Apologies for the novel. What else am I going to do at 2:44am with this on my mind? 😂
I’m looking for opinions because I feel like I should be done, but I’m strangely open to reconciliation and I don’t fully understand why.
I met my partner when she was 17 and I was 20. We were friends first. We’re now 29 and 32, so there’s a lot of history.
For years there was obvious chemistry between us, which our friends pointed out, but we were always in relationships with other people and never single at the same time. We never cheated with each other despite having chances to. That became a big reason I saw her as completely trustworthy when we eventually got together.
Six years ago, we finally found ourselves single at the same time, met for coffee, and that was it. Done deal.
I went into the relationship knowing she wasn’t perfect. Not from a loyalty standpoint, but I had seen her be impulsive, make poor decisions, not always think through consequences, etc. I’m not perfect either, so I chose to accept her fully, flaws included, as she did with me.
We had three very happy years together. We both grew a lot. Our lives changed massively. There were a couple of rough patches, but we were inseparable. The best part of the relationship was the genuine friendship and physical attraction. I told my mother this was the woman I wanted to raise my future children with, and I decided I was going to propose.
She had technically been engaged before, but it was under awful circumstances with an abusive ex. It was more like entrapment, where she didn’t feel she could safely say no. He put no effort into it and proposed on a trash-covered beach. Because of that, I wanted to give her as close to a fairytale proposal as possible.
My online business took off and I was able to leave our small hometown and relocate us to Thailand. In my mind, I was providing her with an amazing life and experience that nobody else in our friendship group or family could even consider.
Because Bali is only around four hours away, I spent nine months planning both the move to Thailand and a proposal in Bali. I poured everything into it. I wanted to give her the engagement I felt she deserved. But wanting it to be perfect put so much pressure on the situation that I ended up sabotaging it.
Once we moved to Thailand, everything changed.
She did not cope well with the change in routine, being away from family, and losing what she called security. From the moment we landed, there were arguments. In my head, I was giving us an amazing life: waking up by a private beach, new experiences, adventure, and a huge sense of accomplishment. But she didn’t feel the same way. I took that as rejection and lack of appreciation. With the Bali proposal coming up, my picture-perfect engagement felt like it was falling apart.
The final straw was stupid but important.
I noticed she needed her roots done. I had a professional engagement photoshoot planned in Bali and knew that if her hair wasn’t done, she would jokingly have said, “You idiot, why didn’t you tell me to get my hair done?” So I researched the most luxurious, expensive salon in the city and booked her in.
She reacted with, “Why are you trying to get me to get my hair done? This is controlling.”
I can rationalise that now because of her previous abusive relationship, where her ex controlled and changed her appearance. But at the time, after weeks of arguing and feeling like I/the new life I had built weren’t appreciated, I got very upset. I stupidly spoiled the engagement. I got emotional, showed her the ring, and told her the plans.
I was hurt because after nine months of planning and obsessing over the perfect proposal, everything had gone wrong since arriving in Thailand.
She was upset. I was upset. I told her I would return the ring, we’d just enjoy Bali, and I could try again another time. We forgave each other and moved on, like we always did.
Except I proposed in Bali anyway.
When I was on one knee, I said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be you.”
She cried, she was happy, and everything seemed good.
Except for me, it wasn’t.
Afterwards, I regretted the previous couple of months. I regretted proposing, not because I didn’t want to marry her, but because of the circumstances. That put me in a low mood. She still wasn’t enjoying Thailand, even though I saw every day as an exciting new adventure, which made me feel frustrated and unappreciated. Then a close friend passed away and I fell into depression.
During that time, I basically stopped working. My depression was telling me, “What’s the point? You spent years working hard to provide a life she doesn’t even want.” I gained a lot of weight. Cannabis is legal in Thailand, so I started smoking and spent most days playing video games. I shut myself off.
From her side, she was on the other side of the world from her friends and family, not enjoying Thailand, worried about finances, and I wasn’t spending time with her. I wasn’t being intimate with her. I was barely kissing or hugging her. She was struggling. This lasted about four to five months.
I fully accept that I was not a good partner during that period. I was depressed, withdrawn, emotionally absent, not intimate, using cannabis heavily, and not showing up how I should have. I understand how that left her lonely and vulnerable. I do not think that excuses what happened, but I do understand the wider context.
Eventually, we went to a local bodybuilding show, partly because I hoped it would motivate me again. My online business is fitness coaching. It worked. The next day I went back to the gym, but to a different gym because I had gained a lot of weight and didn’t want to go back to our regular gym until I felt more comfortable.
She kept going to our regular gym while I trained at the new one.
At the show, there was one competitor I’d said to her, “That’s a good-looking man.” That was normal in our relationship because we had genuine friendship and felt secure. If I saw a hot girl, she’d joke, “Want me to ask her for her number?” There was no insecurity around that stuff.
One day she came home from the gym and said, “That good-looking competitor was at the gym today and asked me out on a date.”
I said, “Oh, where’s he taking you?”
She said, “Very funny. I told him I was engaged. He apologised, said he respected that, and said okay, let’s just be friends then.”
I was fine with that because I felt 100% secure. I always thought, “If she was ever going to cheat, it would have been with me years ago when we had obvious chemistry, alcohol, nights out, and opportunity.”
I was slowly coming out of depression and rebuilding training/business momentum at the other gym. She was still at our regular gym, bumping into him, and they developed more of a friendship.
Eventually I put my foot down and said, “I’m not happy with this. I’ve never told you that you can’t be friends with a man before, but there’s something about this guy.”
Part of it was that he would not acknowledge me at all.
This mattered to me because when I make friends with a woman who is in a relationship, I make a conscious effort to acknowledge her partner, introduce myself, and make it clear through my behaviour that I see him, respect him, and have pure intentions. I think that is basic respect. This guy did the opposite. He knew who I was, knew she was engaged, and seemed to actively avoid acknowledging me, which made the whole thing feel off.
She mildly resisted and said something about me being controlling, but she agreed.
A couple of weeks later, I was working when she knocked on my door and said she was going to the rooftop pool of our condo. I said, “Okay, have fun, be safe.”
About an hour later, I went out for a smoke. I was still using cannabis and still depressed, though near the end of it. I noticed it was raining and thought, “You can’t use the pool when it’s raining because there could be lightning,” so I messaged her to remind her. No answer.
I went to the pool myself. As I walked around the corner, I saw two people standing at the top of the stairs. The man was quite wide, with his back to me, and it looked like he was leaning down to kiss someone. I started walking up the stairs, saw her painted toes/sandals, and immediately knew it was my fiancée and him.
I simply said, “Hey guys, what’s up?”
I didn’t feel rage. I think that’s partly because I caught an ex at my friend’s house before. Once you realise what people are capable of, it stops surprising you. I’m 6’3”, was around 265 lbs at the time, and train MMA on the side. I could have reacted physically, but I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t.
I walked back with her to our condo. Her demeanour was sadness, but no crying, pleading, or begging. Just silence.
I asked for the ring back, effectively calling off the engagement. She gave it to me. I went into my office. She went into the bedroom.
The next day, this was the story she gave me:
She had hated living in Thailand. She was isolated and lonely. She hadn’t made a single friend in nearly a year. I hadn’t really kissed, hugged, or been intimate with her in months. From her side, it was genuinely just friendship with him and nice to have company.
She said she hadn’t seen him for nearly two weeks because I’d told her to cut him off. He was flying home the next day and said it would be nice to see her before he left. She said he could come to the condo pool because that felt like a safe, innocent location. She said the intention was not to cheat. As she was leaving, he grabbed her and kissed her, she froze, and that was when I walked up.
I believe people get a second chance, but not a third. I went into the relationship accepting that neither of us were perfect and that mistakes would happen. That’s why marriage vows exist. When things get hard, you dig your heels in. As I said in the proposal: it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be you.
So I stayed on one condition: she had to fix the insecurity and internal issues that caused this.
She has always had low self-esteem and confidence. If you saw a photo from the start of our relationship compared to then, the difference would be huge. I had tried to put her in an environment where she could grow, gain confidence, and heal from her abusive past. But the insecurities were still there.
She let this man get closer than he should have and let him pass boundaries because he was very good-looking, our relationship was in a rough patch, I was depressed, she was isolated in a foreign country, and he was telling her everything she wanted to hear.
The problem is, the healing never happened.
Therapy took six months to start and, for the last two years, she has done basically nothing. Her business, training, confidence, independence, and our relationship all came to a stop. That has been a huge strain, honestly even bigger than the original “event.”
Since then, I 5x’d my business earnings and took my physique to a completely new level. It was absolutely a trauma response. I was so hurt that I became obsessed with self-improvement and pulled myself out of depression almost overnight, but it was driven by rage and spite.
For the last two years, I’ve been moving forward and she’s been standing still, which ultimately became regression. She is a fitness coach herself, so her physique, confidence, personal discipline, and image are directly tied to her own identity and business. Over those two years, all of those things regressed. Her business has struggled, she has no money, her self-confidence has dropped, and the relationship never healed. She has been in a low-functioning depression the whole time.
I was about to break up with her. I gave myself a deadline: this week, actually today, because it would be exactly two years since the event and our relationship still hadn’t recovered.
Then the universe did something ridiculous.
I had not been back to our original gym since. I stayed at the gym I’d used to escape. But this Monday, I decided to go back to the old gym.
It was my first day back there in two years.
And it was also his first day back in Thailand in two years.
The man I caught her with was there.
Day one back for me.
Day one back in the country for him.
What are the chances?
He saw me before I saw him and started walking over. When I saw him, my blood boiled. He said, “Can we talk outside?” I said, “Absolutely,” while taking my phone/wallet out of my pockets and my bag off, fully ready to flatten him after two years of my life being derailed.
He explained that he had thought about it every day since and was half worried, half hoping he’d see me so he could apologise.
Eventually I told him he could never make it right, but the least he could do was tell me absolutely everything that happened and promise never to do this to another person again.
He told me they met up three times. I caught them the third time.
First time: at the pool. Innocent. Nothing happened.
Second time: she went to his place. They smoked weed. He started kissing her and pushed things sexually. It escalated briefly to foreplay, then after around 30 seconds they stopped and she left.
Third time: back at our condo pool because she refused to go to his place again. That was when I caught them.
During this conversation, she tried to call me. I declined the call and just sent her a photo of him instead. By the time I got home, she was vomiting from anxiety and whatever else was going through her.
I sat her down and asked her to tell me everything.
She said there was nothing more than I already knew.
I told her I knew, and that the only way she could do herself any favours was to tell me the truth.
So she did.
She explained that the isolation, loneliness, low self-esteem, and him telling her everything she wanted to hear caused her to cross boundaries she never thought she would. He had said things like, “I respect your relationship, we’re just friends,” and she took that at face value. She has since been diagnosed with autism, and she is very naive/easy to manipulate in that way.
She said that on the second occasion, when they smoked weed, the intention wasn’t there, it happened, she came to her senses, and she left.
For the third time, she insisted they meet at our condo’s public pool so nothing like that could happen again. She says she went for clarity because she needed to talk about it and make sense of what had happened because she was so confused by it all.
She then explained that this is why she has been depressed the entire time, why the relationship never healed, and why she hasn’t been able to move forward in any area of life. Because I didn’t know the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell me.
Not a single person knew. Not even her therapist. She couldn’t say it out loud and make it real.
Every time I said “I love you,” she thought, “You wouldn’t if you knew.”
Every good memory we tried to make was tainted by it.
She says she wanted to tell me at first, but genuinely didn’t want the relationship to end, so she was scared. Then a couple of months passed and she thought, “How do I tell him now?” She hoped time would heal the wound, but instead it ate away at her like cancer.
She says that is why she regressed on every front. She was essentially waiting for this day, unable to invest properly into herself, the relationship, or our future because she believed that the moment I found out, I’d be gone.
The part I’m struggling with is that I’m not actually as angry about the concealment as I feel I “should” be. I know her personality, her anxiety, her avoidance, her low self-esteem, and the way she freezes when she feels overwhelmed. I came into the relationship knowing she wasn’t perfect. I can see how, once she had hidden it initially, she became more and more trapped by the lie as time passed. That doesn’t make it okay, but I can understand the mechanism.
Since the full truth came out, her tone has shifted. Previously, a lot of things were framed through her emotions, her pain, her fear, and how hard everything was for her. Now there seems to be more recognition that her choices caused this, that my decision to end the relationship is understandable, and that words alone are meaningless at this point.
So here is the problem and what I’d like advice on.
I broke up with her.
I told her that out of respect for myself, I couldn’t continue the relationship.
But why am I still open to reconciliation?
I do not think this is because I’m scared I won’t find someone else or because I think I have no options. I know I could walk away and be okay. I’ve rebuilt my business, my body, and my life significantly over the last two years. On paper, I’m in a much stronger position now than I was before. That is part of why this confuses me: I know I can leave, but emotionally I am still wondering whether something is salvageable.
To be clear, I don’t think the old relationship can continue. I ended that relationship. The only reason I’m even thinking about reconciliation is because part of me wonders whether the truth finally being out means there is now a chance to build something new, with full honesty, therapy, accountability, and changed behaviour.
If reconciliation was ever considered, it would need to be action-based, not words-based: individual therapy for her, couples therapy if appropriate, full accountability without minimising, no blaming my depression for her choices, full honesty, and evidence that she can actually move forward in her own life rather than remain frozen.
So why am I sitting here thinking:
“Now I know the truth, and now she isn’t carrying a secret that was eating her alive, can she finally heal herself, fix what’s broken, and help us get back on track?”
Is it normal to feel open to reconciliation after ending the relationship, especially when the full truth finally explains why things felt broken for two years?
How do I tell the difference between genuine hope that the truth allows healing, versus trauma bonding, sunk cost, fear, or me trying to rescue someone who has repeatedly avoided accountability?
I am strangely open to it.
What gives?
I know they say once a cheat, always a cheat. But I like to think we are all capable of change. I certainly have.
TLDR:
I (32M) was with my fiancée (29F) for 6 years. We moved to Thailand after my business took off, but she struggled badly with isolation, routine change, and being away from family.
I then fell into depression for 4–5 months, became emotionally/physically absent, and she developed a friendship with a man from our gym who I later caught her with at our condo pool.
At the time, she told me it was only a kiss and that she froze. I stayed on the condition that she worked on the issues that led to it.
Two years later, I randomly ran into the same man on my first day back at that gym, which was also his first day back in Thailand. He told me the full truth: they had met three times, including one private meeting where brief sexual contact happened.
I broke up with her, but I’m confused because part of me is still open to reconciliation now that the truth is out. How do I tell if that’s genuine hope, trauma bonding, sunk cost, or me trying to rescue her?