Two days ago, my girlfriend told me she had hooked up with two other men in June. Both are people I know. By the time she told me, I had introduced her to my family and we were looking toward getting engaged. I thought I knew how our relationship had begun. Now I’m trying to understand a part of it I hadn’t known existed.
We started talking in December 2025. She was living in London, and I was in Mumbai. I already knew her because she had previously dated a friend of mine. As we kept talking, we developed an emotional connection and began looking forward to seeing what might happen between us when she returned to India.
She came back to Mumbai in June 2026. We met in person and became physically intimate. I wanted a serious relationship with her, but I also wanted time to get to know her in person before making it official. That part is mine to acknowledge. I wasn’t treating her as my girlfriend because I didn’t yet consider us boyfriend and girlfriend.
At the same time, I didn’t think we were starting from nothing. There had been months of talking, an emotional attachment, and the expectation that we were moving toward a relationship. To me, the time in person was about discovering whether we could build on what was already there. I understand now that my expectation wasn’t necessarily the same as an agreement between us.
The encounters with the other two men happened that June. She knew I knew them. They didn’t know about my involvement with her, so I don’t blame them. Still, knowing them makes this harder to take in. These aren’t two strangers whose existence I can leave somewhere outside the rest of my life.
Her explanation is that we weren’t officially dating. We were seeing each other and considering a relationship, so she doesn’t believe she did anything wrong. She has also said that what happened has happened. I can follow her explanation of our status at the time. I’m struggling with how settled it sounds when the information is so new to me.
We officially became a couple in August, roughly two and a half months after those encounters. After that, I grew more serious about her. My family met her, people knew about us, and getting engaged became something we were looking forward to. That future matters here. I’m hearing about June from inside a relationship that has already become much more important to me.
I feel betrayed, but I can’t honestly leave out my own hesitation to commit. I wanted more time before calling this a relationship, yet I believed the emotional and physical connection meant we were already choosing each other. She describes that same period as one in which she was free to see other people. I don’t know how to make sense of feeling betrayed by something she says happened before there was a commitment to betray.
I haven’t figured out what this means for the future we were planning. I was looking forward to getting engaged to her. Now I’m still trying to take in what she has told me.
