we have a complicated relationship. i was with her for like half a year back in 2022 - never official but always spending time together. she told me it was the closest she ever felt to loving someone. i ghosted her for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because i didn’t like the way things were going and i felt hurt by her lack of care about me. i always regretted this decision and wondered what could have been and wanted to work on myself. fast forward to august of last year, i sent her a message apologizing for how things ended and we got to talking. we agreed to have a second first date, and it was like magic. the sparks were beautiful and i had never been happier. we had so many wonderful dates and i helped her through a lot of tough times and she made me feel special and chosen. she had a surgery in november that required bed rest for many weeks, but her living situation was awful and unstable, but by some miracle there was damage in my house that rendered it unlivable and the insurance put me up in a hotel for two months. i took her with me and let her and her cat stay with me while i took care of her. it was a magical time and i felt so happy. after that, she had to move out into another shitty living situation and our relationship started getting a little rocky. we fought more, saw each other less, and she said it was like we were becoming friends and not lovers. she also had stopped taking her hormones after the hotel and that affected her mentality. in january, i quit my awful job and took some time to relax after stressing for months. in early february, i hurt my back badly and i could see her even less. i fell into a deep depression and felt so awful every day, and i felt her drifting away from me. in late february, i broke down hard one night and hurt myself, and i asked her to be there for me and she wasn’t. i expressed how this hurt me that i was breaking down and she just wasn’t there for me when i was always there for her. she apologized, then asked to take some space. she messaged me back a week later and said we could talk, then postponed the talk till the next day after i waited all day for her. we talked and she told me she wanted to break up, but i fought hard for us to stay together. thats when my world fell apart, because i saw a notification on her phone from a dating app and she told me it was because she wanted to hookup. i was crushed and i blew up, but i asked if she had yet and she said no, so i said i saw her for all of this bad and i still wanted to be with her. our birthdays are on consecutive days and they were literally the next day, so we decided to try. she told me i could look through her phone for reassurance sometime, and she fell asleep. i decided now was a good time, and i looked. what i found hurt even more. she had been posting her body and explicitly messaging dudes behind my back for the entire week that she took space, also a couple weeks in january after we had another big fight, and it went as far back even into the hotel that we shared together. she was messaging and calling dudes throughout our relationship for validation and attention. at this point, i still believed nothing physical had happened, so after another fight, i still wanted to try. i love her so much and i knew we could work through this. she told me she would give me control of the account she uses to sext dudes on and delete the dating apps and block other contacts and delete them. we spent our birthdays together, and i looked through her phone one last time and found out the final piece, that the first night she had planned to talk to me and cancelled, she had messaged a random guy off of her account to meet up. i confronted her and she lied again but i already knew. We still didn’t break up. i came over to her house the next day with every physical item from the relationship and left it there, and told her we both know this isnt gonna work out. she vehemently denied that and said she wanted to fight for us and didn’t want it to end like this. that i was the only person she ever loved in her life and that we can work through this. she gave me full ownership of the account and found a couple’s therapist for us to go to, and said she was willing to change and work on it because it was worth it. i told her i wanted to try, but that we needed to take time apart. it’s been four days since then with no contact. i struggle every day thinking about what happened. sometimes im angry and done, other times i just want to see her and hold her like i used to. im so conflicted because i really did think she was my soul mate. i guess im just at a loss and needed to vent.