u/Cion318

Hello everyone,

I am new here and currently do not know how to move forward in my life with the crisis I am going through. I am seeking help or advice on what I should or can do.

I am a 32-year-old male and was with my significant other for almost 13 years. She was my second girlfriend and the first person I was ever intimate with, and I have not been with anyone else since. One and a half years ago, I proposed to her, and we got married half a year ago.

At the end of March this year, we were about to buy a house when she confessed that she no longer wanted to buy it because she was in love with someone else. She also admitted that she had been having an on-and-off affair that started just one month after we got engaged. So for almost one and a half years, she had been betraying me while still saying yes at the wedding, getting pregnant shortly afterward, losing the child, and planning a future together with me as if nothing was wrong.

After she confessed, I did not know how to react at first. I am still deeply in love with her, even though I know there is no way back to how things were, and the betrayal is so excruciating that I can no longer trust her in a romantic relationship.

She stayed in a hotel for a few days because she wanted time to think about what she wanted. When she came back, she told me she wanted us. Over the next few days, we talked a lot, but she kept saying that we were “Plan A” while she did not yet know what “Plan B” looked like or whether I would even be part of it.

After a few days, I told her that I thought she already knew what she wanted but was afraid to say it out loud. That resulted in her crying excessively the entire day.

Eventually, we both started looking for new apartments without hating each other or trying to hurt one another. We wanted to keep things civil because we still cherish each other as friends. She moved out at the beginning of this month, while I stayed in our apartment since it is affordable and a good size.

Now that she is completely gone, we still text each other from time to time to ask how we are feeling and how we are adjusting to the changes in our lives and living situations. Whenever she writes to me, I respond almost instantly, which I know is unhealthy. But when I message her, she sometimes takes hours to reply.

Like I said, I still cherish her as a friend because I do not have many friends myself. I am a somewhat introverted person who tends to keep to himself and would rather play video games than socialize. However, I do have a large family with very close bonds, especially with my cousins and my brother, and they are all there for me right now and trying to keep me company.

But whenever I am alone, I feel devastated, miserable, and empty inside. I constantly feel the urge to contact her, send messages, or check whether she has replied.

I cannot understand why she did this to me instead of simply talking to me. She herself is a therapist and should know what something like this does to another person.

The person she cheated on me with was one of her patients who had been seeing her because of his own relationship issues and because he felt unhappy in his previous relationship. Maybe that triggered something in her and made her reflect on what she felt was missing in our relationship. But she never once talked to me about any of it. She never tried. She simply cheated on me with him.

She told me that she always chose to come back to me. But she also always went back to him. She said that she felt no remorse because, to her, it was easy to completely separate the two parts of her life — her life with me and her life with him.

Right now, I told her that I need time for myself and that I will not be contacting her. I also told her that if she contacts me, I will not reply for the time being.

So far, one day has passed, and I still catch myself checking my phone frequently and looking to see when she was last online. But at least I have not written to her.

I really want to let go of my romantic feelings for her while somehow keeping a friendship because she is still very important to me. But I do not know whether that desire comes from the love I still have for her or whether it is truly because of who she is as a person.

I also do not know whether trying to stay friends is the right thing to do or how I should proceed from here. At some point, we will still need to be in contact to handle the divorce.

So yeah, this is my current situation, and I genuinely do not know how to navigate any of this. Any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

And sorry for the wall of text.