This is unforgivable, right?

[HeidiSchmeidi]

I think this is probably unforgivable but just want to run it by an objective audience. This happened a year ago and my ex is trying to get me to take him back (he has been trying for a year) and I wanted to see if I am crazy for even considering it.

My boyfriend and I were long distance at the time, and I hadn't seen him in three months. His ex started working with him. She is a woman (colleague from another office) who he had a brief relationship with (a few months) and he ended it because she was in love with him and wanted more and he didn't return her feelings.

When she arrived though, she relentlessly chased after him. To the point of propositioning him for sex and telling him if he did it she would never tell me and so on. She started sending him messages and so on about how she still loved him and didn't he miss her (he did tell her to stop and eventually blocked her) but it was quite blatant she was trying to steal my man.

In his defense he did tell her to please leave him alone because he was in a relationship (she didn't respect this request) and he was also completely honest and told me everything at the time and shared any texts with me so I was in the loop.

At the time, pre-pandemic, there were a lot of boozy work nights out almost every weekend, and I know my boyfriend very well and he is one of those people who gets absolutely blotto and does and says crazy things (loves everyone), so I was very uncomfortable with him getting wasted drunk if she was around. Not so much because I thought he would sleep with her, but just because I thought a conversation would start that he would not be in control of and so on.

So we agreed he wouldn't go to events which she was at, or if he did that he'd stay sober. Which he did for three months. Then one day there was an event she wasn't meant to be at, but she showed up to and he was already completely wasted when she got there. He was drunk at this point with no boundaries so he didn't think to leave.

She started hitting on him quite blatantly, and he ended up talking to her for a while. I happened to call him, and he told me where he was and that he'd chatted to her and in his drunk state he didn't see a problem at all with it. He actually got quite belligerent with me "I am an adult I think I can make a judgement".

I was home alone, I'd had a really stressful day and I felt very threatened by how persistently this woman was trying to steal my man and so I asked him to come home and call me. So he did and left five minutes later (it was about 9.30pm). He had been drinking all day on some corporate boat trip and he was absolutely wasted.

We never argued much, but I ended up absolutely raging at him, shouting, and told him I wanted to break up with him. I then blocked him on everything. This might seem an over-reaction, but at the time we were under a lot of strain being separated, and I felt he wasn't doing enough to get this woman to stop chasing after him (maybe his ego enjoyed it a bit) and it was making me feel really uncomfortable.

I'd stress we never had ANY problems with trust before (together two years) but this woman was blatantly gunning for him in the most obvious way and I was worried after so many months apart and her constantly trying to get him alone that something might happen everyone would regret.

Anyway, I did my dumping tantrum, and he (already wasted) decided to go back to the party and carry on drinking because he was upset and said he was on a self-destruct mission. She got him talking, he told her we had split up and cut a long story short he went back to her place and slept with her.

The next day he woke up really horrified but he believed we were genuinely split up so he went home. Later that day I called him to try and patch up our fight and sort things out and he confessed what had happened.

I was absolutely devastated, and told him I could never forgive him. He cried for weeks, tried everything he could to win me back but I just could not get past it.

Here we are over a year later and he is still trying to win me back, I am the love of his life and so on, it was a drunken mistake he made when he felt I'd dumped him.

Any thoughts on this? We do still love each other, but although my behavior was bad on that night I couldn't figure out why a few hours after our breakup he went and had sex with the one woman who had been making me feel unsafe for so long.

Obviously I;ve been very uncomfortable

He did her wrong, she did him wrong. I sort of don't care. Do you?

If you do patch it up, if you don't find someone else.

And don't get drunk and ditch people if you don't mean it.

I'd struggle to forgive you but somehow he has. More fool him.

So you have an argument and the next thing he does the moment after you "break up" is put his dick in the ONE person you were threatened by? Sorry OP but he wanted to do it. He made a bunch of decisions that night that led him to sleeping with her. Decisions he CHOSE to make. Presumably there was plenty of time between him going back to the party and sleeping with her where he could have thought "Hmmm... maybe having sex with my ex isn't the best thing to do right now, maybe I should be trying to make things right with my girlfriend.. " But he didn't think that because he wanted to shag her and probably always wanted to.

Sorry if this is cold harsh truth but men like him are shit and you deserve better. You will never trust him again. This will come up in every argument you ever have.

Although on a side note, this could have been a self fulfilling prophecy because of how much you badgered him about his ex. What he did was gross and unacceptable but in your next relationship, try to chill a bit

@HeidiSchmeidi it was a bit of a harsh tone from me and I apologise for that but I stand by what I said. He tried to do everything he could to make you comfortable, she wasn't meant to be at that function and then she was which he couldn't control. It's not easy to ignore someone at a work event as she is also a colleague, you can't exactly blank someone in front of other workmates. He came home when you told him to.

The actions she was taking to try and get with your ex should have made you feel embarrassed for her rather than insecure and anxious. I understand that it was very upsetting for you but you let that manifest into your relationship and ultimately it caused it to end and both of you are hurt.

Whether or not you decide to get back with him is only a decision you can make, but either way I hope you can reflect on what both of you could have done differently.

I reckon he is as shagging her long before the admitted transgression

Move on he’s a shit
Don’t need a man so much

@JohnMiddleNameRedactedSwanson

he is one of those people who gets absolutely blotto and does and says crazy things

There’s a word for ‘those people’. They are not people to build a life with.

Presumably he isn’t 18. Grown-ups don’t get so blackout drunk that they lose all control and then abdicate all responsibility for their actions.

This

My moral compass used to spin uncontrollably when I was very drunk. It got me into trouble on a number of occasions. I’d like to think with age and the increased responsibility that I have now it would be different but I stopped drinking in my early 30s and have resisted the urge to test it out since.
I’m not sure why I lose all inhibition but for some of us it just disappears. I’m not alone, my sister is the same, if you met me you would find it hard to believe, but with a few on board I have done some truly awful things.
DH knows me and does keep a close eye on me when I’ve been drinking, I do rely on him to reign me in.
I’m also crap at reading when men are attracted to me, DH usually has to spell it out to me.
Maybe your ex has learned a hard lesson. It is hard for men to play the sexual harassment card at work. It sort of goes against the grain. It can also go very badly for them if the obsessed woman decides to retaliate.
I think you have had a battering on this thread. You are probably well rid of this man if he did actively encourage this woman, but if you do still have feelings for him maybe, when lockdown is over, have a conversation with him. Mumsnet can be judge and jury at times. It’s your life and your decision. If you want to give him a second chance then go for it. There are plenty of posts on here at the moment reflecting on how they gave up on a relationship and wondering if it was the right thing to do.

I think you have two different questions here. Was it unforgivable? Possibly not. I think you did contribute to the situation. What he did was far from right but we've all had acted badly when hurt and lashing out, which it does sound like a big influence here.
The second question is can you move past it and given the shadow it cast on your relationship before this, then it's a resounding no.

I think the incident happened because in your (understandable) state of anxiety you were very controlling and he had handled it despite being drunk, he’d had a conversation for a while, it had been controlled and it was over, yet you insisted he come home, then dumped him for his trouble. He then allowed his drunken self to make a decision that he probably wouldn’t have sober.

The work situation sounds like sexual harassment on her part and should have been reported.

If you decide he is worth it, you have to dismiss it as a drunken mistake and get over it. If Not tell him and move on.

Unfortunately ime, this is exactly the kind of thing that lots of men will do 2.5 nanoseconds after a break-up, especially if they're drunk.

I think under the circumstances I might be willing to give it another go, but there are issues on both sides that I'd want to sort before I jumped in with both feet, if it were me, so I'd probably insist on some counselling or at the very least some very very open and honest talking first.

At a minimum you've got to tackle: his drinking, him not taking your concerns about her seriously at the time, why on EARTH he didn't report her to work for what sounds like pretty sustained and uncomfortable sexual harassment and you flying off the handle when he hadn't really done much wrong, then dumping him, then blaming him for thinking he'd been dumped (when he had been).

He gambled.
He thought that night that he could shag the girl he was flirting with at work and perhaps get back with you.
You had officially ended the relationship and so he was technically free to shag other people, then re-start the relationship with you.
He hoped.
You read about it on these boards a lot where the girlfriend takes him back, and then 4-5 years later he does it again. Because he risks it again, it's his nature, he's not loyal, he's opportunistic.

I think he made one huge and horribly hurtful mistake. He was very drunk and very upset, believing that your relationship was over, and she took advantage of that. It sounds as though he has been totally honest with you at all times, though, even admitting to shagging her. My own feeling would be to give him a chance. Conditional on staying away from her and getting some help for his binge drinking, which seems to be having a horrible impact on your relationship. Of course, only you know how you feel and what you can deal with, and whether you want to deal with it.

To be honest, it's sounds exhausting being in the relationship, needing restrictions and rules for him to be around his ex.

He should be more then capable of talking to an ex without falling into bed with her, although you say that's not your worry, I'm really sure I understand what your worry was.

What if another woman simply wouldn't stop hounding him, despite his quite clear requests for her to stop, would he have to stay away from her as well, how far does she have to go before this is put in place.

You either trust him or you don't, you didn't and he ran straight to her and slept with her. Although he was single, he knew his much that would hurt you and chose to do it anyway. I wouldn't be taking him back.

If the extent of the harassment is as written in the OP and it was completely unwanted then anyone in their right mind would have reported it not only to their boss, but the police as well. It was going to happen regardless. Just so happened that the OP gave him the green light by dumping him so he jumped at it. I mean he almost broke his neck getting back to the party didn't he he didn't even leave it a day 😬

If I still loved him, and he clearly still loved me, I'd forgive him. It's been a year, forgive and move on. Never mention it again though.

From his point of view, you’d broken up, you’d blocked him so he couldn’t even talk to you despite that he went home for you. So he’s drunk, he’s horny and she’s there. They fuck. You unblock him and he’s honest, so you’re mad. It “proved a point”.
Not everyone would think “I’ve been broken up with, I should sober up and hope she unblocks me”, if anything that would make me even more ready to go out and fuck the next person who wanted to fuck me.

This relationship sounds toxic. You do not sound good for each other. He made you so anxious you were a tantruming-dumping-when-you-didn’t-mean-it mess. And he decided to make said break up stick by going out and doing what you were so anxious about.
You may well still get along as friends but surely you can both see you are not good for each other?
You will meet someone one day who doesn’t push you to this point and who you will trust with your life and that is who you are meant to be with.

He sounds quite loathsome to be honest, even before she came along.
Why does he get so drunk - has he no control ?

I think you over reacted and you had just broken up with him. You sound controling to me.

You both behaved massively childishly, you’re clearly not right for each other so block on everything and move on with your life.

I know it's unpopular, but I'm going against the majority here...

I'm very much of a the view once a cheater, always a cheater, once that trust is gone, it can never truly come back, etc etc, but based on what you've said, I actually think what he did is forgivable.

He was always transparent with you and even though he was smashed and miles away, he respected you when you demanded he goes home (which is somewhat controlling I have to say). However, you then completely flipped at him and ended it with him.

I can completely see why, when he's got someone offering sex on a plate, and he's just been dumped because you don't trust him to be around this woman in the first place, he would think fuck it, I'm going to do what I'm being accused of. You ended it with him and in that moment he was single. You played a part in this too.

Your behaviour was awful. He didn't ask that woman to chase him. He kept his distance out of respect for you, to the extent of massively curtailing his own social life. Then you raged at him, dumped him, and blocked him after a two year relationship, just for talking to her.

Given how you treated him, he had every right to sleep with anyone he wanted that night.

If he was really that worried and upset at work then surely he would have threatened to tell HR or actually had done so, on grounds of harassment.

I'm not sure I buy the she was chasing him that much, he must have given her some encouragement or maybe they were just work friends? I don't know but you either trust someone or you don't, arbitrary rules just encourage them to rebel and won't fix your issues.

If you can't forgive him it won't matter what people on the internet say. I too would be very interested to hear her side of the story.

Everyone knows Ross was in the wrong!