Dating can get very hard when you are middle-aged because everyone has so much baggage.

What would you do if the woman you were dating admitted that she cheated on two of her past boyfriends, including the last man she dated?

That is the situation that the man in this story is in, and since his previous marriage ended due to his wife cheating, he is thinking about breaking up now to avoid future problems.

WIBTA if I leave my girlfriend for cheating on her last boyfriend?

I (40m) have been dating someone (41f) for a little over 7 months now.

This would be heartbreaking.

I married my college sweetheart and was with her for 17 years, before she admitted to having a long term affair with a family friend at the end of 2022.

I didn’t handle it well at all. The only thing that kept me here was our daughter, that we share 50/50 with. So, I don’t have a lot of dating experience.

It is disgustingly common.

Between 2022-2023, I found out 5 of my closest friends were also getting cheated on, too.

Some decided to stick it out, some kicked their partners out. 3 guys got cheated on, 2 women got cheated on.

Sadly, it is more common than people think.

So infidelity was definitely in the air during the lockdown. No worries though, my ex wife’s affair started long before that.

Anyway, we separated and I jumped back into the dating scene pretty quickly and met a bunch of really fantastic women – but as with anyone my age, they came with baggage of various sizes.

This is all part of dating.

Because I was still dealing with my own baggage, I walked away from some that I wish I stuck it out with and others I ran faster than I thought possible.

After my last breakup with someone, I took a few months and reflected on a lot of things and continued on my path of self improvement and growth.

Wow, he is just surrounded by them.

During this time, I found out one of my closest friends who had been helping me deal with everything for the last 2 years admitted “don’t worry, I’m a piece of trash too. I cheated on [my current partner] a few times.”

I was floored and devastated, I had dropped so many friends in the last 2 years when I found out they cheated on their husbands or wives, I never thought the person I was confiding in the most was hiding their secret life all this time.

Some people are entirely untrustworthy.

I knew them for 16 years, and yet I was relying on a serial cheater for support. My options were walk away like I did everyone else, or bend my rules to keep them in my life.

I decided to keep them in my life.

This often happens as you get older.

I’ve been watching my moral compass and strict concepts of honour and integrity chip away and crumble as I rebuild my life, largely to my dismay and sadness.

I spent my life under a certain code of black and white right and wrong, but everything has turned gray.

This is not always a good thing.

I look away at things I never would have looked past before, I accept things from people I never would have before. But I have also learned new boundaries and stopped accepting other things.

Good and bad, I’m still working out the new me.

Great, hopefully this woman will be different.

At the start of this year, I started chatting with a woman and we bonded pretty quickly over similar interests and experiences.

Her boyfriend was cheating on her with someone in their group, and so many of the things my ex and her ex were so similar it felt like we were hearing about our own ex’s when listening to stories about the things they were doing.

People can change.

She admitted to cheating on a boyfriend in her early 20s but seemed genuinely remorseful, and because it was 20 years ago I overlooked it because we all make mistakes and no one in their 40s is the same person they were in their 20s.

She has a few kids, and all seem to really like me. My daughter loves her and her kids.

This all seems great.

We both have our own houses and are doing pretty well in life, all things considered. We go out on dates regularly and have a great time when we’re together.

Or not.

Last week, I took her on a special holiday and she got a little too drunk one night and admitted to cheating on her last boyfriend with a random guy she met at a music festival (EDC) a few years ago.

She refused to go into details about it, but she lost a few friends because of what she did. She had been with her boyfriend for about 3 years at the time, and decided she was going to have her fun in Vegas.

It really doesn’t matter.

I don’t know if she cheated on her boyfriend to get back at him for cheating on her, or if she knew he was cheating on her at that moment.

But I know they were trying to work through it and they stayed together for another year before they broke up.

He should just break up with her and be done with it.

Obviously, this has caused some strain on me and she’s noticed I’ve been different. I’ve spent the last several days thinking about the old me, and the new me, and the reality of what dating life is at my age.

Every single woman I’ve dated since separating from my wife has been cheated on, some of them quite a few times – and some of them have cheated on past relationships.

Dating is so hard these days.

Darn near all of my friends have been cheated on, and most of my friends that cheated are no longer my friends.

It’s so prevalent, it’s so common, and I’m still relatively so new to dating again that I’m just not sure if there’s any point in walking away and trying to find someone else when the likelihood is still almost 50/50 that whoever else I find has also cheated on their past partners.

There is nothing wrong with having standards.

WIBTA if I just walk away?

Is this something worth looking past (not ignoring, but keeping a conscious eye on other red flags), and acknowledging my own insecurities about getting cheated on again?

She cheated for no real reason, and it didn’t even seem to be a one-time mistake. I could never trust her.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

This is so very true.

He should never settle for a known cheater.

This is exactly right.

Yup, she has a history of doing terrible things. Don’t wait for her to do them to you.

Yup, history matters. End it.

She’s a cheater, he can never trust her.

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