I found out Ethan was cheating on me with his gaming duo. We had a massive fight. In the second month of our silent treatment, he went Instagram official with his new girlfriend. Everyone thought I would lose my mind, cry, and beg him to come back, just like I used to. Ethan thought so, too. But I didn't. This time, I chose to let go. I assumed we were over, and I packed up all my things and moved out. But after a while, Ethan actually tracked me down. "Chloe, we've been giving each other the cold shoulder for so long. Aren't you ready to make up?" I tossed my phone to the side and kept losing myself in the embrace of the man next to me. On the other end of the line, Ethan’s voice erupted into a crazed, furious roar. I never thought Ethan would cheat on me. "Chloe, was that you playing support in his last game?" My best friend, Mia, called to ask me. "No, why?" "Oh—so your boy Ethan is carrying some other girl?" "No way. He told me he was playing with his boys." I glanced back at the closed door of the study. Ethan was inside, supposedly in a Discord call with his friends. "No, that support was playing enchanters. Classic girl gamer. Go check his match history." After hanging up, I opened his game profile. Five pages in a row. It was always the same support player, "BabyMimi," laning with him in the bot lane. I clicked on her profile. It was definitely a girl's account, and her bio was filled with cute selfies. Ethan had played with other girls before. But playing with someone so consistently? This was a first. I hadn't checked his history in a while. He wasn't even trying to hide it. He didn't even bother using an alt account. I kept my cool and didn't bring it up immediately. When he finally finished playing and walked out of the study, I was still sitting by the coffee table, pretending to watch a trending Netflix show. "I’m gonna take a shower, babe," he said, walking straight into the bathroom. He left his phone on the couch. As soon as I heard the shower start, I picked it up. On Snapchat, I was pinned at the top. The chat history was completely clean. No red flags at all. Refusing to give up, I logged into his Riot Mobile app and clicked on his chat logs with that girl gamer. And there it was. Based on their game chats, they had moved to Snapchat, but Ethan had been deleting his chat history on his phone. What shocked me was that they weren't just gaming buddies. Ethan was in an online relationship with her. During our five years of dating, because Ethan was good at games, girls were always hovering around him. He wasn't exactly a saint either. Early on, he loved the attention and never rejected anyone. Every time I found out, I would act like the crazy, insecure girlfriend. I’d throw a tantrum, cry, and force him to block them. But at least he had never officially committed to anyone else.
I hooked his phone up to my laptop and ran a data recovery tool to pull up his deleted Snapchat logs. To stop him from messing around in games, I had learned how to do this a long time ago. Inside the bathroom, Ethan started singing. He was in a great mood. Just as the progress bar hit 100%, the shower stopped. I quickly opened the recovered file. The contents confirmed my worst fears. Since the 18th of last month, he had been texting her "good morning" and "good night" every single day without fail. "Good morning, beautiful. The weather is amazing today. I love you." On his way to work, he would snap pictures of the morning sun for her. "The chicken today is a bit dry, but the pumpkin is really sweet. Just like you." He took pictures of his lunch and sent them to her like a daily check-in. "Look, the sunset tonight is beautiful." He didn't even forget to snap the sunset when he reached our apartment gate. "The grapes I bought are super fresh. You should eat more fruit too." Those were the grapes *I* bought, and he had sneaked a picture when I wasn't looking. "Look at the dinner I made. Looks good, right?" That was the dinner *I* cooked. For the past month, in the little gaps of our daily life, he had been sharing everything with BabyMimi. And the irony was, I hadn't even received most of these photos. His romantic gestures were exclusively reserved for her. And every time he sent something, her replies were incredibly enthusiastic: "Omg, so pretty!" "I love you too, babe~" "You're so amazing, I wish I could taste it!" This kind of positive feedback clearly stroked his ego. Thinking back to the beginning of our relationship, we used to be just as sweet. We had endless things to talk about. But after dating for so long, transitioning from college to the real world, the stress of life and work got in the way. We talked less. Lately, he had been spending more time on games, but he always claimed he was playing with his boys. I hadn't doubted him because I thought it was normal to occasionally play with girls. I just didn't expect him to cross the line.
"You're looking through my phone again!" Ethan walked out of the bathroom, saw me with his phone, and spoke in a flat voice. He was incredibly calm. He probably felt confident I wouldn't find anything. "Ethan, I leave you alone for a second, and you start an e-relationship?" I threw the phone onto the coffee table in his direction. The screen was still lit up, displaying his recovered chats with Mimi in agonizing detail. Ethan visibly panicked. He rushed over and grabbed the phone. "Chloe, let me explain..." Realizing he was caught red-handed, he put the phone down and tried to grab my arm. "What is there to explain? You always complain that I'm bad at the game and refuse to play with me. You told me you were playing with Jake, but it turns out Jake’s name is Mimi?" I held my warm mug of milk, taking slow sips. "We just play games together. She’s just an online friend." He said this so righteously. As if being "online" made all those sweet, intimate words in the chat history completely meaningless. "But you never sent me any of those photos you sent her." "Those were just random snaps. They didn't mean anything." "If they didn't mean anything, why share them with your online friend instead of me? You're bored of me, aren't you, Ethan?" "I'm not bored of you. I want to build a life with you." He reached out to hold my hand, but I pulled away. "People who want to build a life together don't act like this." Right in front of me, he opened Snapchat, deleted Mimi, then dragged me to his PC, opened the game, and unfriended her there too. "See? I told you she's just a random online friend. Texting is just a game. It means nothing. I can delete her just like that, Chloe." He tried to use this to brush off the fact that he had cheated. It was as if the more casual he acted, the more petty and unreasonable I looked.
I didn't argue with him anymore. To Ethan, the moment he deleted her, the matter was resolved. But in my heart, I had no intention of forgiving him. We had been graduated for two years, and including our college years, we had been together for five years. In all this time, he had never once brought up marriage. Even after we moved in together after graduation, he never expressed any desire to visit my parents. I had been waiting for him, taking care of his daily life. I tried so hard to be the perfect girlfriend, hoping to show him the love of a future wife. But I didn't expect that even after all this time, he would still be so immature. In his mind, it seemed like we could just date forever. Whenever our friends joked about us getting married, he would just laugh it off. Every time I felt bitter and hurt, I would comfort myself by imagining the moment he would finally propose. I thought, we’ve been together for five years. If we don't end up married, what was the point of all this love? But this incident proved that he had no intention of marrying me anytime soon. I started giving him the silent treatment, and I moved back to Mia's apartment. During this time, Ethan texted and called me, but I ignored him. I threw myself entirely into my work. I'm a graphic designer, and I started staying late at the office, working myself to the bone. Before, I rarely worked overtime because I was always worried Ethan wouldn't have dinner when he got home. Even if I had unfinished work, I would bring it home and pull an all-nighter. Now, work consumed me, numbing the pain.
We had been in a cold war for over a month. I didn't get an apology or a proposal from Ethan. Instead, in the second month, I saw his post on Instagram. He was official with someone else. It was Mimi. I recognized her face. The announcement photo was a selfie of them standing shoulder to shoulder. They had met up in real life. Our mutual friends and college classmates all thought we had just had a fight, and that I would go back to him crying like before. But this time, I didn't. I just kept tapping on that photo. Zooming in and out, looking at every detail, trying to find a way to let go. Thirty minutes after he posted it, I left a comment: "You look great together. Wish you two the best." The moment I posted that comment, my phone blew up. My friends flooded my DMs with shock and questions. I didn't have the energy to reply to them one by one. Shortly after, I posted my own update: "I guess loving someone for a long time doesn't mean you get to stay together." That post was my belated announcement of our breakup. Honestly, I should have pronounced Ethan and this relationship dead a long time ago. I don't know why I dragged it out. It was as if I just couldn't let go of the past and kept trying to run away from reality.
When I was eight years old, I saw my mom kissing one of her coworkers, Mr. Davis, in the parking lot downstairs. That scene shattered my world. Since then, I couldn't look at my mom the same way. I only knew I had to be extra good to my dad because I felt so sorry for him. But at the same time, I didn't dare tell him the truth. I was terrified he wouldn't be able to take the blow. And selfishly, I didn't want to see them get divorced. I don't know if my dad ever found out, but they are still together to this day. Since that moment, I grew to despise betrayal in any form, whether in friendship or love. I also developed a deep fear of intimacy, especially with men. Even with Ethan, whom I had dated for so long, I would start shaking and breaking out in a cold sweat whenever we did anything beyond basic kissing. So, no matter how hard we tried, we could never take the final step. For a long time, I felt incredibly guilty about this. I always thought that his reluctance to bring up marriage was because of my issues. That was why I was willing to wait for him. I wanted to show him through my actions that I really trusted and loved him. Of course, Ethan had once promised me that he was willing to wait, and that he would never betray me. But as the years went by, he seemed to have thrown those promises out the window. He crossed my boundaries again and again, meeting different girls, playing games with them, and staying on voice calls late into the night. It felt as though he was trying to punish me, provoking me over and over. Maybe he wanted me to know that he could love anyone, but since he chose to stay with me, I should be grateful. As for his real reasons, I didn't know anymore, and I didn't care. I went back to the apartment to pack up the rest of my things. "Why aren't you throwing a fit this time?" Ethan leaned against the doorframe, watching me pack with cold eyes. "Ethan, I just suddenly realized that our five years together were incredibly boring." "Since when did you learn to play hard to get, Chloe?" I caught the smug implication in his voice.
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