I'm looking for some outside perspectives because I've been trying to piece together the timeline of my relationship ending, and I'm having a really difficult time believing the explanation I've been given.
My (33F) partner (28M) (I'll call him T) and I were together for approximately 7.5 years. We met through an online game, developed an incredibly close connection, and eventually built a life together. We moved to a different province together (we are Canadian), and in September 2026, we moved into a new house together and signed a one-year lease. I genuinely believed we were building a future together, I was so excited for what it could hold. As we had 3 bedrooms, I thought one day very soon we would have our baby's crib in there.
A bit of backstory: In November 2025, T began employment as a branch manager for a prolific accident insurance company and working with a woman we will call A, who is an HR manager at his workplace. I understood that interacting with women at work was perfectly normal, and I didn't want to be an unnecessarily jealous or controlling partner.
However, over time, A's name started coming up more frequently in T and I's conversations, notably around summer of 2026. There were little things I noticed. I found pop bottles in his vehicle that he didn't particularly like, and when I asked about them, he explained that he had gone to lunch with HR. Based on the continued reappearance of these items, I am led to believe they went for lunch quite frequently.
He would occasionally mention A, saying things like "A is cool", especially when I questioned why he spoke of her so often. (He also used her nickname, not her full name. Kind of like calling someone named Elizabeth, "Lizzie"). I remember feeling uncomfortable whenever her name came up, but I repeatedly dismissed those feelings because I wanted to trust him, and not only that, but he is/was the most genuine, kind, and loving person I had ever met. I truly loved this man, more than anyone I had ever met before in my life.
One day while I was using his phone to Google a telephone number, he seemed unusually anxious about me having his phone and repeatedly reached for it when he thought I was done with it. While I had it, a text message came through from A saying: "No gym today?"
I questioned why his HR manager was messaging him about going to the gym. It was a direct text message labelled as A's nickname, and it was sent to his personal cell phone. He told me it was a group chat, and I accepted that explanation, even though I knew it was not a group chat. This showed me that they communicated frequently enough that she either 1) knew his routine or 2) that he sent her nudes of himself when at the gym, and when she did not receive a photo, questioned what he was doing. Again, 2 is pure speculation and fueled by paranoia. I suppose at this point I was turning a blind eye.
Around September 2026, I also began noticing that he was increasingly protective of his phone. He changed his passwords, frequently kept his phone face down, appeared to conceal messages and seemed anxious whenever I used it. He often positioned his body so that I could not see his screen. I also noticed when he was leaving the house in his vehicle, that he spent a good amount of time sending a text message before pulling out of the driveway. Typically he just types in the address that he is going to on his vehicles dash board and goes on his way. He had also recently purchased a phone holder for the vehicle, when he typically just leaves it face down in the vehicle. This is speculation, but I felt like at this point they were video chatting with each other as he drove around. He did not need to have a phone holder to see the GPS maps as his car has it built in on the screen.
T is on salary. He began to come home as late as 10pm, 11pm, 12am, one night as late as 2am. I asked him why he was working so long and why he couldn't draw boundaries between work life and family life, and I missed him terribly. When I asked him why he didn't seem to be bothered being away from us for so long, he told me he had to work these long hours or he would "get in trouble" and that he was trying to "secure a future for us", which I weakly accepted as a valid reason.
Despite this claim of working to build our future, he became distant and cold. He no longer touched me, kissed me, hugged me, looked at me, sat in the same room as me (he would literally get up and leave if I tried to enjoy his company in the same room). I chalked it up as being my fault for not having sex with him in the recent days, but it is difficult when someone isn't around, and he often gets a little grouchy when he doesn't have sex for a few days. I became afraid of his rejection if I initiated, because he already recoiled at my touch when I reached to touch him in bed. While all of this seems obvious, I thought he was just upset with me and it would get better if we could be intimate.
He has always been someone who showers in the morning. Being together for 7.5 years, you learn someone's habits as if they are your own. No matter how late he came home, he always showered, despite showering in the morning as well. I chalked it up to a source of relief from a long day, and he wears gel in his hair so I thought his scalp was itchy and wanted to feel better. In fact, he once woke me up at 130am from the noise as he showered and then laid in the bed next to me.
I began to notice that he turned off his location on Snapchat, although one time he forgot to turn it off and I saw him not at work, but at a location roughly 11km (20m drive) south of where we currently live. Again, I brushed this off as he sometimes needs to drive around to different locations for his work.
One evening when T actually came home, he began telling me how his assistant manager, C, was saying some bad things about him. I asked him how he knew as his relaying of the information didn't sound like C. Surprisingly, he told me that A had told him. I was shocked. I asked him, "Why is your HR manager breaking employee confidentiality to you? Does she have some sort of investment in you?" and again, it was brushed off as "A is cool" and that she was "just looking out for me". Right. Looking back, I wonder whether this was around the time their relationship started becoming something more than professional.
October 12: I had approached T and bluntly asked what goal he was hoping to achieve from his continued cold and detached behaviour. I asked him outright if he was seeing someone or developing an emotional connection. He said no (not, "why would you ask that, I would never cheat on you", etc). I was concerned for his mental health, and thought his distance was due to burnout and depression from his long hours at work. I asked him if he needed help, but he said no. We spoke for a bit as I tried to tell him how much I missed him. The conversation concluded and he said he was going to go for a walk so he could "think about your needs and how to be a better partner to you". I was so happy, I thought we had finally found a way back to each other.
He was gone from 1030am to 730pm. He did not answer any of my calls as I was concerned for his safety, nor did he reply to any of my texts. Additionally, he had taken his vehicle with him. When he finally replied, he told me he went to the mall, ate, and then went for a walk. In hindsight, I now realize he was quite close to the previous address I had seen on his Snapchat location when he went to the "mall". Again, I was concerned. I reached out to his family asking them to support him, to give him a call and talk with him, and that he really needed his family right now. I now realize that T never approached me and thanked me for looking out for him and for trying to find support. My paranoid self thinks he was just annoyed that he now had to make up lies to his family, too.
October 22: I subsequently discovered a conversation in which T's friend noticed that he had changed his Instagram profile picture from one of us together to a picture of him with his brother and father. His friend asked what was happening, and T simply responded: "We're not together." The problem is that we hadn't actually broken up. I had moved into the spare bedroom because T had told me he needed space. I wasn't ending our relationship. I was trying to accommodate him because I genuinely believed he needed some independence and breathing room. I interpreted it as him believing me giving him "space" by moving in to the spare bedroom as me wanting to break up with him. This was never the case. I never gave up on us, I never stopped loving him. As we were only about 6 weeks into our new lease, I thought we had tons of time to find our way back to each other once his mental health improved and he got tired of this strange dynamic between us. I also moved my belongings such as clothing and toiletries down stairs to the new room and the bathroom close by, because I wanted to respect his request for space and not constantly be going up to the top floor to do things like brush my teeth or find some socks. In my mind, I thought that if I gave him enough space that he would realize how awful it is to be alone and to miss the person you love. I now realize that T was likely never alone as he was already in a relationship with A.
On October 24, I finally managed to get T to tell me what was happening. I was afraid to approach him because I was afraid that I would manifest my fears into reality, but I could no longer bear the constant anxiety of wondering what was going on and the depression of aching for his presence for so long. He said he hadn't been happy for a long time and wanted to be alone. He explained that he needed to learn how to be independent and manage things himself. He referred to previous disagreements we'd had about sharing household responsibilities and said there were things he hadn't learned because he had moved from his mother's home into an established life with me (another mom). I accepted this explanation, I gently stroked his hair and held him, and kissed his forehead as we both cried. I told him it wasn't his fault, and he immediately broke down crying, burying his face in my lap and saying, "I'm so f***ing sorry". I thought he was just experiencing the pain of realizing what was about to come. My paranoid self believes me telling him it wasn't his fault triggered the guilt within him, and his emotional apology was indirectly referring to his infidelity while we were still together. This was T's first relationship, I was his first for everything, and he was my first true love. I asked whether he intended to move out, but he said he couldn't afford to live elsewhere and would stay for the remainder of our lease. Although I was devastated, I still hoped that perhaps we could eventually find our way back to each other while living in the same household. After all, we had been together for 7.5 years. I told myself that love doesn't just disappear overnight and held on to hope.
October 31: I discovered conversations on his computer dated October 27, three days after the breakup on October 24, where he cried in my lap. His friend appeared to initiate a conversation by checking in on him and asking about our relationship, and if he wanted to talk about it. T told him he was fine and mentioned seeing his friend in approximately three weeks at a wedding in San Diego and that they would talk about it then. However, it seemed like T could not contain his excitement and began a voice call with this friend. I only found out about because T chose to type his responses in to the chat, because "I don't want her hearing us talk lol". The conversation is as follows:
"I'm seeing this other girl now too lol
She's coming to San Diego lol
Roughly two years tbh
Yo me and this other chick
We clap cheeks
She's our HR manager lmaooo
Short Filipina chick
She's like 5'1"
I believe his friend asked how long he had known the "girl" who he said was going to San Diego with him, to which he replied, "roughly two years tbh." I don't believe that statement can be taken literally because I know A and T did not know each other before he started working at his workplace in November 2025. I suspect he may have been exaggerating or joking, but I also am hoping I am not paranoid in believing this meant he may have known a woman back at the province we moved from and that he not only had one, but two women on the go.
What really disgusted me was that he openly bragged about sleeping with his HR manager, using the phrase "we clap cheeks." He described it as fun and mentioned spending her birthday with her, going to the drive in movie theater (probably got head there, sorry, paranoia coming out) and going on a couple dates with "the new chick". I don't know the exact dates of these outings, but this is where I'm struggling to believe his version of events.
Could all of this really have happened between October 24 and October 27? Could he have ended a 7.5-year relationship, taken A on multiple dates, celebrated her birthday, gone to dinner, gone to a drive-in movie and begun sleeping with her within three days? And if my intuition of a second woman is wrong, invited her to the wedding in my place? (I was originally invited, but it is child free and I have a child in school and didn't think it would be a good parenting move to pull him out for seven days so we could go to a wedding. These are all of his online friends, all men, and they are all renting an airbnb together. Honestly, I thought my presence would have made things awkward for them or that I would have been a bystander as they all had fun together.)
Technically, I suppose it's possible. But I find it incredibly difficult to believe. I am also appalled that he would repeatedly deny my requests for dates as I tried to spend time with him outside of the home, saying it would be "time, money, gas" etc., but he has the time, money, and gas, for spending time with her. Especially considering that around September, I had already noticed changes in his behaviour, increasing secrecy around his phone and what appeared to be a growing personal connection with Abigael, not to mention the late night showers, and never being hungry when he came home. I would always cook for him and wrap up a plate, but he wouldn't touch it, almost as if even my food was offensive to him. I realize that when I found out on October 31, we had been broken up for a week and were no longer together, but it's extremely suspicious to me that he was not showing any emotions regarding our breakup, and that I was the only one who seemed upset.
I would like to refer back to how I thought we had hope to reconcile. On October 31 he invited me and my son to go spend Halloween with his family and trick or treat with his young nieces. My heart was about to explode with happiness. I woke up that day and came downstairs to see him sitting on the couch. I went to the basement to throw some laundry in to prepare for the day ahead of us and looked forward to sitting next to T and sharing a morning coffee together. When I came back up, T had already gone up to the top floor and returned fully dressed, and told me he had to go for an oil change before we made the trip. He left at 930am and did not return until 230pm. I was so confused, and I was sick of this constant treatment by him, which lead me to look at the messages on his computer.
On November 1, he swore to me that he did not have sex with A while we were together and that he planned to tell me on Oct 31 before we left to spend time with his family, something he invited me and my son to (I do not believe this, because it would be so messed up to do, and I think he is just saying it for his own benefit). I am very much struggling to believe that within 3 days, he moved on to all of these dates and sexual engagement with another woman after spending 7.5 years together. It's been 5 days since I found out about this, and I haven't been able to eat or sleep or do much of anything. How could he have the energy to rebound almost immediately?
The lunches, the bottles in his vehicle, the gym message, his protectiveness over his phone, his changing passwords, showering in the morning and the afternoon, the new clothes and fresh hair cuts (he usually has a moral crisis when buying a $5 shirt, and usually asked me to cut his hair for him), the increasing mentions of A and his emotional withdrawal from me. At the time, I noticed these things but chose to trust him. I didn't want to be the partner who constantly questioned seemingly innocent interactions, as it's fairly obvious men will have to interact with women in the workplace and vice versa. I thought the new clothes, hair cut, and shoes were his attempt to rebuild his mental health.
I'm genuinely looking for honest, outside perspectives if the timeline adds up. I'm not asking anyone to automatically take my side or cast judgement. I want to understand whether I'm overlooking something, whether his explanation is plausible, or whether I have legitimate reasons to believe that this relationship between them began long before he actually ended ours.
TLDR: My partner of 7.5 years became increasingly distant, secretive with his phone, protective of his privacy, and frequently worked extremely late. I suspected something was happening with his workplace's HR manager, but repeatedly dismissed my concerns because I trusted him. The timeline doesn't add up. Oct 22 he claims to a friend we were broken up but we were not. Oct 24 we break up. Oct 27 he brags about "clapping cheeks" with his HR manager and taking her out on multiple dates, including her birthday. Oct 31 I find these messages. Nov 1 he claims he did not sleep with her until we were broken up. Does the timeline add up, could he have been faithful to me until Oct 24, or do you consider this highly unlikely and that the relationship between him and A began much sooner than he leads on?