Five months into our break, I found out she had been sleeping with the man she was dating. They had had sex on their first date. Before either of us started seeing other people, we had agreed that sex was the line we would not cross. If we wanted someone else that much, we would end our relationship first.
I confronted her and ended it. That part was clear, even if almost nothing about living afterward has been. We still share a rented house, and neither of us can afford to leave before the lease ends. There are another four or five months to go.
We are both 24, and we had been together for eight and a half years. For a long time, I thought everything outside our sex life was good. We had built a home together. When we moved from an apartment into a house, and I got a job I liked with a shorter commute, I felt as though the life we had talked about was finally coming together.
But I had spent years feeling unwanted. I was nearly always the one initiating sex, and usually she turned me down. Sometimes I decided I would stop asking and wait for her to want me first. That rarely happened. Even when we did have sex, I struggled to feel that it was something we both wanted.
I did not want her to have sex out of obligation. When she apologized for how little we were having, I told her it was okay, that we did not need sex to love each other. I meant the part about love. I was much less honest about how lonely I felt. We never really talked through what was happening.
The gaps grew longer, even after our schedules became more similar. Eventually we went from around May or June 2025 until roughly February 2026 without having sex. I had kept hoping a change in our circumstances would change this too.
In early April, she told me she had been flirting with a man at her new job and felt guilty. I said flirting alone did not really bother me. Then the conversation turned to marriage. She thought I had never sounded serious about it. I had actually wanted to propose on our anniversary in 2025, but money had kept me from buying a ring. I told her about the plan and the conversations I had been having with friends about proposing.
A week later, she asked for a break. We agreed we could meet other people, with that explicit boundary around sex. About a month in, she said she would download dating apps and suggested I do the same. Around that time, she asked whether I wanted to have sex, since we would not be sleeping with anyone else. We did, for about five nights in a row.
Then she started going on dates with another man. I was getting matches but barely meeting anyone. Only later did I learn that our agreement had already been broken on their first date.
I cannot separate that discovery from all the time I spent wondering why she did not want me. It does not tell me what she felt during those years, but it brings those feelings back. We are cordial now. I once thought I might be able to forgive her and move on together. Now I want to stop being in contact, and we still have months left in the same house.
