TLDR: In so many words, he decided to throw away the last 5 months of dates, birthdays, holidays, and memories to choose a drunken overnight trip with Brooke to Disney. I feel the details are important, so I encourage you to read the full story!

I (23F) broke up with my (22M) boyfriend of 5 months this week.

Some backstory: He and I met on a dating app back in September. He lived in my hometown (which I am currently not living in) so I traveled back and forth regularly on the weekends to see him. We FaceTimed daily, texted a lot and honestly we didn’t feel we were all that far apart even if it was long distance.

On our second date, after dinner, his friend texted him and asked him if he (alone) wanted to meet them at a bar in town. He took me with him so I could meet his friends, which I was excited to do. He had told me about his friends (most of them were females, which I wasn’t bothered by) so it was nice to put a name to a face. When I arrived at the bar 2/3 of the girls there were nice and welcomed me, while the 3rd girl (we’ll call her Brooke, that’s not her name) stared me down and was very unapproachable.

We sat at a table and I tried to get to know them better and let them get to know me better. Again, everyone but Brooke was very receptive of me. Brooke made little/no eye contact with me and just stared at my date. She was cold and brought up his ex at the table which everyone sort of brushed off. I felt uncomfortable around her but I wrote it off as just a bad first impression and that she isn’t always like this (which he assured me). I was in a sorority in college, I had seen women who acted like this all the time, and although it annoyed me I didn’t let it get the best of me.

The next day he invites me to go to some bars with his friends (Brooke included). I meet him there and immediately upon walking into the bar I say hello to her and his friends. She ignores me, turns to him and says “I want to go to a different bar now.” The other friend tells Brooke that she’ll go with her to the next bar so that he and I can have some time together. Shortly after, we leave the bar to go meet up with them. As we all meet up outside we walk to a club caddy corner to the bar we just left. As I try to pick up pace to walk next to him, Brooke tries to cross and cut me off (so that she can walk shoulder to shoulder with him) This made me very uncomfortable and I cut her off and resumed my place next to him. Once we all get into the club Brooke and another friend disappear, leaving him and I alone, which was fine by me. He and I decide we want to leave, so he texts them to tell them that we’re going home. Brooke begins texting him telling him how rude he is for not finding her in the club and telling her in person. I started developing a weird gut feeling towards her, but dismissed it in my head as an overreaction.

*Fast forward (this is where we get to the meat of the story). * He tells me in November that Brooke has planned a trip for the friend group to go to Epcot to drink around the world in March. I was open to the idea of it, even after he told me it would be an overnight trip. (Disney is about 2 hours from our hometown, it could in theory be done in a day). I asked what the rooming situation looked like, to which he informed me that he and Brooke were the only two planning to stay overnight and so they would have a room together, two separate beds. This felt very off to me. I expressed to him, still keeping an open and naïve mind that I didn’t love the idea of that and it would be best if they had separate rooms. A quicker and easier fix to this would have been to invite me on the trip, but since Brooke planned it, she was in charge of the guest list. We discussed it, he agreed and about a month later in conversation he told me he was getting a separate room. I still didn’t like the idea, but I figured it was a compromise and I wasn’t trying to be controlling of him or interfere in his friendships.

The last week of December, I took time off work so that I could stay in my hometown for about 10 days and spend more time with him. One day, we spent the whole day at the beach. The thing I liked most about our relationship was that we could spend hours upon hours with each other and not get bored and never once look at our phones. After a long day out, we get in the car and he has several messages from Brooke but doesn’t say anything about it.

A couple days later (New Years Eve) they get into a huge argument about him spending all day at the beach with me and not responding to her messages (this is where I found out that she was tracking him on Life360). She is upset with him because when I’m in town he spends “all his time” with me and since meeting me he’s “changed”. (Aside from being home for 10 days, I usually would come home twice a month for a weekend, so I wasn’t with him often). Basically, she threw a temper tantrum at him to guilt him into spending more time with her. This is just what I gathered from what he told me (but I assumed there was a lot more said). A week later, she makes him take her on an all day beach trip too.

This is when I really started to realize things weren’t right. I took him to go drive F1 race cars, a week later, she bought him a remote control F1 car. If he would postmate food to my house, she would make a remark that she didn’t get the same treatment (to which I later learned he was sending her money for food). For his birthday, I made an Instagram story post for him. After she saw mine she made 3 and made sure to announce how much she loves him. She had a Christmas stocking for him at her house, she would take him on shopping trips and do a lot of “date-like” things with him. She reeked of jealousy but he continued to turn a blind eye to it and dismissed me when I asked if there was/has been anything going on between them romantically/intimately. I asked a couple times throughout the duration of the relationship and he assured me they never slept together, they never dated, there were never feelings, she’s just his best friend and like a sister to him.

Then I found out he lied.

Last week, something felt off. His mood had changed when we talked, he seemed closed off and irritable. I asked him if something was wrong and he would dismiss it as it’s nothing. He was coming to see me, at my apartment that weekend for Valentine’s Day. I was excited because this was the first time he would travel to see me where I’m living, he seemed happy to come, but not thrilled.

Finally, a few days before Valentine’s Day, I got it out of him… he slept with Brooke. However, he claimed he slept with her once, back in August, a month before we met. He said that there were no feelings there, that they got drunk at a friends birthday and it just kind of happened, but they both mutually agreed it wouldn’t happen again. My heart sunk because I knew it all along. It made perfect sense to me because the way she looked at me, her friends, and him were 3 very different looks.

Suddenly it all clicked.

I was open minded and heard him out, I let him explain everything but this was our first argument. He explicitly said he wanted to work things out and didn’t want to end the relationship right there. Through this conversation he never mentioned drinking around the world in Disney. I had hoped he would think about it and he would come see me a couple days later and realize that going on the trip without me, (just going period) was inappropriate.

A couple days past and he did come visit me. The day itself was fine, we kept the peace but there was definitely tension between us. I’m the type that likes to have problems resolved quickly whereas he prefers to avoid facing them in hopes they go away. This wasn’t going away.

The next day we discussed it. We remained calm and mature about it. I told him that I am not comfortable with him going on that trip, and I’m uncomfortable with his relationship with her, especially knowing what I know now. I asked him how he would feel if his sister’s boyfriend did this to her? He said he wouldn’t like it, it would make him uncomfortable. I asked him how his guy best friend would act in this situation (he also has a girlfriend and also slept with Brooke (two weeks after sleeping with my bf)? He said his friend wouldn’t do it. In his mind, these scenarios were different. So I told him if he went on this overnight with her, him and I would be through. I told him to make a decision and he asked for some time?! So I graciously gave him 48 hours to think about it. 48 hours passed and he said he discussed it with his family (who I met multiple times, and they had expressed that they liked me for being mature and having morals and ambition. I was also the first girl he’s taken home to his family).

He called me and said “after talking to my parents, they think I’m too emotionally immature for a relationship and that I need to end things before you get hurt.” I was in shock that he admitted that his parents told him (again, 22M) what to do. Honestly, I was embarrassed for him, but I agreed with his parents.

So, do you think I overreacted and it was truly a one time thing? Was it right of me to trust my gut that something more was happening and end it right there?