u/Ecstatic_Macaron_609

I initially broke up with my boyfriend of 1.5 years over something that happened that made me feel that we really were incompatible (just recurring behavioral issues, e.g. perceived lack of effort but boyfriend says he was giving all he could at the time, nothing abusive), a decision that I think I made rashly. My boyfriend responded that he felt the same way and agreed with breaking up.

I mulled over the breakup and decided that it was not what I actually wanted. I believed that we could still work our incompatibilities out and learn to speak each other's language. So I reached out to him and I said that I wanted to get back together and told him what I thought about our incompatibilities and how we could still work on them since we we were able to work on some of them already. But he said no and that he really wanted to break up because he thought we needed some time and space for ourselves. The conversation ended with me asking if there was any way we can do to fix the relationship and that I still love him, and he just responded that he "just needed to be left alone for now."

I may just be in denial, but his final response made me feel as though he's still giving it some thought. That maybe he'd still come back to me after I give him some time. when can i tell that i've given him enough time to be alone and reach out to him again? or do i just have to consider this as over and move on with my life?

the thing is, i love this person so much and i feel like i'd be willing enough to appear desperate just to keep him in my life. i don't know if i should still fight for this or if i should just accept defeat.

My boyfriend and I have been together for around a year and a half. my boyfriend and I had a really complex time at the start of our relationship. Before we even got together, I was very flaky and had a lot of unresolved issues so there was a point in our dating phase that I was gone for a while. Anyway, we started dating each other exclusively when I fixed some of my unresolved issues.

One day, he introduced me to a girl. I noticed that they were unnaturally close and touchy. It made me so uncomfortable that it made my stomach twist. But I was afraid to bring it up because I had the tendency to overthink things and thought that maybe the observations I was making were all in my head, intensified by my insecurities and low self-esteem. They both were a part of a playgroup and naturally they hung out, but I chose to just ignore my gut because I didn't really want to be that crazy insecure girlfriend and stop him from hanging out with someone.

I didn't really bring this issue up, not until this girl started dating my boyfriend's friend. We were casually talking and he brought up how he was worried that his friend started dating said girl. Apparently, his male friend friend just came from a break up and my boyfriend didn't think it was right that he was immediately hopping onto a new relationship. And out of nowhere, he said he used to like this girl. I forgot the context, really, but I think he was trying to say that he used to like her but didn't pursue her because of something and that his friend should've done the same or whatever. I was so visibly shaken when he told me about that because that means that my gut may have been right when I first met this girl. I was naturally upset and asked him when he started liking her. It seems that he started talking to her during the time I was being flaky with committing to a relationship with him. Of course, I asked him if he still liked her and he said no. I asked him why he didn't think it was important to tell since he hung out with this girl a lot of times, and he said it really just didn't cross his mind. I also brought up that I had been worried about his closeness with this girl since the first day he introduced me to her, but he said that those interactions didn't mean anything to him and that it was just friendly banter and that I had nothing to worry about since he won't do anything like that to me. I just couldn't understand how you can continue pursuing a supposed friendly relationship with someone you found attractive. Especially given the timeframe between when he started liking this girl and thought of pursuing something with her and the day we actually made up and started exclusively dating each other. He swore that he realized that he wanted to pursue a relationship with me instead because he had already loved me then and that he just started talking to her at the time because of what happened between us at the start of our relationship. Feeling guilty that I actually caused this because of my own flakiness and unresolved issues, I just dropped it.

It has been months since that happened and it hasn't really crossed my mind since they stopped hanging out regularly as well. Not until the other day. My boyfriend and I were playing a game with some of his friends. They were new faces so I have never met them before. One of the guy suddenly says that he was surprised that he was now close with my boyfriend considering how he used to be uncomfortable with my boyfriend's relationship with his ex-girlfriend. I put two and two together, the new guy's name sounded familiar. It was the ex-boyfriend of the girl I was worried about. And all of a sudden, all the worries I had about my boyfriend and this girl that I thought were all just a product of my anxiety, became real to me. Because how coincidental could it be that someone felt the same way that I did. Of course, I was curious to no end, I asked this guy, while my boyfriend was listening, what sort of interactions made him uncomfortable, I told him my own experience, shared what kind of interactions made me iffy. I tried to sound as cordial as possible, to sound that I was just being curious even though I was extremely bothered. I clarified some things with my boyfriend and he said that he never liked her at all since he started dating me exclusively. But I just can't shake this feeling of betrayal for some reason. I can't help but feel that I was right to feel uncomfortable about his closeness with this girl at that point in our relationship and that he was a liar for telling me that I had nothing to worry about. I felt as though he has been talking to this girl behind my back and that he only stopped hanging out with her because she is now dating his friend. And to think of it, had his friend never dated this girl, I never would've known that he used to like her and he would've continued hanging out with her without ever telling me that there was history between them.

for some reason i feel absolutely betrayed. I want to break up with him but I feel that I may be overreacting. We've already talked and he has said his piece already, and he felt that "I threw him under the bus" with how I asked questions and shared things with his new friends while he was there. He is resolute that at no point did he ever have any feelings for this girl during the span of our relationship. But I just can't seem to shake off the feeling that he is lying. How do I move past this? I keep feeling that he would've dated her instead of me if he had the chance. Would it be an overreaction if I just broke up with him?