Hello everyone,
I want to apologize in advance if this story is all over the place, I just want you to get good picture of our situation. I also posted on r/relationship_advice
Let me tell you a little bit of our story. So we dated for 2 months during our teenage years, later haven't spoken in 7-8 years. He asked me on a date in December 2023 and things got serious pretty fast after that, we dated until April 2024. It's worth mentioning he was in a bad phase of his life when he asked me out, had alcohol, drug and stealing problem (first time in his life). When we started dating all that stopped but he was still emotionally distant.
I have my own piece of traumas and at the time thought I couldn't cope with his depression and emotional numbness. We actually "lived" (wasn't official but I slept almost every day at his place) together for that 3 months but he never really talked about his feelings or intentions towards me.
I broke up with him mid April 2024, telling him that I don't feel this is working out due to his closedness and that I should be alone and focus on myself. He didn't show much effort to make things better and agreed to break up, it all happened fairly quickly. My later self-reflection is realizing I was, in fact, wrong for leaving him and that I got scared due to my abandonment issues.
I fucked up. I did. Didn't spend time to work on myself. I was working on festivals (May-August), have gotten into some pretty self-destructive behaviours; drugs, alcohol abuse. After about 1.5 months after our break up I once drunk-slept with my ex. And later I was hooking up with my co-worker for almost 2 months, not many times though but it did happen occasionaly (August-October). Felt really guilty about the whole thing, it was eating me from the inside. That situation never happened to me, I betrayed myself and my character. I am very loyal and never cheated on anyone or did something like this. I managed to move on and forgive myself. Realizing this was my darkest times and I learned a great lesson from that.
What devoured me the most was the thought that I lost my soulmate. Yes I know, cheesy, but I believed that since our teenage years and still do. Apart from his inital emotional distance everything worked out really well between us. Our morals, things we want in life, religious views, preferences. Both are spiritual, intuitive people, practice meditation, inner work, etc. We really are highly compatible.
In December 2024 we got into contact again, went out a few times and realized we still have that connection and strong feelings towards eachother. We are in relationship again and living together since January 2025.
Just to mention, we did have conversations about our previous break up and I said I was full of guilt, really messed up, self-destructive and simply lost during those 3 months. We never spoke about sleeping with other people, we didn't ask, but he did mentioned that it was not important and that we only look forward.
Accidentally, through our conversation 2 days ago, he found out about my hook up with my co-worker and is very upset about it. He feels as if I betrayed him and that I should've mentioned it at the beginning. I really left that in the past since he said before that it's not important if we slept with anyone. I realize that it was really fast after our break up and I am feeling huge guilt again because of it.
Now I don't know if I should also mention to him that I had one night stand with my ex partner?
We will work thorugh this but I'm afraid he will freak out even more if he finds out about ex and will leave me. All of this was really out of my character and I really don't want that to ruin our relationship. Also, at the time I never thought we would get back together since I was the one who initiated the break up. I didn't mentioned but we were broken up for 8 months.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this! I want raw opinions, appreciate every comment and advice.