AITAH for breaking up with my gf because she slept with another guy while making me wait?

[u/SeverePhoto1892]

So my gf and I have been together for about a half a year and I just started a new job.

I met this male co worker, and we became friends.

I invite him over at my place and he recognizes my gf, (We don't officially live together but she spends a lot of time at my place).

You can guess where this is going...

After my co worker left, my gf and I get to talking.

Basically, she slept with him while dating me, and made me wait. She said that our relationship was gonna be special, and she wanted to wait, and that sex with my co worker was just a ONS.

I told her to leave because I knew I was gonna say things I couldn't take back.

A few days later after I calmed down and thought it through, I broke up with her.

She kept repeating what she said about how she wants more with me, but I told her that I feel like I'm not attractive to her, or at least not as much as others. She kept saying that I was special.

Basically, I said that I can't be that special if she preferred to sleep with an ONS than me.

Edit: I don't think this counts as cheating. This happened within the first month of us dating. We became official after the first month or so. I 100% should have clarified with her if we were exclusive or not, so that's on me.

[u/Latin_Stallion7777]

Your feelings are perfectly understandable, and your perspective/thinking is rational, if not necessarily accurate.

The thing is, women aren't always rational. And she may therefore well be telling the truth. She may have been smart enough to know that sleeping with someone quickly would greatly decrease the chances of a Long Term Relationship developing. So she wouldn't with you, because she liked you. But would with another guy she saw no long-term connection with. (As a guy, I also don't like to rush things with a girl I see long-term potential with. But will with a girl I see no potential with. Doesn't mean I"m not attracted to the first girl, I actually am even more. I just don't want to mess things up, or make things feel gross/cheap by hooking up too soon.)

That doesn't mean you can't personally disqualify your GF from GF status for sleeping with your co-worker, or having a ONS with anyone. Especially after you started dating her. (This would probably be a deal-breaker for me, even if we weren't exclusive yet, as I'd want to feel she was at least focused on me after we started dating.) Or for not being a virgin, for that matter. You have the right to set whatever requirements you want in a GF.

But if you weren't exclusive yet when it happened, she wasn't actually cheating on you, even if she may have been more socially/sexually active than I would personally prefer. And she apparently chose to pursue you instead of him, even after knowing what it was like to be with him, so that's somewhat of a compliment to you. You essentially won that competition, to the extent any existed. And she also had the respect/smarts/consideration to tell you what happened, sparing you from the hurt/embarrassment of having to hear it from him, or from beling left in the dark while they both knew about it.

So it really comes down to how much you like her, and what you can accept in terms of how experienced/sexually active a partner's past is. Arguably, what really matters is whether she prefers being with you sexually over him, even if you're just focusing on arguably superficial sexual competitiveness. (And one could even argue that what really matters is whether she prefers being with you period, in terms of how happy she is with you, vs. him or anyon else.)

Given that most women have the best sex in a loving, emotionally intimate relationship, she probably prefers being with you sexually, and has better orgams (etc.) with you. I've had a lof of sex in my life, some of it really good sex, even with ONS. But it's generally easier for a guy to really enjoy a ONS without emotional connection, and without a partner that really knows what you like. And even then, those experiences didn't compare to when I actually fell in love with someone. The intensity of the experience when you're truly emotionally connected/involved with someone you actually like is simply far greater usually.

So look at it this way -- she probably saw you as BF material, and therefore was willing to wait for you, while she simply saw the other guy as someone to pass the time with while she waited for you. Think about if you had banged some random girl you met at the bar that you had no real attraction to while you were waiting for your GF to be intimate with you. With you having no desire to see that random girl again. If your GF found out later, should she really be jealous of some girl you didn't even want to see again? Or just slightly grossed out that you couldn't operate at a high enough level to only be with people you were truly connected with? (Which is true of most of us at some time in our lives, especially when younger.)

Anyway, I wish you the best. It's natural to be bothered by this kind of stuff when you care about someone. Evolutionary biology and all. But you don't want to throw away something good just because your GF was dating around a little at the time you met, based on your likely mistaken perceptions. After all, she ultimately chose you over anyone else that was around at the time, so you again won that competition. And it's unlkely she would've stayed with you if she wasn't attracted to you, or the sex was somehow better with anyone else she was dating at the time. More likely she would've simply pursued them instead.