I caught my girlfriend telling her ex that she still misses her

QI am in my late 30s and recently asked my girlfriend to marry me. Before Christmas last year after I asked her, I was the happiest I’ve been in a long time. By January it was all destroyed. I found out that she was talking to her ex, telling her she loved her and missed her.

I found out on the new iPad I had just bought her when I was trying to print something. She was going to try and lie about it until I called her out. She says she’s sorry and she doesn’t love her ex or want to be with her, but I can’t get over it. So soon after I asked for her hand in marriage.

We haven’t had sex since. She says it’s because we both caught a bug and then I got a bad infection. But that’s all cleared up now and when I touch her she has zero interest. I’m hitting a brick wall, my heart is bleeding and I don’t know how to handle it.

AI am really sorry to read this — I can sense your frustration and hurt when you should be planning a life together.

It really was very wrong of your girlfriend to accept your proposal when she still had feelings for her ex. You saw the evidence on the iPad, and it doesn’t matter what she says to you because she told her ex that she loved her and missed her.

Of course it is possible to still have love for somebody with whom one has had a relationship, and to miss them from one’s life to a certain extent, and I could understand and possibly forgive this if everything else in your lives was working. But it is not.

She is freezing you out physically and there must be a reason.

Even though your heart is broken you will have to have a serious talk with your girlfriend and risk getting even more hurt.

Ask her why she agreed to get married when she was still actively in touch with her previous girlfriend. If she says that all is well and it is you that she wants, then ask again why there is no sex between you.

You will have to be guided by her answers, but explain to her that your trust has now been shattered and it will take quite some time for you to trust her again.

As always you have options. You can break up, which would be awful for you, but better now than in the future if she isn’t sincere in her feelings for you. Alternatively you can suggest taking a break so that she can get her head together.

I realise this is easier said than done as you are probably living together and it is not easy to find alternative accommodation.

A partner/spouse is someone on whom we can rely, who is there for us when life gets tough, and who cares about us more than anybody else.

This is not happening for you — right now your girlfriend is the one that is making your life difficult and so she cannot be there for you to help you through it. Also the period after an engagement should be one of the happiest times of a person’s life. The joy of having found ‘the one’ combined with looking to a future together, sharing hopes and dreams without any of the hardships that are surely ahead, is a wonderful time. This is also not happening for you.

Instead you are miserable, and she is the cause of your misery. If she does want to remain in your life it seems to me that she has a lot of explaining and reassuring to do. If not, then it is better to know now so that you can get on with rebuilding your life.

The Covid-19 virus and its effects means that people are having to spend an awful lot more time together than they usually do. For people like you who are in conflict it must be particularly difficult.

After you have the conversation with her and make some decisions, then try to limit the time you think about all of this to, say, once a day.

You should even allocate a particular ’worry time’ so that when you start thinking about it you can remind yourself that you’re not going to think about it until whatever time you have decided on.

There is so much going on right now that is causing people huge anxiety that you will only be adding to it by worrying about your relationship.

So try to stay well, both mentally and physically.