I (M25) met my (now ex) fiancée in my first year of college. We we're both 18 and went from friends to dating pretty quickly. We clicked so well and everything was so easy and effortless. We had a really good relationship. It's the kind of relationship that everyone wishes they we're in. The kind of relationship that people idolized and said "if those two broke up, then love doesn't exist." You get the picture. For the purpose of this post, let's call my ex Ashley. Ashley was everything I was looking for in a woman. Funny, smart, attractive, down to earth and family oriented. She wanted to build a life together. Our families got close over the course of our relationship. It was like we we're already one big family before even getting married. As planned, I popped the question a year ago not knowing that this would change everything. She said yes of course, but things started to change. Slowly but surely, over the months, she became more distanced. I tried to ignore it and chalk it up to nervousness. You know, cold feet before taking the big marriage plunge. I should've trusted my instincts. She always went out with her group of friends on the weekends. I've been on these outings before, usually it's clubbing and drinking. It's not my scene but I trusted my girl so I had no problem with her going without me. These outings became much more frequent after I popped the question. I tried to ignore my gut feeling that something was wrong about this. I should have listened. Last week I get a text from one of her girlfriends. She said she feels super guilty about what's been going on. According to her, Ashley has been worried about getting married. She feels that she hasn't had a chance to explore other options and the prospect of getting "locked down" for life made her really anxious. On these outings, she will frequently flirt with guys, dance with them, grind on them, make out with them, to "get it out of her system." Since she wasn't hooking up with them, she didn't consider it cheating. According to the friend, she also hooked up with a guy in the club bathroom. She sent me pictures and videos from some of those escapades. My heart sank. I felt like I died that day. I thanked the friend for telling me and told her to keep it between us. For me, any form of cheating is a big no no. I knew it was over. What makes this worse is that I have a past with cheating. She knows about my high school ex who cheated on me, and being a stupid teenager, I tried to end it all. This just makes this whole situation cut even deeper. She knows how much hurt she could cause, and still went ahead with it. I wanted to crawl into bed and cry for a month. I wanted to be weak. I felt weak. I decided I would give myself the chance to mourn and cry over this after I protect myself. Me and my fiancée share an apartment that we both pay rent for 50/50. I decided to take 2 days off work and covertly started to move my things out to my brother's house across the city. He knows about everything and immediately offered his place to me. The first day I moved non essential items out, when Ashley got back from work she made a comment about it but I brushed it off by saying I sold some stuff and took some more stuff to a storage unit to tidy and clear space up in our apartment. She didn't question it. I was furious on the inside about everything that I found out about but kept cool to avoid suspicion. She noticed I was a bit withdrawn but i told her i was just tired and stressed from work. The second day, while she was at work, my brother and his wife came over to help me pack everything else and I was fully moved out by 3pm that day. Since then, I have avoided every single form of communication sent by my ex. I have completely cut her off. I refuse to talk to her or her family. I don't even want to confront her about what happened. She came home that day and saw everything was gone."AITA for abruptly cutting my ex-fiancée out of my life?"
She texted all my friends and family who in turn texted me, but I only responded to my parents who are fully behind me and my decision. Her family and friends are blowing up my phone and saying that I'm an AH for leaving without a word.
They've even been blasting me on social media. I don't really care. She knows what she did. To me, she is dead. She doesn't exist. Because of all this backlash, my brother and his wife are now also questioning if it was right of me to completely ignore everyone. This has caused me to doubt myself a bit, so here I am. AITAH?
Here's what top people had to say:
PKMNTrainerAlhari said:
NTA for cutting her out but honestly you need to tell everyone she cheated, no point taking the blame for what she caused. Tell them, block them, move on.
Popular_Error3691 said:
Nta. She knows what she did. You might wanna tell everyone so they get off your back.
strongopinion4life said:
NTA However I think you need to make it clear to others why you left cause they will tell everyone that you "abandoned her" when you didnt and could cause harm to your social and even professional life (I know some people who dont hire cheaters for the simple fact is they can betray some one they vowed to love then they can do it to anyone or anything, I think you get what I mean I hope).
I also think you dont deserve people telling you that you are awful or a bad person and stuff like that when you arent. Cheaters dont deserve to be seen as the victim.
Prudii_Skirata said:
NTA but in your place, I would explain it to her/them with one single parting message of: "You don't have to worry about getting married and missing out on other opportunities anymore because you blew it..."
darkstarjax said:
Send the evidence from her friend to all her family. Excluding her. Let them deal with her themselves.
Afraid-Tea-5745 said:
NTA. I would have however made sure her family and friends knew what she did. But that's just me.
Superbubbler said:
You’re NTA, but it seems like you’re trying to let everyone else think you are. I wouldn’t worry about closure or finding out why, because you won’t get the truth anyway. You should at least let people know who you both are. She is a cheater and you have self respect enough to not tolerate it.
UPDATE (1 day later):
Update: An overwhelming amount of people have convinced me to reach out to her parents and give them an explanation to clear my name. I will update when I get a chance to tomorrow. Thank you for the responses.
After an overwhelming amount of people screamed at me in the comments to speak out, I decided to break my silence.
I didn't want to make this whole thing public. Despite what she did, some part of me still cares for her. I was with her for 6 years. You can't just throw that away overnight. I came to the conclusion that the right thing to do was to talk to her parents. Only her family needed to know.
Everyone else can have whatever opinion they want of me, I don't care. The people who truly know me and are close to me are the only one's I care about. I sent a detailed message of what happened to my closest friends and family.
All of them, of course, believed me right away, no pictures needed. I didn't feel like it was necessary or appropriate to spread those pictures of her, so I didn't. Now that the people I cared about were sorted, I moved on to her parents.
I messaged her mom, who by the way I had gotten so close to I considered her a 2nd mom and she considered me a son. She was very upset with me, but agreed to meet up.
I felt like this needed to be an in person conversation rather than a nuke i drop in an email with everyone they know CC'd. I met her mom and her dad at a diner we used to frequent for breakfast. I know, so cliche. It was quite emotional.
They were understandably upset. They didn't do anything wrong and I cut them out of my life like nothing happened. I understood why they we're upset, so when they we're confronting me I was very quiet, just listening. Letting them get it all out. I admit i was tearing up with them. That is until they accused me of some things...
It's been a whole week since all of this went down. In that week, a lot happened. Apparently, according to her parents, my ex convinced everyone that I CHEATED and that SHE kicked me out, and I haven't been answering anyone because I was so ashamed of what I had done. LOL.
I literally laughed out loud. I responded by saying that I am sorry and I wished them a happy life and walked out. I was so f*cking upset I couldn't even have imagined of being accused of this. What a f-g joke.
I can't believe her parents would believe her and throw me under the bus so fast. I walked out because I'm pretty sure I would have said some things I'd regret to her parents. I didn't wanna do this but she left me no choice. I activated the nuclear option.
I went home, made an email titled "For your reading pleasure" and attached every picture her friend sent me , including screenshots of the chat with her friend where she expressed how guilty she felt about the cheating.
I also attached the videos of her grinding and making out with other guys. I included a long explanation detailing everything that has happened since D day.
I ended the email by saying that I do not wish to be contacted and that I expect my ring back at some point. I attached her, her parents, any friend I could think of, and a coworker that I just so happened to know as well. F it.
So that's where I'm at now. I may be the a-hole for sending that email, but she really tested my f-ng limits when I found out what she was telling people.
I have 0 regrets. Currently crashing at my brother place on the pull out couch. He's helping me get through this, as much as one can I guess. Who knows what kind of fallout that email will create. Either way, I'm gonna sit back and enjoy it with popcorn (whilst sobbing)
Here's what people had to say after the update:
ExcitingTabletop said:
In the prior post, I told folks that OP should have gotten his story out rather than ghost. Folks vigorously disagreed.
This is exactly why. If you ghost, expect them to spin a story that you are the villain. Rather than you know, be a normal person and have a 5 minute conversation. "Hey, we're splitting up. I have evidence, I'm not going to do sh$t unless I hear you tell folks I cheated on you. Then it's on. Have a nice life."
OP will have some folks forever thinking he was the cheater. All because avoid talking to his ex for a couple minutes. He didn't know her that. It just would have been in his own best interest.
Courtesy isn't necessarily just being nice. It can also be a sword or a shield. Folks forget that these days.
YankeePoilu said:
What was the point of meeting them to give them an explanation if you never bothered to actually give them the explanation? Seems like you could have just sent the email like you did anyway.
Of course they heard something different—you ghosted everyone. I get you felt bad because it’s a bad situation, but you left fertile ground for misinformation or gossip to spread, then you never bothered to explain it face to face.
pisa36 said:
Chin up you definitely dodged a bullet. You were right to drop the bomb after she was fabricating lies against you.
sleeping-siren said:
I understand why you went nuclear, and also why you couldn’t explain in person after they had just been yelling at you and repeating her false accusations. And clearly your ex is a liar, so it’s better that things ended now.
But I also get why her parents would believe that she was telling the truth. She is their daughter after all, and they did try to contact you. Unfortunately, the silence created a void that she was able to fill with her narrative for a week.
Idk if they would have believed you if you responded to them sooner, my point is just that you shouldn’t take it personally that they believed her.
I have no judgements about what you should or shouldn’t have done, and I’m genuinely sorry you went through this. I hope you can take time and receive support to process and heal.
