Fiance (partner of 11 years) had one night stand whilst on overseas vacation with me

Hi all,

I am a 33 y.o. male, my fiance is a 33 y.o. female. Almost a week ago my partner admitted to having a drunken one night stand with a random person we both met whilst out on a night of heavy drinking. Even typing this seems like a fantasy.

Some context - we have been together for 11 years and have been engaged for the last 2 years. My partner has been severely depressed for the last 5 years, unsatisfied with her career path and a lot of her surrounding life decisions. I have tried to support her through all of this as best as I possibly could, but over the last 2 years I have become fatigued with trying to support her. During this period she has heavily relied on alcohol to escape her problems. I think we were definitely in a bit of a rut with our relationship during this time. We sought out couples counselling who encouraged us to chase our 'dream life' together to reignite our zest for life and our relationship.

My partner always had dreams of moving overseas for a period, so after some convincing, I decided to support her in this and take a year off from my career to do a working holiday with her overseas. I knew financially this was a bad idea, but she has backed my career in the past and moved to other parts of my home country to support my work endevours, so I went along with it willingly to support her.

To cut it short, four months into this venture her depression only deepened. We went out for dinner one night and met up with some locals and ended up getting extremely drunk with them. I don't remember much of the night, honestly, but I do remember witnessing my partner kissing one of these random men - I just thought it was a joke cause i kissed him on the lips right before hand as a joke. She revealed to me the next day that she kissed him repeatedly that night, and he may have touched her downstairs but she can't remember. I was hurt, but I tried not to make too much of it given how stupid we were both acting that night.

Fast forward two weeks, and she reveals that after dropping me off home that night, she went back to the restaurant to collect my phone from this guy and proceeded to have unprotected sex with him. He also went down on her. I'm just so stunned at this. We have what I would consider to be a very happy and healthy relationship, we are each others bedrock who have supported each other through good times and bad, generally with a smile on our faces. She tells me it has nothing to do with her love for me, or wanting to end our relationship. She said she is just so depressed that she wanted to escape herself for a moment, relive past time of being young, single and carefree. She is so regretful and distraught and wants to do anything to show that she can rebuild us. Rationally I understand this, and I believe her when she says she still loves me. But I just can't fathom how someone can love you so much and so selfishly give this away so easily.

Needless to say, I caught an early flight home, and am now jobless as I took 12 months extended leave off work, have no car as her car was our sole vehicle, and am sleeping on a blow up mattress at my mum's house. I feel worthless and betrayed. I sacrificed so much to support her in this overseas move. And the worst part is I don't feel like I can open up to my family about what actually happened as I may want to salvage the relationship. I have a harsh family that will never forgive her if they find out.

I don't know if i want advice, or guidance, I think i just want to be heard as I feel I can't express what truly happened to many people in my life right now. I want to organise therapy ASAP to work through this. I am just not ready to give up our old life, and I feel like i'm grieving so hard for our future also.

Thanks for listening.

35 comments posted: Saturday, October 29th, 2022