Was I emotionally cheated on..? She moved on in just 2 weeks/a month.

[SadHeavyHeartlol]

Hi. There's a lot of context so please bear with me, I'll try to not make it confusing. I'm devastated.

Context: (You don't have to read the whole thing, just the first part I guess...)

(MOST IMPORTANT PERHAPS; NOT IN ORDER BUT SORT OF A TL;DR): This is the guy I never liked and she knew why, she even agreed with me on many things. In hindsight there were many red flags because for months they spoke, at the time I didn't think anything of it and I didn't want to be controlling, but looking back at old messages, she said he was "kind" and "nice" multiple times, she even told me "we talk everyday atp" but I didn't think anything of it because she was talking to me about her friend group that was falling apart, and I was like "well now you met these guys" (people I introduced her to) and she said that, Idk why I'm so blind . This guy would rant about his day to her and she's told him jokingly "I'm happy to know more about your lore" and that he "writes well". He'd also send her anything he'd cook for "tips". I didn't think anything of it for months, but eventually couldn't take it anymore, and I mentioned it. She apologised and said she'd stop talking with him, and their dms did die down, but I think the damage was done. When we broke up she promised me she didn't like him and told me "wow you're obsessed with him" We broke up 23rd of august, 5th of september she was already putting up romantic statuses for him. Either way, not even a month later, October 17th she went and visited him in his country. We've known each other for 9 years, 2016 to 2017 we dated, we broke up, I moved on after 7 months, she didn't take it well AT ALL, last words she told me were "I'll talk to you in an hypothetical future ()" Well that hypothetical future actually came. 2024 we got together again, she told me she was jealous of my ex for 6 years and wanted to be in her place. Told me she'd manifest for me to come back to her everyday. I did, and I'm no saint I'm afraid, but it feels like she just erased 9 years of love and bond in 1 month. For a guy I introduced her to. EDIT: 22nd of september she messaged my best friend to vent about me and ask about my gym progress. I thought she was still interested in me, then not even a month later she went and visited him in his country. I have my problems. I contributed a lot in ruining the relationship, she wasn't bad at all during it, but I never expected this. Maybe I deserve it.

When my friend confronted her, because he could see her instagram stories, she said "I don't want to stop myself from living something genuine just because it ended up being with a guy he hated". She even basically said I'm inferior saying "I think he knew how intelligent especially emotionally this guy is, and that's why he couldn't stand him." when it's not the case at all and she knew the exact reasons why I didn't like him.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We had a big argument on the 8th of august. Why? Because I found out that she had her ex "FP" (<- not the guy she moved on with, but still something weird happened) in her friendlist on a platform after promising (and she did show me, to be fair) she'd remove him from everywhere. I believed her but the damage was done because of how I reacted. By the way, a week after she finally blocks me this guy is back and playing games with her. When I confronted her about it she was mad and lied saying someone else had invited him, but it's probably not true. <- This was like, after august and after what comes next.

I thought things were fine because she was still messaging me, sending me photos of her cat or her city, although we didn't talk much for a week or two. Still, we had agreed to meet. After that, 23rd of august she messages me saying she has to block me. I never expected it.

And so she does, except the place where we met, facebook. So I message her there, she'd reply to me, I was pathetic, begging and pleading, but at least she'd reply to me, and she was sad but not angry or anything. I asked her "how come I'm not blocked here yet?" she said "I don't have the courage to block you." Silly me thought there was still hope after that.

Later, I find out she has a private twitter account and this guy (the one I was jealous of and the one she moved on with) was interacting with her. I was a bit confused so I confront her about it because she told me she wasn't going to use twitter again, and this is where she gets incredibly mad and accuses me of stalking her. The only reason I found out is because I had a gut feeling and checked his twitter. She told me she didn't like him and that I was obsessed with him.

This was a "friend" () group of people I introduced her to, but they all blocked me after me and her broke up. There was this one guy I didn't like, she knew why I didn't like him, she even agreed with me on many things.

Our "last" (I broke NC multiple times, sadly.) interaction was 2nd of sept, that's when she blocked me on messenger too, I guess she did have the courage. She promised me that she didn't like him, that I was obsessed with him, that I never listen. Either way, 5th of september she was already putting romantic statuses on discord for him. A friend told me. But 22nd of september she messaged my best friend, venting to him and ranting about me, asking about me and my gym progress even, said she was "sad and disappointed" and that she was feeling a lot of "rancor" towards me. So I thought she was still somewhat interested in me... Yet in october she had already gone to see him. Told my friend she doesn't want to stop herself from having something genuine just because it ended up being with a guy I hated. She lied saying the reason I didn't like him was because this guy is intelligent on many things especially emotionally and that's why I couldn't stand him, which is not the case at all she knew exactly why I didn't like him.

[Pook075]

Hello and welcome to the family!  I'm so sorry you're going through this and unfortunately, your experiences are not that unique on this forum.  So many BPDs end up moving on very quickly after leaving relationships because they can't stand being alone.

Were you emotionally cheated on?  She'd say no, and that's probably a true statement for her.  But you also get a say in that and you can call it like you see it.  My ex did the same thing- she wasn't officially cheating on me, but she had already lined up her next romance before we ended our marriage of 23+ years.  She essentially admitted to emotionally cheating though and would explode with anger if I ever brought it up.

Hopefully in time you can understand that she's mentally ill and made careless decisions out of mental instability.  That doesn't mean she never loved you, and that doesn't make her a horrible person.  It just means she's doing the best she can while dealing with serious mental illness.

Who are you speaking with in your life to help you move forward?  Have you ever considered therapy to work through it?  Most of us here have and it was a tremendous help.

[SadHeavyHeartlol]

Hey... I want to specify that during the relationship she was great. She is diagnosed aware and treated as far as I know, during the relationship I was the problem but I never expected her to move on in just 2 weeks with a guy I introduced her to. I'm no saint and I understand why she left me, but I can't understand and accept her moving on already. Sadly I made the mistake of spying on her today and I saw she put up a status reading "I sought and longed for something I could not quite name. But in you, I found it". It's hard to swallow, I can't take it. I was supposed to go to the gym today and now I just want to rot in bed. It feels like she loves this guy more already than she loved me in 9 years. At this point I'm not even sure if it was the BPD making her move on so quickly or if I've hurt her so badly during our relationship she genuinely just stopped loving me right there and then. I can't make sense of it all.
I tried therapy at first and it didn't really work, but that was before finding out she had in fact moved on already... Maybe I should give it another shot. I feel like I'm annoying everyone around me, my mother, my friends, I'm just gloomy and doomy. She's come back so many times during the years but it feels final this time, she really seems head over heels for this guy and it's killing me, truly.

[Rowdy]

Hey, I can relate to this, as can many people involved with a pwBPD

The question as to whether she cheated on you can be answered quite simply. If the tables were turned, would your partner feel that you cheated on her, and would you feel guilty for acting in the way she has. There is a term for this, it is called monkey branching. Whether the person involved in ‘monkey branching’ has bpd or not, it is indicative of someone that isn’t emotionally stable, emotionally mature, and generally their judgement is very clouded, misguided even.

No one is perfect. Everybody makes mistakes in a relationship. The problem with being in a relationship with a pwBPD is you are on the back foot from the start, so any mistakes you make are amplified and the level of tolerance from your partner is at a much lower level compared to a normal, healthy relationship.

This then leads the pwBPD (or any emotionally stunted person) to start the discard phase. However, because they are not emotionally strong enough to do what an emotionally secure person does in a breakup situation, i.e spend time on their own healing, growing and learning from the relationship, they seek out new supply, because they can not handle being on their own. It then appears to the outside world they have met ‘the one’ and are happier than they have ever been, but in the majority of cases this is just a picture they are painting with the sole purpose of getting the onlooker to see what they want them to see.

This then makes the person that has been discarded feel worthless, that they were never good enough. That isn’t reality, that is a distortion of the truth that has been painted for you by someone that is mentally ill.

My story is quite similar to yours on some levels, in fact if I write down how I was discarded you will see many similarities. I’ve written my story on here but haven’t gone in to detail about the discard, maybe I will write it here later to give you an idea that you are not alone. Over time your mindset does shift, even if you think it never will, you do start to see things differently, that it wasn’t your fault and you will start to think that it is them that is the victim (of themselves) not you.

[SadHeavyHeartlol]

Hi! I hope I'm replying to you, new to this forum and I haven't used a forum in a while. You said your story is similar, I'd like to hear it so I hope you do see this and decide to answer me and tell me more. I can also go more in detail and really explain everything. Like I said I was 100% the fault during the relationship, maybe not 100% all of the time, but for the majority of the time, at least the last few months. One thing I really did wrong was not be there for her when she truly needed me, that I can't blame her for. She's come back so many times during the years I truly thought our story was romance book worthy, I mean when she came back last year she told me she was jealous of my ex and wanted to be in her place every single day. Told me she manifested for me to come back to her. I did and she still let me go . If she had moved on with someone completely unrelated I wouldn't have been as hurt and I definitely wouldn't have cared as much. It would have still hurt but way less than this. And to answer your question, if the roles were reversed, YES. I would 100% feel like I cheated. Not only this is someone I introduced her to, this is someone I was jealous of, someone I didn't like (and she knew the whys) and someone who always felt inferior to me for no reason at all. Also someone she very clearly got closer and closer until I said enough. This guy is genuinely soulless and fake, he is a super fake person I'm not sure how and why she'd fall for him. I warned her, too. Still fell for him.

[Pook075]

Hey... I want to specify that during the relationship she was great. She is diagnosed aware and treated as far as I know, during the relationship I was the problem but I never expected her to move on in just 2 weeks with a guy I introduced her to. I'm no saint and I understand why she left me, but I can't understand and accept her moving on already. Sadly I made the mistake of spying on her today and I saw she put up a status reading "I sought and longed for something I could not quite name. But in you, I found it". It's hard to swallow, I can't take it. I was supposed to go to the gym today and now I just want to rot in bed. It feels like she loves this guy more already than she loved me in 9 years. At this point I'm not even sure if it was the BPD making her move on so quickly or if I've hurt her so badly during our relationship she genuinely just stopped loving me right there and then. I can't make sense of it all.

For someone with BPD, they always have a favorite person or a few favorites at any given time.  That's why your relationship was great, she was all-in.  But at the same time, their minds create unhealthy fears that the relationship is falling apart, that you're going to leave her, etc.  So they stop being all-in and start looking for reasons to get out of the relationship.

With your friend, she saw potential and he quickly became her new favorite...that's so incredibly common in BPD relationships.  And maybe for today, it is perfect for her.  That will change over time though because that's what always happens in BPD relationships.  The same cycle you went through with her, your friend will experience as well.  And so will the next person, and the next person....

Why am I sharing this?  You probably did things wrong, like you said.  We all do at times.  Relationships are about love and forgiveness, but BPDs struggle with doing that because of the pattern I described above.  At first their partner is perfect and can do no wrong.  But over time, they're horrible and can do no right.  Both are extreme viewpoints that likely aren't true.  That's the mental illness part of all this.

I tried therapy at first and it didn't really work, but that was before finding out she had in fact moved on already... Maybe I should give it another shot. I feel like I'm annoying everyone around me, my mother, my friends, I'm just gloomy and doomy. She's come back so many times during the years but it feels final this time, she really seems head over heels for this guy and it's killing me, truly.

I'm so sorry you're suffering,  You mentioned in another post that you were supposed to go to the gym- get up and go!  The way through this is to live your life and stay busy; sitting around only makes things 10x harder.  And it probably is a good idea to take a few more therapy sessions just to talk this out and process it.

Wishing you luck my friend- please keep us updated.

[Rowdy]

Ok, strap yourself in.

First things first, my relationship was 27 years, married for 22 (still married) and I was not aware of bpd when I was in the relationship.

So, going back over 10 years, my wife and I are driving back from a long drive to get some furniture, car is rammed with flat pack boxes. About 10:30 at night, we make it back to our village and a guy walks out of his drive to go to the pub across the road. He had let his 12 week old puppy run out in the road and I nearly killed it. Flat pack went through my windscreen, he offers to pay. I go to see him the next day and feeling partially guilty suggested we pay half my insurance excess each, but leave feeling that the guy is arrogant, generally a bad first impression.

Skip forward to 2019. A friend of my wife’s gave her the contact details of this guy, the same guy, that was the husband of her friend. The reason being so my wife could buy drugs from him.
I ended up being dragged around their house one evening for a bbq. My impression of the guy didn’t really change, he seemed a little more friendly but I still had that doubt about him in my mind.

Skip forward to July/aug 2023. My wife is on holiday with her best friend and her best friends mum. Messaging me all the time, ringing me every night, telling me she misses me so much and doesn’t ever want to go away on her own without me. Then her friend (the one whose husband sells her drugs) messaged her to say she had been caught out cheating on her husband.

It is around this time that I had started pleading with my wife to stop buying coke off this guy, and asked her to stop drinking so much (she would drink a couple bottles of wine, or 3/4 bottle of gin a night) as I knew it was destroying us.

My wife said she needed to be there for both of them, as he didn’t really have any friends to talk to about the breakdown of his marriage. He would then start coming round my house all the time to talk to my wife. By now I was beginning to see the guy for the toxic person he is. He never called his wife by her name, he would only call her ‘it’ or ‘cunt’ and would tell us the things he had done, like thrown all her possessions on the driveway, throwing a shoe at her head, putting her sat nav in the microwave….. that sort of nonsense.
I would generally get up and go into another room, play my guitar, anything other than listen to his bull.

On Sunday evenings we would invite my sister in law, her daughter and her husband for dinner, as well as our two sons. My wife then started inviting this guy and two of his children to join us. My eldest that doesn’t live with us didn’t say anything, but later on told me he couldn’t stand the bloke. My youngest used to eat his dinner as quick as he could then go upstairs to his room, because he couldn’t stand the bloke. My brother in law didn’t like him either, because one of his children is autistic and he would call him a retard. It was at this time he started coming out with lies that were so outrageous you could google search what he was saying to catch him out. These are things that have some truth to what he comes out with but just don’t add up. A couple of times I actually wanted to punch him straight in the face the crap he came out with annoyed me that much. I even caught a look from him one night that was pretty much a confession that he was up to no good.

He had been constantly messaging my wife, and his messages were so illiterate my wife would ask me to read the message because she couldn’t understand them. He messaged one afternoon while our niece was round and she saw that he had messaged, and asked her aunty if he was her boyfriend, which my wife laughed off and denied. Around this time she became more secretive with her phone, and stopped asking me to read the texts. She would quite often pop out and say she had to go and see him because he was in a bad way.

At the time I had my suspicions, certainly on his part, but thought my wife was more intelligent than to get involved, that she could see him for what he really is. Then I would come home some days in the afternoon, to find him in my house drinking and taking cocaine with my wife. He then turned up with a large quantity of it and asked my wife to stash it because he was worried his wife was going to tell the police he was dealing drugs.

It eventually came to a head one weekend. A client of his had offered the use of his holiday home in Monaco, so he flew out with his two kids for a week. On the Sunday my wife was out and rang me asking to find her passport, as their friend wanted to go out there and stay with him because he was apparently in a bad way. I looked but couldn’t find the passport. I didn’t want her to go but thought if I told her as much it would make things worse, and she found it. She then came home and found the passport and within a couple of hours she left with her friend to fly out to Monaco. She became very distant and difficult to reach on the phone, and was basically ghosting me. I’d messaged telling her I was worried about her. She eventually rang me later in the evening and started an argument that I told her I wanted to speak to her about when she got home.

I’d told her that I had my suspicions but she denies anything was going on. When she came home the first night was frosty, the second night led to me leaving home. She was still adamant nothing was going on, that she had no feelings for this guy whatsoever, but within 2 weeks she was seeing him. She would get in her car drunk out of her mind to go and pick him up and sneak him in the house, when my son had gone out.

I’d spoken to his wife. She left him because he lies so much. Because he has been a coke addict for over 30 years. Because he is controlling and abusive. Because he didn’t even sleep in the same building as her. A friend of hers told me he would demand sex and if she refused he would drag her down the stairs on her back by her hair. He is abusive to people on public Facebook groups, and everything my gut told me about the bloke has been confirmed by various people that know him.
He tried to intimidate my sons friend into paying him some money that his dad owed him, but had passed away.

But he likes to drink, and he likes to get coked out of his head, and so does my wife. He also has a bit of coin in the bank, and my wife is quite badly in debt. There is much more to the story, I’ve written about it on here already, I’ve probably forgotten a fair bit of it too. .

[SadHeavyHeartlol]

Thanks to both of you for replying...
I'm sorry to hear all of that, Rowdy. Honestly you've had it pretty rough and it sucks. Perhaps I can find solace in the fact that I wasn't actually married to her, although the plans were there. I really wanted to marry her, and she did too. I've been reading a lot on BPD these past few weeks and it's a bit scary, there's people who have it or have had it worse than me, and even though it's not a competition maybe I should be happy. But I can't really be happy, I miss her. I genuinely thought I was her only guy in the world. The way she made me feel, I genuinely thought I was a Prince about to become King one day. But I guess some Princes don't become Kings. I truly thought our story was different, unique, I thought I really was the love of her life. I never struggled to move on from relationships too much, to be fair I have had more flings than relationships. It was easier for me to move on from another ex of mine of 6 years, and that relationship was beautiful and she was the gentlest soul to me all of those 6 years, I think of her from time to time but it's different. Maybe it's different because of the way my exwBPD kept coming back, told me all those thing on how she'd "manifest everyday for me to come back to her" and when I actually did, even though things weren't great during the last months, she's let me go. She's let me go and gave a "win" to a guy who never liked me simply because my opinions were different than his and I'm not afraid to voice them. And yeah, honestly I never thought she'd cheat on me, because that's truly what she did, even though she's convinced herself she did nothing wrong because she told me "If it happens after, it's not cheating". Part of me is still protective towards her because I have a gut feeling something bad will happen because of this guy, he is fake, he is not stable, I just know it. I mean he's the kind of guy who would get mad at video games, when there was nothing to be mad about.

I'll try and keep you guys updated, thanks for the replies again. For now, I'll try and keep up with my gym and stick to my diet (struggling with this), but I do miss her. Again I really thought our story was worthy of a romance book, but I guess a book doesn't necessarily always have a happy ending. I need to focus on my life now because honestly I'm quite behind in life and this is also killing me, perhaps if I had a better life I wouldn't feel as defeated.

Going to be quite hard these coming months especially december there's a lot of video game stuff coming out and the thought of her playing them with him instead of me is quite excruciating, she really seems to think this guy is the love of her life, maybe it's harsh to say but I hope it's just the idealisation phase and it'll all come crashing down. Karma gave me my dose once, I hope it does its job again here...

[SadHeavyHeartlol]

Another thing that is truly hurting me is that I feel like I've thrown away an opportunity, that I lost a smart woman with a good career. A woman that had asked me to move in with her eventually, an opportunity to live in the Capital, a big city. Don't know how to really cope tbh with lots of things. I keep checking her socials (can't see much, I'm blocked everywhere). She used to tell me she was goth but didn't really have anything gothic going on about her, it seems that now she has actually gone goth and that kinda made me jealous too, cause why not do it when I was there? I truly spend my days wondering if they really will last, since it's long distance too. But so were we.

[Rowdy]

I understand. I helped my wife open her business. I helped it grow by opening another branch of the business. I then put all my time and effort into opening yet another business, and it is sad when all that seems to be thrown away.

But you have to look at things differently. There shouldn’t be any other reason why you love someone, other than it just being love. Any other reason, like status, or where our partner can provide us a place to live, just becomes a transactional relationship, and that isn’t a good basis for a relationship.

[SadHeavyHeartlol]

You're absolutely right. It's more so, I would have loved to be there with her. For her to show me her city, her favourite places. Make memories. Now she'll do it, but not with me... I'll never *truly* move on, I just know myself. The fact that I threw away a story like this will stay with me forever, because I was 100% the reason we broke up, but then on top of all my guilt, she did this to me, if I could go back in time, consciously, I would avoid meeting her. I'd rather live a full life never knowing this kind of love, never having a connection this deeper again over ruining it and basically getting emotionally cheated on, by the same woman in whose arms I wanted to die. I could go on and on just typing whatever, but the truth is that I can't take it, and don't know how else to put it. Not sure how to cope. Just knowing I was the only guy in the world for her to essentially not even being a memory is too much for me to take. I've had a lot of flings, less relationships because I need a genuine connection and depth to even just talk to someone, but even in my happiest relationships this one was ALWAYS on my mind. Went out with some friends tonight, stayed out until 3 AM, around 2 AM I started thinking about her and couldn't stop. I come home and cry because she's not here with me. I'm pathetic, I feel pathetic and lost. I moved on so easily from other relationship, including deep ones where I really liked the girl, so why can't I do it now??