>be me >start dating girl Tonya in 2009 >be in Army,

>I treat her like shit, constantly hold it over her head, get drunk and bring it up and call her names, treat her really bad for awhile. Dealing with Alcoholism, PTSD from Iraq, friends killing themselves, etc
>2014 I start to trust her again, not treat her bad, learn I need to let it go and move on with the relationship, but every once in awhile it gets brought up and I get angry because she keeps wanting to see her friends. In2016 I notice she's starting to act more distant. Seeing her less and less, blew me off on her birthday and mine etce
>in dec of 2016 she stops talking to me. She's going to school so lives with her parents because it's closer. She wont answer my calls or come to see me. Everyday she says "Ill be over today, Ill be over tomorrow" but she never comes to see me
>Eventually admits she wants to break up after 2 months of not seeing or talking with me on the phone. Her only reason is that she is too bitter about her friends and she just resents me for it now.
>In march 2017 Jess (oh the Irony) contacts me and told me that Tonya cheated on me with a guy at a party once in feb 2016 that she went to
>Jess tells me this because she hates Tonya now, not because I made Tonya stop seeing Jess but because Jess thought Tonya was a POS and was about to end the friendship with her anyways. Jess doesn't like me, but told me just to hurt Tonya.
>confront Tonya and she admits to it, plus she admits to sleeping with another guy 6+ times from Sept-Oct 2016
>reason she was avoiding me is because she was afraid to tell me and just wanted to let me go without hurting me

>says the reason she did it was because I had given her an ultimatum about her slut friends and was tired of arguing with me, and that made her very resentful and eventually she just didn't like being with me and wanted to be with other men that hadn't hurt her like I had and then after she did it she felt like she still wanted to be with me until after December.
>she knows what she did was wrong, I can tell she feels very bad for it.

In total we were together for 8 years. Many wonderful times, been through so much. It'd take me a whole day to write the positives of our relationship and how much we loved each other. We were planning on getting married after she was done with school.
After I found out I moved states, got a new job making lots of money, I got fat from alcohol so Im loosing weight now, stopped smoking etc. We have been talking since I found out and she doesn't know if she wants to be with me anymore, or if we can get past it and neither do I. We are keeping the option open for now and trying to talk things through. It's been almost 3 months since I found out. I'm over the initial part of the break up, Im not crying or anything anymore. I'm ok without her and realize I don't need her in my life, but I still love her deeply and miss all the good times we had. We had such a wonderful connection and I don't want to lose that. Is there any way to still make this work? She's not begging me to take her back or anything and it honestly sounds like she doesn't know and she says stuff like "I just want to make the right decision because I never want to hurt you again", but I want time and so does she so that we can both figure out if we really want each other or not. Ill probably be moving back home in November so we still have plenty of time to think and work on things.

I have already forgiven her in the sense that I'm not angry, but I just don't know if I could ever trust her again. I know sometimes in marriages or relationships this long, people can cheat and people move past it. We got together at a real young age (she was 16 I was 18) and I feel like the first few things she did was just out of childish stupidity. The cheating that happened in 2016 I feel like it happened because I was treating her really bad. I had a right to be angry after she was rubbing up on that dude naked, but I shouldn't have told her to stop seeing her friends and I shouldnt have been so bitter and angry towards her. I used it against her for so long that I think it really hurt her.
I realize that there is no excuse for her cheating, but I also realize that there was a reason she cheated and it seems consistent with everything that happened and what she was telling me even before I found out. While I don't believe it's my fault or anything, I do take responsibility for my role in it happening. I could have treated her with more forgiveness and not being so bitter about it.

I really love this girl bros, but she hurt me very bad. How can we as a couple recover from this? Is there any hope?

/OP

>>18301634
I forgot to add that a year after I got back from Iraq I came home (in 2011) and we spent a lot of time together after I got home, pretty much every day for a long time.

wew that was a read
leave her, you can't. relationships doomed