Hi, I’m posting because I need clarity and a reality check. I (20F) have been dating my boyfriend (22M) for a year and a half. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, but I genuinely loved him and thought we’d build a future together. We talked about living together after graduation, and I really imagined marrying him one day.
Here’s the situation.
A few days ago, his female best friend (who I had expressed discomfort about in the past) messaged me out of nowhere. She told me she had gotten a boyfriend and was cutting off my boyfriend out of respect for her new relationship. That part didn’t bother me much, but then she told me that she and my boyfriend had slept together months before we started dating and had a threesome (with another man) shortly after our first date.
He never told me about this. In fact, he denied anything like this ever happened multiple times when I brought her up. We have had SO MANY arguments over this girl and time and time again he’s just lied to my face about this and I can’t believe I had to hear it from her one and a half years after the fact. I confronted him, and he admitted it. He said he “messed up” by not telling me the truth, but to me, this wasn’t just a lie of omission. It feels like deep dishonesty especially because I spent so much of our relationship feeling insecure about their closeness, and he made me feel like I was overreacting.
On top of that, my friends pointed out things I didn’t fully see during the relationship:
• He admitted recently that he doesn’t think about the future with me and doesn’t know if he wants to live with me.
Looking back, I realize that most of the love, effort, and care in the relationship came from me. I was very emotionally open, affectionate, and intentional. I now feel like I was carrying the emotional weight of the relationship alone.
What’s confusing is I still love him. Deeply. And letting go of the future I envisioned with him hurts more than I can describe. But I also feel sick to my stomach when I see pictures of him now. I feel like the person I loved never truly existed.
I guess I’m trying to figure out:
• Is this something someone could move forward from?
• Is lying about sleeping with someone (especially someone still in their life) before/during the start of a relationship forgivable?
• Am I overreacting by thinking this is the end?
• How do I deal with the idea of never talking to or seeing someone I loved for over a year?
I’m scared of the silence and the loss. But I also think this may be the universe giving me the final sign I ignored for too long.
Any advice would be deeply appreciated.
TL;DR: My boyfriend lied about sleeping with his best friend (and having a threesome) right after our first date and kept it from me for our entire relationship. I just found out, and now I’m rethinking everything.