TL;DR:
My (then gf) ex became close with a coworker she admitted she was attracted to and compared me to. I asked for clearer boundaries, but she continued spending time with him outside of work and didn’t clearly represent our relationship there. This caused ongoing conflict and insecurity on my end. I’m trying to understand whether this crossed into emotional cheating or if I was overreacting.
Hi, I need outside perspective because until now I don’t know if I’m crazy or if what I experienced crossed into emotional cheating. I’m trying to process lang what happened in my relationship. And perhaps hear from others who were in a similar position. I want to understand if there was a way I could’ve handled things better instead of just telling her off and hoping she’d learn.
For more context,
my girlfriend (now ex) started a new job. She was the youngest on the team and was onboarded by a guy, let’s call him Jimmy. I didn’t know much about him at first, but the first time I saw a photo of him, I had a really bad gut feeling. I ignored it and never acted on it.
One night during a drinking night out with my girlfriend and our friends, she pulled me aside and told me something that completely broke me. She said that at work, they were talking about smoking, drinking, etc., and then she told me, verbatim:
“I wish you were more like him.”
At that point, I was devastated. Objectively, he was her type: tall, chinito, baby-faced, doesn’t smoke or vape, and doesn’t even like drinking. The only similarity we had was that I’m also tall, though he’s taller.
I tried to handle it maturely. I thanked her for being honest. I then asked if they could keep things purely professional at work and stop being friends outside of it. She said she couldn’t and didn’t want to. The look on her face when I asked made it feel like I was asking her to end the world.
What made it worse was that nothing was really resolved. We just stopped talking about it and let it sit. The night in question was on a Saturday, we talked briefly on Sunday, and I left Sunday night for a trip. By Monday, while I was away, she invited her workmates to play badminton. Jimmy was part of that group. She had never initiated anything like that with me before (to play badminton or whatever or any other activity). We were already rocky, yet she still chose to spend time with him and her workmates while everything was unresolved. This became a recurring pattern over the next several months.
Another issue was how she represented our relationship at work. She later clarified that she had only mentioned once in passing that she was “seeing someone.” It took months of arguments just to make her understand why that hurt me. All I wanted was something subtle, like casually saying, “Okay sure, I’ll go. I’ll just let my boyfriend know so he can pick me up after.” Maybe I’m overreacting, but to me that felt like basic respect and reassurance.
There was also an incident involving playlists. I asked her to make a collaborative playlist with me, but she never added anything. Later, I found out she made a playlist with Jimmy. A third workmate was technically involved, but in reality, it was mostly just the two of them contributing.
It took me breaking up with her the first time for her to finally tell Jimmy to back off. This happened many months after she first admitted her feelings. What hurt more was how she framed it. She told him they couldn’t be friends anymore because I was uncomfortable, not because she wanted to respect our relationship or because boundaries had been crossed. It made me feel like I was being painted as insecure.
This honestly isn’t everything that happened. These are just some of the more memorable examples. What made things hurt even more was that at some point, she admitted, “I think he might’ve liked me, not sure.” Hearing that made everything feel heavier.
I want to be clear that I was never asking her to quit her job or completely cut ties with him. I understood that they had to interact professionally. What I struggled with was the continued relationship outside of work. Things like spending time together after hours, riding in his car when they went places, especially alone, or hanging out with him at another coworker’s place felt like crossed boundaries to me.
Over time, I found myself repeatedly asking for reassurance and reminding her to set limits. That dynamic made me feel guilty for even needing to ask and eventually made me question whether I was being unreasonable.
There was also one karaoke night with her team that I joined only because she got extremely drunk. The entire night, she kept following him. When he disappeared, she would look for him. She barely acknowledged me. She doesn’t remember any of this because she was blackout drunk, but it’s because she handles alcohol very badly (looking back to her admitting this Jimmy thing during an inuman pa).
Looking back, maybe I was foolish for letting this drag on for so long. All I ever asked for were simple reassurances like, “Okay, I’ll keep things professional” or “I respect our relationship and I’ll set boundaries.”
So I genuinely want to ask:
Was I emotionally cheated on, or was I just insecure and overreacting? What would’ve been a better way to handle this situation?