So, just to preface this, I know I’m the asshole for cheating, I have no doubt about that, but that’s not what I’m asking about here in this post so please refrain from making your judgement based on this. 

(Also, please bear with me, this is going to be long, I’m very long-winded, sorry everybody.) 

For some background, I am now 27 and my ex is 30. We dated semi-casually/semi-seriously when I was 16 and he was 19 for about a year. 

I describe it this way because we were teenagers, only communicated through texts (infrequently), saw each other maybe once a month (he joined the military shortly after we started talking), and did not have very much in common other than mutual attraction. However, we were “official” and did exchange ‘I love yous’ and talk jokingly but hopefully about having a future together. 

He found out I was planning to cheat on him after he went through my phone and saw that I was also talking to other guys (I never was physically with anyone but I might have been had he not called me out on it and it’s still cheating regardless). When he confronted me, I lied about it, and we broke up right then and there but still continued to date on and off for about another year before we officially called it quits. 

I’m not excusing my behavior but I came from a really messed up background — I was in and out of foster care and was severely abused both at home and in the system. Because of this, I was also pretty messed up. I lied about little and big things, stole food and clothing, cheated on people and in school, manipulated others for my own gain, abused drugs and alcohol, was very promiscuous, and all around did not give a fuck about anyone other than myself and my 3 sisters. I was desperate to be loved but not trusting enough to ever give anyone the opportunity, so in order to protect myself and keep my options open because since that’s all I ever learned how to do, I was rarely faithful in my relationships. I was also a bitch about a lot of things but was still pretty submissive and doting in other ways, so I’m sure it was a confusing whirlwind for anyone I was involved with. All in all, I wasn’t the best person, let alone friend or girlfriend. 

I feel incredibly guilty about who I was back then and what I did to others. I have worked very hard in my adult life to never be that person again through lots of intensive therapy, medication, getting an education, and choosing to be better and do good each day. I can never take back the hurt I caused others but I have centered my life around making up for my transgressions through other means. I own and operate a non-profit that houses and fully sponsors homeless teens and young adults who have aged out of the system to receive counseling and work towards their future goals, whether that be college or entering the work force. This information is probably meaningless for the purpose of this but I feel as if it’s important to know that my behavior was circumstantial and it is not who I am.  

My ex and I still talk, we grew up together so he knows my situation, and I have apologized profusely to him over the years. He calls me up crying about once or twice every single year to tell me how I’ve ruined his ability to trust and love others and how hurt he still is. Sometimes he hits me up and is very flirtatious and tries to spark things up again (I always turn these advances down). Other times, if I’m dating someone and he knows who they are, he will antagonize them, insult them, and has, on occasion, gotten physical with them. I never severed ties with him because I always felt like he was justified in his treatment towards me and his resulting behavior because of how I wronged him, because I thought he was amazing and I felt like I was beneath him, and I felt so guilty for messing up such a good thing with a good guy that part of me hoped we’d get back together. 

Recently, about a few weeks ago, we were catching up and he started bragging to me about all these things he’s doing (he is very accomplished, has his PhD and has won a lot of awards, and is such an upstanding, good person, he adopted his cousin’s twin boys because the cousin is strung out on heroin, so he kind of deserves to brag and be complimented for all he’s done) but I thought it was strange because we hadn’t spoken in length for years. Then he started bragging about how he hadn’t dated anyone since we had been together, something he does often, even though this is a lie as I know at least three people he has seen and two he has been “official” with. He again blamed me for his unwillingness and inability to get involved with others and started saying straight up bullshit about the times we were together (saying we dated at a different time than we did by several years, saying we were never official and only talked for one month, etc). Then he started coming on to me, demanded I start sending him nudes regularly, and that we be fuck buddies. 

At this point, I just lost it. I started yelling about how he can’t change the facts of things just because he doesn’t like how they turned out, how rude it is of him to always try to use me for sex (something he has admitted to in the past), that it’s not fair he pops back into my life to punish me every few months and that I was done with it, that I had always felt sorry about how I treated him before now but that I wasn’t sorry anymore because he’s acting creepy and pathetic, that it had been over 10 years since all this happened and he should have been over it by now and that not dating anyone in your twenties doesn’t make you some saint like he’s always painting himself out to be, I told him he needs to stop blaming me for his intimacy issues and stop using me to make himself feel good, that he is being ridiculous and that even though he thinks I’m the horrible person it’s really him, and that he needed professional help. I did say I wish I had never hurt him or anyone else but that I was a teenager, raising myself and living in constant fear, and that no one should be judged based off of who they were as teenagers and that he of all people should know that (he also did some very messed up things as a teenager which I won’t elaborate on as it’s not pertinent to this). 

He got really pissed off and started cussing me out and saying that I was a good for nothing whore and that I would never be anything more, that everyone knew what a slut I was and that that no one actually liked me, that I can’t call him out on acting like a shitty person because I am the actual truly shitty person, that I don’t deserve to be happy or loved, that I was an idiot, that he wasn’t immature but that I was for raising my voice and always using slang words (I work with teenagers, it rubs off, what can I say), that I would never be as accomplished him and would never amount to anything, and that he was the best thing that has ever and will ever happen to me. 

I rolled my eyes and laughed at him and get kind of snarky and told him I don’t owe him anything, that it was gracious of me to apologize as much as I had but that I didn’t have to but did because I wanted him to know it was me and not him, and that even if I did owe him something it most certainly wouldn’t be my body and that he’s raising his cousin’s boys badly if he believes that. 

He said that since I just put out for everyone and since he’s already seen it all then I shouldn’t be such a bitch about us hooking up or sending him nudes and that it’s offensive to him that I’m shutting him down. 

I hold him that the only reason he was mad was because I was supposedly a whore but that I wouldn’t be a whore for him. 

He stormed off after this and then blocked me on all social media a few minutes later. We haven’t talked or seen each other since. 

I don’t really feel bad about cheating on him anymore or about how he’s dealt with that (I still know it was wrong). My opinion of him has completely flipped from placing him on a pedestal to thinking lower of him and believing he’s just an egotistical jerk who’s got everyone else fooled (we’re from a small town and he’s very popular here, everyone loves him and thinks he is literally the world’s greatest person, and everyone he meets outside of our town think the same thing). 

A couple days after we fought, I started to feel like I am actually in the wrong for being mad at him, fussing at him, and for having stopped feeling bad, and for starting to feel kind of repulsed by him. I know that everything impacts each person differently and I don’t want to invalidate his feelings or belittle them and I know that everyone moves on or doesn’t at their own pace and own prerogative and it’s not my position to say how or when someone does or doesn’t do this. I know that even though I might have seen our relationship as silly and was not really invested in it or him, he may have been very committed and in love and I could have crushed him, so just because I feel one way doesn’t mean he will feel the same way, and I can’t project that into him. 

But truth be told, and to be quite blunt about it, I truly just feel like he’s being a little bitch about it and that he has now wronged me so we’re even somehow. 

I don’t really know how to feel about how I’m feeling and keep switching between feeling like I crossed the line and will never be in the right when it comes to him because of our history OR feeling relieved, vindicated, and very appalled at and vexed by him. 

I’m just here looking for some unbiased clarification as of course my friends support my side of it just as I’m sure his friends support his. 

So reddit, AITA? 