eventually broke up because he would slash boxes in anger, but I also recognize that I wasn’t healthy in that relationship either.
Because of what happened with T, when D had a friend encouraging him to leave me and go for one of the girls at our school, it
TRULY flipped a switch in me I couldn’t turn off. Especially because D would occasionally talk to my girl best friend at the time.
I started doing things like:
-Threatening to leave him, knowing what it would do to him.
-Deleting my socials to get his attention.
-Deleting all of our shared pictures.
-Ignoring him for 1–2 days.
-Intentionally making him cry because I knew how vulnerable he was.
So honestly, we were both fairly toxic. And we were only 13–14, so neither of us really had the emotional maturity to handle a relationship like that.
Then D moved to a different school and got a girl best friend. He seemed to have more things to relate to with her than me. At one point, he asked to go to a football game with her and asked if I was comfortable with it.
I said no.
He still went.
Again, it flipped a switch in me.
So I started texting/flirting with T, the same ex who had cheated on me.
I was now becoming the cheater.
T and I didn’t do anything physical at this point, but D found out. He told his girl best friend to stalk T’s socials for him and ask him detailed questions about our past. I found out because T told me.
I broke up with D because of this, then got right back together after he cried to me.
Eventually, around 14–15, we finally ended things for good.
After that, around 15–16, I started talking to older guys and seeking attention/validation. I’ve always been pretty insecure about my looks, and I think I was seeking a type of validation I couldn’t get elsewhere.
And yes, T, the same ex who cheated on me, eventually came back into the picture.
We hooked up around four times during the summer. We both knew it wasn’t a relationship.
Then we get to when I was 16–17.
This is where the AITAH comes in with C.
C and I were together for 9 months. We were long-distance the entire time. We didn’t really start having problems until around 4 months in.
One major issue was my guy best friend. For context, he’s gay and has a boyfriend, and I’ve known him for 8 1/2-9 years.
C didn’t like that I had him as a friend, and I didn’t like that I couldn’t get enough of C’s attention because he played sports and had family commitments. By around four months in, I was honestly starting to want to leave.
Most of our issues were little conflicts that kept building up.
One thing that REALLY bothered me was that C wanted me to cut off my guy best friend for him, but he wouldn’t do the same because he had a girl best friend himself.
So obviously, I was going to keep close to someone I’d known for almost nine years.
Other issues included:
-He didn’t want me hanging out with my friend because he said I acted differently around him.
-He would try to get me to spend money on expensive trips to see him, as in thousands of dollars because of the distance, while knowing I was paying tuition for a college class and saving for a car.
-He didn’t seem to understand my financial situation because he didn’t have a job of his own.
-I didn’t like the time conflicts from being long-distance. There was a significant time difference, to the point where he’d be eating dinner while I was getting ready for bed.
-I’d want his attention because I missed him, and he’d get frustrated and raise his voice at me to get me to settle down.
-I’d try showing him things or telling him things, and he’d tell me I was being dramatic.
-When I’d bring up conflicts and explain what I thought needed to change, I felt like he wouldn’t actually listen and instead made it seem like my concerns were cute or something he didn’t need to take seriously.
Eventually, we got into an argument and broke up.
C initiated the breakup.
He blocked me on my socials.
As far as I knew, we were broken up.
About a week later, I noticed he’d added me back. When I added him back, I saw he’d been sending me all these apologetic reels, “missing your ex” type of reels, things about being sorry, saying he’d do anything it took, etc.
BUT.
There was something I had already done.
I’d say less than a week after he left me, I hooked up with T again. Yes. That T. The ex who cheated on me when I was 12–13.
Yet, I still added C back.
C and I started reworking things a tiny bit, and I told him that before we made things official and got back together, we needed to have a conversation. Mind you, I never told him that I wanted to take him back.
C, however, made it seem like we’d never actually broken up. I had to tell him multiple times that HE LEFT ME. I needed time to comprehend everything that had happened.
Then one day, C and I got intimate during a conversation, and I ended up admitting that I’d hooked up with T after he broke up with me. I honestly don’t know why I did this. It felt like something I needed to admit, and in the moment it somehow made sense, but I don’t know how I didn’t comprehend the consequences of telling him.
He FREAKED OUT. According to C, what I did was cheating. And this is where I’m confused. From my perspective, we were broken up. He initiated the breakup. He blocked me. We were separated.
I didn’t hook up with T while C and I were together. I hooked up with him after C ended the relationship. But C considered it cheating, presumably because we eventually started talking again and were considering getting back together.
So, AITAH for hooking up with an ex after my boyfriend broke up with me? Was this actually cheating, or was this a miscommunication about what the breakup meant?
After everything happened, I blocked C. The moment I received a text from an unknown number calling me a “slut” and insulting me over what happened, I immediately blocked him and the unknown number.. I don’t know for certain if it was his girl best friend or his sister, but given the timing and context, I didn’t feel comfortable continuing contact.