"My boyfriend cheated on me while pregnant...sort of?"

My boyfriend (32M) and I (28F) met 6 months ago at a bar. At the time, I was visiting my family and checking out a couple of apartments with the intention of moving to this city in April. We stayed in contact until I moved and I even flew back to visit him once.

Once I moved here, we both decided to play the "I like you but I love being single" game for a couple months, but it was giving me anxiety and I decided to have a sit down talk to end it...and then realized I was pregnant. It was the first week of June. I told him about it and told him it I was keeping it but it was completely up to him if he wanted to be involved and to what extent.

We talked it out and decided that given the circumstances, we like enough that we should keep dating and give it a try. The weekend after he went away for a four day trip to his out-of-state hometown for a wedding. A week after he got back he officially asked me to be his girlfriend.

One month later, in the middle of July, I had a miscarriage. We were both devastated, and the extent to which he was sad surprised me given the circumstances, but weirdly enough that experience was emotionally bonding for us.

Fast forward to today...somebody from his hometown texted me that they slept together while he was in his hometown after he knew I was pregnant. In fact, he had her with him for almost the entire trip, and in bed with him all of the nights.

I'm not really sure how to feel, because it was technically when we weren't official but he knew I was pregnant and he was the one that said we should give us a try. And it felt like after we decided to give us a tried that there was an applied officialness? Then to turn around and do that the weekend after? It just feels so grimy...? And thoughts?

Tl;dr - Boyfriend cheated on me before we were technically official...but it still feels grimy? And thoughts?

What do you think? Any advice on how to handle this situation? This is what top commenters had to say:

psrandom said:

This will be bit harsh but you only got together because of the baby. Sadly, the situation is not the same. Both of you valued your singlehood before. Go back to it.

Calm_Brick_6608 said:

I think assumptions lead to disappointments and misunderstandings. And I think unless two people have mutually confirmed they are exclusive and in a committed relationship, those things should not be assumed.

You didn’t get pregnant in a committed relationship, it was in fact an accident, so you being pregnant isn’t actually any measurement of the seriousness of your relationship or his commitment. You weren’t his girlfriend. You were giving dating a try, none exclusively.

You’ve lost a baby and you’re realising the person you feel very committed to did not feel the same about you and it hurts. That’s also okay and most people in your position probably would.

That said, you’re being faced with the consequences of your failure to communicate your own feelings and needs. You should’ve talked about exclusivity when you decided to date, and whether or not you wanted to be told about all other sexual/romantic experiences he was having especially with a child on the way. Some people want to know, others don’t.

There’s no one right answer so no one is wrong to do things differently. You both bear equal responsibilities for setting the rules and boundaries of your relationship and you cannot blame your partner for not abiding by the rules/boundaries you want when you neither communicated it nor agreed upon it in the first place.

It feels crummy because you’re facing consequences you assumed you would not have to face. Welcome to adulthood, it’s been waiting for you.

And Terinth said:

Feels grimy because it is. He was never going to tell you about her, and he obviously would think of her if he was back home. He was about to have a kid with you. He was in it for the long haul and fucked up. He isn’t a stand up guy.

In the comments, OP added this update with more information:

He and I are both tremendously busy people. He moved here two years ago to start a business, and it took off way way faster than he was expecting. His phone rings constantly with work calls.

I just finished my PhD last year and got a job at a really prestigious facility in my field. I have a second freelance job that's in a tangential field that I don't plan to give up until I pay off my house in a couple years. I work a lot and I love what I do so I'm happy to work as much as I do.

The first couple of months we continously talked about how we liked eachother, but the thing that held us back was just not being sure how to structure a relationship around two immensely busy schedules. We found ways to make it work but it's been tough.

The last couple of months have been really nice. He's very supportive of me and my career, as I am of his, and he's been really kind and caring regarding the difficult emotional aspect of the miscarriage. We've connected a lot outside of that lately as well.

Finally, to clarify my actual issue. When I told him I was pregnant I told him before he gave me an answer he had to let me talk, a lot. I told him everything I felt about it. I started with the fact that I didn't like being pregnant with somebody that I'm not in a relationship with, but that it would be even worse to force a relationship that didn't feel right.

I told him that I'm successful in my career, financially and emotionally stable, and perfectly capable of doing it on my own if I had to. Obviously, it would have been more ideal to make it work, but I wasn't asking for that. I told him that he could walk away entirely (but I would ask him to sign over his rights), or that we could work out a co-parenting agreement.

I made it clear to him that I understand how big of a commitment it is, especially with only knowing eachother a few months, but that he should think about it carefully because if he chose to be involved I didn't want him to be an in-and-out parent.

He was the one that brought up that we were really good together and that we should "quit fighting it and give it a try". He said that even though the circumstances were not ideal, he liked me a lot and I was the kind of woman that he would have wanted this to happened with eventually. I was kind of floored and not expecting that.

We talked about how we should give the emotional connection a chance, because neither one of us wanted to stay just for the baby. As far as being a dad, he was all in relationship or not - he didn't want a kid in the world he didn't take responsibility for. Basically, the idea was to try the relationship and if it didn't work then we would do out best to have a healthy coparenting relationship.

It feels grimy because to me, that was the point in time where we were agreeing to be exclusive with eachother. He asked me to be official a week later and I did think it was a bit silly - I thought that was the case when we agreed to give it a try. In fact, when he asked, my response was to laugh and say "well, we did say we were giving it a try Kevin."

So...he knew that I assumed we were single a week prior, and chose not to mention the wedding weekend. Basically, he thinks that waiting til after means he was technically single, but obviously he's operating on a technicality there and that feels grimy. I know that the wedding thing is true because I confronted him immediately and he admitted to it.

What do you think?