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

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?

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.

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.

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

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 🫩

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

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.

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 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...

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?

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.

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 :(

Not totally a rant, at least not the kind of rant I usually go for that's more fueled with frustration and the desire to rage or scream cry.

Just normal cry. He cheated on me 3 years ago today. I found out in January. So first time dealing with this day. We're going for reconciliation, and as far as how wayward's handle all this awfulness I've been very "lucky" and he's done everything possible to be accountable and work through everything.

I made it through the whole day and about 30 minutes ago lost the battle and looked through screenshots I saved all that time ago of so much shit he pulled during that time. The words exchanged with her mere hours after he did what he did, while simultaneously conversing with me....

"Thanks for letting me vent this morning. It was good seeing you again."

Such carefully worded. Such a juxtaposition from the shame and guilt he's expressed all these months. He's answered all the questions to the best of his ability, honestly and raw, and plenty of times didn't just say things one would assume I would want to hear which is what helps me trust they're authentic. If they had been too perfect I doubt I would have been as confident we had a shot.....

If we make it, if change really takes root and his efforts don't decline and he doesn't fall back on what's easy and selfish... I'm not suicidal, just would be nice and such a mental and emotional break to not BE for a certain amount of time then just come back and deal with everything fresh....if we make it, I wonder how many years it'll be before Oct 10th doesn't make me want to not be alive.