I forgave my long-distance girlfriend (22F) for cheating, and now years later she treats me badly but still calls me her “dream guy” Me (25M)

My girlfriend and I have been together for about 2.4 years. We’re long-distance, about 1,500 miles apart. In the beginning, everything felt right good communication, mutual effort, and it genuinely felt like I had finally met my person.

About six months into the relationship, she told me she had “lost access” to a couple of her social media accounts and needed to make new ones. The email tied to those accounts was literally in plain sight, and she still uses that same email to this day, but she acted oblivious as if she couldn’t find it or didn’t know how to recover the accounts. Something felt wrong, so I reset the passwords through that email. What I found completely destroyed me. She had been talking to 3–4 different people behind my back sexting, exchanging nudes, and constantly flirting. After a lot of confrontation and painful conversations, I chose to forgive her. I buried my hurt because I genuinely wanted to rebuild something healthy.

A few months later, I started noticing a disturbing pattern. She became extremely paranoid about me cheating constant screenshare checks, going through my texts and even deleted photos, questioning everything I did. She slowly pushed my friends away and wanted me isolated. Looking back, it feels like she was projecting her guilt onto me. I was made to feel guilty for the smallest things while she had actually been the one betraying me.

By around the 1.8 year mark, I truly tried to let go of the past and give her a real fresh start. I stayed calm. I stayed patient. I put in most of the emotional work to rebuild trust and keep the peace. I almost never lost my temper with her. Meanwhile, she became increasingly angry over the smallest things. A misunderstood tone, a late reply, or a minor disagreement could turn into a full-blown explosion. She would say hurtful, inconsiderate things to me, even though I had already been through so much just to keep the relationship together and keep her happy.

What hurts the most is the contradiction. She treats me like I’m disposable when she’s upset, talks down to me, and shows very little affection yet in the same breath she calls me her “dream guy” and tells me she wants a future with me. I genuinely can’t understand how someone can claim to love me that deeply while treating me this poorly.

Eventually I reached a breaking point and told her clearly what I needed to stay in the relationship: basic care, affection, reassurance, and emotional warmth. That turned into days of arguing. Like always, she apologized and promised things would change “this time.” I’ve heard that many times before. The words always come, but the actions never last.

It’s now been months since that conversation, and she’s still emotionally distant. There’s barely any affection, no real emotional effort, and no consistency. The only thing that changed is that she’ll occasionally send me something from Amazon. I appreciate the gesture, but gifts don’t replace emotional intimacy.

This relationship has completely drained me. I’ve gone from being confident and secure to constantly walking on eggshells, afraid that anything I say might trigger another outburst. I’ve tried everything patient communication, reassurance, giving space, changing how I express myself, compromising more than I probably should, and even suppressing my own pain to keep the peace. No matter what I do, the cycle repeats.

The hardest part is that I still care about her. I keep holding onto the person she was at the beginning and hoping that version of her will come back. I feel trapped between not wanting to abandon someone I love and not wanting to keep abandoning myself. Being long-distance makes everything heavier when affection and communication disappear, all that’s left is emotional stress.

At this point, I don’t even feel genuinely loved anymore just emotionally attached to a memory. I’m scared to walk away from someone I invested years into, but I’m also scared that staying means accepting a future where I’m constantly dismissed, criticized, and emotionally empty.

I’m genuinely asking for outside perspective: am I being unreasonable for feeling this way? How can someone treat me like garbage over small things but still call me their “dream guy”? Is this actually fixable, or am I just prolonging something that’s already broken? At what point does patience turn into self-disrespect?

TL;DR: I forgave my long-distance girlfriend for cheating, rebuilt the relationship almost alone, and now she treats me badly while still calling me her “dream guy,” leaving me emotionally drained and unsure if I should stay.