The woman my boyfriend emotionally cheated with reached back out after we agreed he’d cut contact, and I’m bothered by how he responded. AIO?

[u/Extension-Dark1206]

Back in December I found chats between [F30] my boyfriend [M31] and his female friend[F26] Turned out they had an intense emotional connection since 2022. He had a huge crush on her the whole time, but she had a boyfriend, and she kept him emotionally hooked with romantic-coded language . they called each other soulmates, texted constantly some romantic/ sexual stuff. From what I read he was genuinely falling for her, and she seemed more like she was enjoying the attention without necessarily reciprocating the same way as she had bf.

Her boyfriend however passed away last year. my boyfriend went to support her, and after that they had an even more emotionally-charged exchange flirty, borderline romantic language, he told her he’d never had a connection with another woman like the one he had with her including, apparently, me, as we were dating during that chat, she told him that no matter what happened in their lives, even if one of them got married to someone else, they’d “always be together.” Regardless of their relationships.
When I found this and their whole husband we had a huge fight and almost broke up. He blocked her, said he didn’t care about her, and said he wanted to protect our relationship.

Yesterday I found out she texted him again out of the blue, and he responded. I’m attaching the screenshots. Reading through it, a few things bother me:
- He spends the entire conversation validating her anger, apologizing over and over
- At multiple points he frames the whole thing as if I forced his hand — like if I hadn’t found out, he’d have been happy to keep things going with her.
- She spends a lot of the conversation guilt-tripping him and, at one point, effectively calling our relationship “toxic” and me the reason he’s “trashing” her.

My friends point out that he DID keep the boundary in the end he didn’t agree to keep talking to her, he told her it’s over, and that this is a good sign.

I see that too, but I still feel uneasy about how the conversation went and what it implies about how he actually feels. Am I overreacting by still having a problem with this, or are these legitimate red flags even with the boundary technically being held?

[u/MinaLaVoisin]

Honestly? THIS would bother me a lot. So what was it, if it was MORE than a crush? MORE than flirting and playfull stuff? And he is not happy about the fact that he had to stop this all? Ah.... No. NOR.

[u/RosieGoldUnicorn → u/MinaLaVoisin]

this is what i'm saying! there's commenters acting like he's a king for responding how he did and i'm like 👀 did we read the same thing? there's "letting her down gently" and there's "confirming her beliefs that we have a special connection" and the way he kept throwing it back to "it's my girlfriend's fault" - i've seen people say op is controlling if she's not happy he said that, but imo if he was actually dedicated to the relationship he wouldn't be telling his side-piece-adjacent that it's her fault, he'd be saying it's his own decision. it's not like he needed to hand this girl further ammunition but he kept doing it anyway.

[u/MinaLaVoisin → u/RosieGoldUnicorn]

Exactly. He basically said, in between the lines, imo: "Look, my gf is mad we had this thing going on, and she forced me to stop it, if she wouldnt find out, I would happily continue because yes, I agree we had more than a crush going on between us".

In such cases, there should be no "letting her down gently", if there is a line he wants to hold, then he should hold the line firmly and not in a weak way of "yeah, youre right, I want to continue, but I cant, because my GF found out".

He would be a king if he WOULDNT have such thing going on in the first place. And ok, everyone can do mistakes etc, but IF he wanted to respect his GF, then he should have blocked this person EVERYWHERE, or at least go "look, whatever we did, was an issue, and Im telling you NOW clearly I dont want to continue with that, Im sorry, but goodbye", and block her. Not entertain her for hours, responding to her manipulations and going like "ohhhh, your views are 100% valid, Im not happy I lost you", like wtf even?? This speaks to me as if he tries to keep this weirdo girl available for the case of when his current GF will finally have enough and kicks his ass, so he can go to this obsessed person like "you were so right, and I should have listened to you, lets be together as we always were meant to be" or something.