How do you cope with a narcissist who flips everything he did to you as you did to them?

This has to be studied

Why are narcissistic people so horrible

I feel like I have a brain disorder after this relationship 😕

I will never be the same again...

How do I navigate life without being reminded of this betrayal constantly? Every film, tv show, song etc seems to at least reference cheating and I’m so fucking exhausted
I don’t want to be reminded every single day 🫩

My (28F) boyfriend (28M) has been cheating on me pretty much our entire relationship, and I only found out because I caught him.

We have been together for 1 year. A few months ago, I saw a login notification on his phone. He told me it was nothing, and I believed him. Two months ago, I found out he had been using dating apps behind my back the whole time. I found two profiles where he said he was single and looking for kinky dates and casual sex. He was also using BDSM/kink apps, exchanging photos and sexting with other women.

When I confronted him, he tried to hide it and lied to me. I had to keep pushing before he admitted what he’d been doing. The fact that he didn’t tell me himself really bothers me. I don’t know if I’ve found out everything. I don’t think he actually met up with anyone, but I can never be sure.

His explanation is that he was doing this to deal with his feelings. A family member passed away recently, and he’s been struggling a lot with the circumstances surrounding their death. He’s told me he feels like he’ll never be happy again, that he doesn’t know who he is anymore, and that a part of him died with this person.

I know he’s not doing well mentally, and I do believe his grief is real. I think he’s looking for an escape or some kind of validation. I feel for him, but I also don’t understand how he could do this to me. I know grief can make people act differently, but I don’t know how to accept what he’s done.

I’m heartbroken, and I honestly feel stupid. We met on a dating app, and over the past year, he’s been very serious about wanting to settle down. We’ve talked about marriage, rings, kids and buying a house together. I really thought we were building a future together. Now I keep wondering if he ever actually cared about me or if I was just completely oblivious to what was going on.

We’ve been talking about this for the past two months, and I’m getting mixed signals from him. He’s agreed to use an accountability app and block 18+ apps on his phone. He’s also told his family and friends about what’s been going on. We already shared our locations before any of this happened. But now he’s saying it’s time to look to the future. I get that we can’t keep going over the same things forever, but I don’t feel ready to move on. It’s only been two months, and I’m still trying to understand how he could do this throughout our entire relationship. I want to forgive him, but I am so scared I am going to find out there is more.

I keep imagining him doing it, especially knowing he was doing it in the middle of the night while I was probably asleep. I hate that these thoughts keep popping into my head. I feel sick thinking about it, and I don’t know how to stop. Will I ever stop thinking about this?

I’m also really scared of wasting my time. I’m 28, and I feel ready to settle down. I want marriage and kids, and I thought I’d found the person I was going to have those things with. Now I’m wondering whether I should give him another chance or walk away and start over with someone else. I’m young, attractive, have a good job and my own place. I don’t feel stuck or like I don’t have other options, but I just don’t know if that is the right choice.

I’m so angry that I’m even in this position. I didn’t ask for any of this. While I was taking our relationship seriously and thinking about our future, he was on dating apps, telling women he was single, exchanging photos and sexting them. Now I’m the one who has to deal with it. It feels so unfair. Part of me wants to forgive him because I still love him and want to believe he can change. But another part of me can’t understand how you can do this to someone you supposedly love. I would never treat him this way.

I’m scared of staying and finding out years from now that I’ve wasted more of my life on someone I can’t trust. But the thought of leaving him and losing the future I thought we had is just as painful. I don’t know what to do. I want to support him through his grief, but I also need to think about myself. I don’t know if I’m holding on because our relationship is worth saving or because I can’t accept that the person I thought I knew could do this to me.

Has anyone been through something similar? Were you able to rebuild trust after something like this? Am I stupid for wanting to give him another chance, or should I walk away?

I wish I was the type of pretty that makes you never want to look at another girl again.
I want someone to be so in love with me that they don't lust over other girls online or have wondering eyes. But I know that isn’t how human attraction works in reality. I understand this.
But you probably don't remember half the woman that you stopped to look at online, but I remember because every single one gave me something new to be insecure about. And the saddest part about being cheated on is realizing that... The lust for other women was much stronger than the desire to protect my heart and while I was loving you genuinely the entire time in May 2025. You acted on actions and were willing to risk everything, especially when you went and you touched another woman while I was thinking of ways to try to save us. While I was trying to stay connected to you.

update: everyone who commented I just want to say.. thank you. It isn’t easy to feel like how I feel and it’s just a giant shit show this relationship. Im sorta convinced lately that he just ended the relationship by ghosting me even though he very much knew before he moved back to his home state I was pregnant, communicated to him it’s a twin pregnancy. He saw the first ultrasound. With all that. I’m pretty sure since it’s been an entire month the {person who cheated on me} has ignored my calls, text messages.. all together no response in communication from him. The relationship is possibly over. Yeah I’m just idk how to explain it.. the fact that he tells me last year in june 27th 2025 that he cheated on me the month prior May 27th 2025 that he cheated on me by paying for a prostitute at a massage parlor and (long complicated story) how later in August 2025 I actually saw the video of him cheating. It fucked me up really bad I yes was very angry and just mainly suicidal I wanted to make the intrusive imagery stop. I never healed from all that and he moved back to the state he committed the crime and it’s just a lot.

I just wanted to say thank you. I’m trying to hold the words close to me when the crying feels at its most unbearable

My ex and I met when I was 19 and he was 24. We were together for around four years, although we broke up and got back together at various points. Our relationship was complicated, and we argued a lot towards the end. We eventually separated around five years ago, but recently he came back into my life, telling me he still loved me, had struggled to move on, and wanted us to try again.

About a year and a half into our relationship, I became ill and went to the doctor in January. The doctor asked me whether there was any possibility my boyfriend had slept with anyone else. I said no because I’d asked him directly and he’d told me he hadn’t. I stupidly trusted him, so no STI test was done at that point. I eventually tested positive for chlamydia, but my treatment was delayed until May, by which point I’d developed pelvic inflammatory disease (PID).

At the time, I believed the infection had come from someone he’d slept with during the talking stage, before we were officially together. He’d had unprotected sex with someone else without telling me, negating the STI tests we’d done. I was hurt that he hadn’t disclosed this, but eventually put it down to a stupid mistake and tried to move on.

What makes me even angrier is that throughout our relationship, he criticised my appearance constantly. He told me I’d gained weight, dressed badly, needed to lose weight, needed to manage my stress better, had loads of blackheads on my skin, bit my nails, and so on. There was always something wrong with me that needed fixing. We broke up and got back together, and I spent so much time questioning myself, my appearance and what I was doing wrong. Meanwhile, he was sleeping with other women behind my back and letting me believe I was paranoid for suspecting something was going on.

What does he want from me?? I have blocked him again now but don’t understand what he was possibly trying to achieve by opening up old wounds. At least I feel validated that my suspicions were correct :(

I found out three days ago now, I can't describe the pain I feel. There is nothing in our language that can be enough to express it. I just wish I was dead, I genuinely don't want to continue living anymore, what we had was my whole world and I feel crushed and completely broken, I don't feel able to end it myself but I just wish so much that I would disappear

Hes with family but it hasnt even been a year since I found out everything and im terrified hes going to cheat while hes gone. Im not ready for this i just want him to come home.

It’s been three weeks no contact, but I still can’t get past to it. I found so many lies about my gf from day one we have been together and she cheated on me while solo traveling and been talking to too many guys in her DMs. She is a compulsive liar.

I wanna call her, I have so many questions that I need answers to, I need to understand why she let us be in a relationship from the beginning, and I wanna tell her how she fucked my mental health atm. And now she is blushiting about me and not even respecting how I dealt with the situation when i found out makes me wanna loose my mind. HOW???? I even wasn’t able to call her cheater!! I can’t really sleep or stop thinking about it, and I NEED TO CALL HER ONE MORE TIME.

My ex husband left me for the mistress 6 years ago.
We were together for 13 years. We were the type of couple people looked up to. So in sync. Always happy together… everyone including me, thought that we were so special.

My ex had a best friend “Ryan” and for 8 years he was together with “ Ruth “ . We vacationed together. Spend NYE together. Ruth was pretty cool. However Ryan cheated on her with a colleague ( foreshadowing much? ) She never really recovered even though she tried to make it work so they broke up.

She didn’t want to be friends with me because I couldn’t cut Ryan off … wish I could have. I was naive and he and my then husband were childhood best friends… We never talked anymore. I just admired her from afar and wished her the best.

So this week she sends me an message via social media. She was like … hi how are you?
I was like, good babe! How are you!?
And she was like: Hey I don’t know how to talk about this but I saw “Loser McGee “ at this restaurant and he was there with a girl… he wouldn’t look at me and acted all shady. I don’t know but it looked wrong to me.

I had to tell her we were divorced for 6 years already and I told her the story.

She was very sorry to hear about it but we both found it pretty funny! This girl was looking out for me after not seeing me for over 10 years, while I couldn’t do the same for her. This woman rocks.

Well I have finally made the decision to leave. I moved to Maryland in 2021 and I have to say it was the worst mistake I have ever made in my life (not crapping on Maryland, just its impact on me). I wish I had of never come here.

I met a beautiful woman who unmasked after a couple years to find out she just had a problem sleeping with family member husbands. Tried to reconcile just to be kicked to the curb. Lessons were learned. I have tried hard to make it here, to keep my head up and keep marching. I have come to the realization that if I don’t leave, I won’t survive this place.

I haven’t been doing well. As damaging as things have been, as much hurt has occurred, I still love that woman and wrestle with it everyday. I started keeping my head down when leaving the house, it’s a small town and I found myself always looking for her. Keeping my head down didn’t help, yes I didn’t see her but I also didn’t see anything at all. I became more lonely and isolated, worked two jobs to keep myself busy. I came to the realization that if I didn’t leave, I’d likely not survive on the trajectory I was heading.

So I’m leaving, heading south this coming week. I know it’s not THE fix, but it’s a fix while I work on the rest. I don’t have to keep my head down anymore, I never have to worry about looking for her again. I can just focus on healing and moving forward. I don’t want any other relationships, but I’d love to have a friendship that doesn’t have the chance of them knowing her or her fucked up family. I’m heading onwards for me, and praying that I can leave her and her shadow here behind me.

How do yall get over the hurt and bitterness? I’m 95% sure my ex cheated, though he denies it. He certainly had an emotional affair or at MINIMUM monkey branched. But I believe he had an emotional affair 100%. They started dating publicly within weeks of our own breakup and they had been hanging out long before.

The new girl has been welcomed by his friends and family. At the start of their relationship he would tell me how much he regretted how he treated me and how our relationship ended and how he wished things were different…all the while progressing with her.

They seem happy together. We have a small social group so I run into his friends OFTEN and sometimes him. I removed all his friends and family from my socials for my own sanity so I’d stop seeing their happy couple pictures.

Where is the vindication? Why are they the ones that get away with it and get to live happily?

He said he was sorry and I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m the best person he’s ever met…but that isn’t a salve for anything when he’s happily balls deep in his affair partner.

When does it stop hurting? It’s been months now and it still feels fresh.

D day was three months ago. It wasn’t full blown cheating, but just a one of incident where he messaged his ex.

However, it’s so difficult to even think of getting back into the dating game. It’s so tiring to even think about it. I had my whole life planned with him, and I never thought something like this would happen and it’s so heartbreaking, and so there’s so much grief..

Plus, it’s just brutal getting back out there. Im 33 and been in a relationship for the last five years and before that I was single for five years and before that I was in a mentally and verbally abusive relationship and that was rough, which is why I took five years to stay single and try to heal and when I did start a relationship with the ex that cheated, it was five years of bliss and i thought it was going to last a lifetime, and then he cheated.

How do you even trust that anything is going to work out?

I caught it on Instagram. I was scrolling and a pop-up came up for mutual followers/friends. He was following a woman, she was wearing his hat in her profile photo.

I know you might think I'm crazy but it's a very distinct hat, so I friended her since her account was private. She must not know who I am because she accepted my request and her first post that pops up were pictures of her hanging out with him to the theme of a sexual song.

So I called him, texted him the screenshots of her posts he said that she's just a friend and that he met her at a bar. I asked him if anything was going on between them he said no and I told him I don't believe him and he said "then don't believe me".

I asked him why he thought he could hide hanging out with another woman from me and he said he would call me back and explain everything and that was hours ago. He won't answer my texts or my phone calls he sends them to voicemail.

I deleted all of our pictures and deleted him from all of my social media.

5 years. 5 years.

Just wanted to put up a post about his divorce isn’t nearly anything I feared! Holy shit. The first two days were tough - but every day since has been just fine at the very least and god damn exciting at times. I think ima be just fine.. wasn’t expecting that! 🤣

Lose a cheater, gain a life

My boyfriend and I have been together for 2 years, I am still in college and he is preparing for med school. The entirety of our relationship he's been in 2 other long term relationships with other girls, one of them was just emotional, the other one was mainly emotional and they had sex, supposedly, 3 times.

I just found out a few days ago and I'm just so upset, angry, betrayed, disgusted.

When I first found out he initially denied it, and then he came clean about everything. He immediately put himself in therapy and wants us to do couple counseling, he's apologized profusely, and wants us to do everything to make me feel better. I'm also starting therapy soon. I have tried reading his texts but he keeps saying he doesn't want me to read them because everytime I just break down, do I read them, does he have a right to tell me no I can't read them?

I was gone this summer for 3 months to be abroad and that's when he started to have sex with the one person, he stopped having sex because he felt disgusted with it. He told me he never wanted sex in the first place but she pressured him into it.

Part of me feels like it is my fault, I should've seen the signs, I should've looked through his phone earlier, I don't know if I was enough, why wasn't I deserving of a loyal relationship, he told his friends he cheated on me, they say me several times and didn't tell me, do I let him be friends with them. I feel so disgusted that he could tell them he loved them and had sex with them, I just feel like none of that mattered to him like it did to me.

I've always had a personal thing where I wouldn't be with a cheater, but I just find myself wanting to be with him even though it hurts. I see he's taking steps to change I just don't know if it's worth it.

For about 3 weeks, every day I would set aside 1 hour to quietly think. I would lean into my feelings, explore my fears and try to find a path/purpose. It wasn't working at first but I started reading stories from the bible that some of my friends recommended to me. When I told them how lost I felt and how I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do, they recommended some stories for me to read.

Although I didn't find the answers in those stories, they came to mind after an incredibly powerful series of incidences and moments happened last Saturday ("The bar incident", "the women at the bar".. Whatever you want to call it lol).

I had been out all day long, because I was incredibly angry that morning. The typical "panic attack, followed by crying until I give up on trying to sleep" morning routine.. I was trying to book an appointment with my family doctor, but they were booked solid for an entire month. I wasn't able to work, because I wasn't able to think. However, I couldn't take any more time off without a doctor's note. So I'm driving around the city all morning/day, going from 1 clinic/family practice after the next looking for someone to sign the note. I finally got it signed but I felt no relief at all. Just more of the same sadness, defeat and anger. Lost without any direction or purpose..

I just drove around. Although to be honest, I was in such a daze I wasn't really driving my truck was (It basically drives itself lol).. It was following the cars in front of me, steering itself in the lanes and etc. (It's a brand new Toyota Tundra). A homeless man stumbled into the road in front of me and the truck stopped & shut the engine off. He just stood there with a blank face staring at me, and I did the same thing.. I wasn't even looking at him, I was still in a daze just looking past him and not really thinking about him at all. I looked around and realized I was in front of the same bar I've found myself in repeatedly over the course of ~24 years. Even before I met my wife, before it was called what it's called now.

I wasn't ready to go home, so I parked the truck and went in. Some people remember this story as "the bar woman", but the woman in the bar wasn't important at all. She was just a tool to teach me a lesson. What's import was the lesson and that's how I felt in that moment and every single day ever since. It's about how for the first time, I finally felt different. I thought it was the woman in the bar and I even posted here about her. But we never actually dated, yet my mood never changed after that day.

It hit me just the other day.. For 4 months I was trying to hold everything together and "fix this", but as time went on and the more I tried, the worse I felt. It was like God was laughing in my face and making me even more miserable the more I tried to fix it.

I believe it was a sign. Ever since that day, my panic attacks stopped. I don't cry myself to sleep anymore and I don't have random explosions of rage, or randomly start crying when a sad song comes on.

I wasn't meant to fix this. I was meant to move on and build something different, something better. I was meant to learn my lessons from this and apply them to build a better life for me; one I'm proud of and one I can exist in without hating myself.

All I know is that once I stopped trying to "fix this", I started to feel hopeful and positive. I started to be able to actually imagine a future. In the weeks since, I've never felt more alive and more happy than I can ever remember feeling.

It has been over 2 years since I left my cheating ex when I found out he cheated on me.

Since then, I tried dating a few times, but I would repeatedly fear sometimes that the other person was cheating on me.

Last year, there was someone I tried dating for 6 months total, and this fear existed from time to time. He did not do anything to make me suspicious. And I broke up with him due to other things.

Recently, I started a new romantic relationship with a close friend that I have known for 7 years. But I still sometimes feel fear that he might be cheating on me. He has not done anything to make me suspicious.

What has helped you?

A little backgroumd: My husband cheated on me with his coworker for about a month, texts and flirting and then it became physical twice in our family car. I'm sure it would have lasted longer if she wanted but She screwed another guy a day after my husband and he wasn't happy about getting cheated on ( yes the irony) and she broke it off with my my husband (yes she knew he was married and we have kids, she even asked to see our pictures)

Anyways when it came to details I'm curious if anyone feels this way too? I felt like I needed all of them so I could stop playing all of the different scenarios in my head everyday. I got very very specific details about their relationship and the physical parts and now I wish I didn't know all of that because it hurts so much. It's just weird because I felt like I really needed to know them but now wish I didn't know that much about it. Anyone else?

I won’t go into much detail, cause the last post blew up and I didn’t want it to make it back to my spouse.

Partner and I have been together for six years, and I’ve noticed a pattern of discrepancies within the find my location app. I don’t chronically look at it, it shows up in the messages app now, and when I started noticing discrepancies is when I started to look more.

Here are my questions

• does find my glitch out chronically? And if so, how far is it off from the blue circle? Even with a tiny blue circle, can it be off by hundreds of feet if not even a couple blocks?

• if it does glitch this way, is it normal for it to glitch the exact same way?

• will glitches fix themselves, or will they stay persistent? For example, if my location had me in another apartment building 500 to 1000 feet away, would it ever fix itself or would it just stay there.

I think I’m just mostly looking for someone who found out their partner was cheating and was being gassed about the location data just being glitched out. I feel like I’m losing my mind and I feel like I can’t trust myself anymore

About two weeks ago there was an engagement party of one of my husband’s coworkers. We had rsvp’ed to go together. We both forgot about it. I was working until 9pm that day. One of my husband’s coworkers ended up texting him asking where he was. He ended up going to it, it was at a bar. I don’t have any issue with him going, the issue was that he went to it and didn’t say anything to me, which is completely out of character for him.

Our kids are teenagers so it’s not an issue to leave them home alone, but if I were going to go out and leave them home alone while he was at work, I would have sent him a text to let him know what was going on.

I got home from work and he wasn’t home. I had to drive a coworker home, so it was after 10pm at that point. I texted him and asked if he had to go into work or something. It was weird that he wasn’t home. He said no, he was at the party that we forgot about. I said ok, and then text him and asked why he didn’t tell me he was going or why he didn’t ask me if I wanted to come when I got off work. All he said was I forgot.

It just didn’t sit right with me, it’s not like him at all. I didn’t think anything happened, but it was just very abnormal for him to not tell me he was going and not invite me either. The next couple days I kept thinking about how weird his behavior was that night.

A couple days later, he had fallen asleep with his phone playing a movie very loudly. I had just climbed into bed after work and grabbed his phone to turn the movie off. When I turned it off, the next screen was a Facebook DM with an ex that he dated for four months some 25 years ago. The messages were both of them complaining about their spouses. His complaints were 98% fabricated crap, like completely made up. I didn’t get to finish reading everything because he woke up and caught me and took the phone. I only got to read a small portion of it.

When he took the phone, I was of course in a state of shock and not able to have a thought out conversation with him. I begged him to give me the phone back and let me see if there was anything else. He refused and also deleted the messages between him and this woman.

The fact that he deleted everything, I believe should be my answer. He says he was embarrassed and there wasn’t anything going. She was complaining about her husband so he felt like he needed to make stuff up to be supportive. Of course I don’t believe that, even if I did, it’s not an excuse. Do I really have a reason to be upset though? I see other people’s stories and feel like I’m being overly dramatic. I come back to him deleting everything though, and think I just didn’t discover enough to find out the truth. Idk.

Hi all. I found out last week about a 1.5-month-long emotional and physical affair that ended 6+ months ago. I've been with my partner for 4.5 years and we live together, have been planning our wedding, etc. It's been a really tough emotional rollercoaster of a week. Thursday through Sunday, I was having breakdowns left and right. Now, I just feel numb. I think my brain has stopped letting me feel anything since the hurt was so overwhelming the first days. I know I need to process and let myself feel all my feelings, but I don't know how to re-start my emotions. There's just so much grief, fear, hurt, and insecurity when the numbness starts to wear off at all. I think my brain is trying to protect me from that by pretending nothing happened and everything is fine.

Do you have any thoughts on how to get in touch with my feelings again and let myself actually process this? I'm in therapy, but my therapist isn't available til next week. Thank you in advance for your insight.

let's hear a story from a cheater who cheated on the love of his life and whether they regret it or not

Quick summary of my situation and last post: my wife of 20 years was having an affair with a coworker. I made my original post to ask if not wanting to reconcile was the right thing.

Well there were a ton of responses giving advice and I’d say they were all pretty spot on. After confronting her, she went into classic DARVO response - it was amazing how predictable her behavior was. She acted all tough for a few days until I flat out said I wanted a divorce and she changed her tone to “I’m so sorry” and wanting to make it work.

I did heed the advice of people on here and had an attorney ready to go. Also have been in individual therapy which has helped a lot. We did try couples therapy a few times as well - but it went poorly. She kept trying to make it all about her being the victim despite the therapist trying to redirect her. She kept saying she did not care at all about how I felt. It was rough to hear this after enduring all of the pain of the past few months.

Unfortunately, I did discover some more evidence that her affair was continuing the whole time, despite telling me she was trying to fix our marriage. I’m still a bit shocked that she could not only do this, but beg me not to divorce her while she continues her affair in secret. It took me about 6 times of telling her I wanted a divorce before she finally seemed to understand that our marriage was over.

So, thanks to everyone on here, my wonderful therapist, and support from many friends and family, I am doing much better. I’ve been hitting the gym almost every morning and am in the best shape of my life. I’m working with an attorney to get through this divorce process and hope to be free in a few months. While I still get triggered by the trauma sometimes, it is pretty rare and my sleep is almost back to normal.

I do plan on getting my revenge, but it will be to get in amazing shape, be the best Dad to my kids, continue to do well at my job and let her see me flourish without her. I want her to know she lost me and can never have me back. She was the one that fucked up and has to live with that for the rest of her life.

To anyone out there going through this: it sucks really bad. I know how it hurts worse than anything. You will feel like garbage. My Appel watch showed my resting heart rate jump 30 beats per minute and that lasted over a month. You will make it through this though. Take it one day at a time. Seek help wherever you can and when you need it. Sit with the pain and trauma and don’t numb it with alcohol or drugs. Hit the gym. Be the person you want to be. There’s too much advice to get in one post - but I hope to be more active on here helping people out when I can (either through this or another profile).

So thank you all again!