AITAH for breaking up a one year relationship when I found out my then girlfriend at the time when I found out she had a past and realized her family was horrible

For some context, at that time I, 17(M) was in my Junior year of High school and my ex was 21(F) who graduated from the same high school I was attending( around 2019). This is around 2021 when this was taking place.

I was and still am active in sports such as soccer/football. I still play in Sunday leagues just for fun and to stay active with friends of mine since high school. I met my then gf who we'll call Rose for this story at one of my soccer games. She was my friend's gf's sister who decided to randomly show up to a game and was with us on the bench while the match was going on. I started to slowly move closer to her and start talking to her because I thought she was cute and was wondering why she was on the bench. Me and her started talking whenever I wasn't playing( I wasn't very good at that time so I sat on the bench for a while and would randomly go in when a player needed a sub so me and her were talking about random things for a while). The game is over and I'm about to head to the bus, because I wanted to see how she felt about me. I went in for a hug and she gladly accepted smiling. I think that's the end of that because my stupid self forgot to ask for her number or any form of contact so I went into the bus and just sat down and regretted not asking. Then, my friend sat next to me and said that she wanted my Snapchat. I was so happy then and all of my friends were making fun of me for flirting and not playing. 

A few days went by and we've been talking ever since, finally I asked what high school she went to and she said mine. I was confused since I've never seen her on campus before so I assumed she was just in a different grade. She then told me she was 21, and at the time I was like WHATT. But me being the horney young teenager I was, I thought it was a flex. We got together shortly after that and I met her family and she met mine. My parents were obviously skeptical because of the age difference and I reassured them that she was a very kind, sweet and cute young lady. I invited her over for dinner and my parents started taking a liking to her so I thought everything was going great. She's funny, I would always drive over to her house and we would hangout and watch anime, go see 

A few more months pass by and I look at my phone to dozens of missed calls and messages telling me to check Instagram, so I called Rose back and she tells me that my friend died( the friend who was the bf of Rose's sister from that soccer game). I thought it wasn't real because we were just telling each other that we would train more after we practiced, and who just expects one of their close friends to suddenly just vanish. I later found out that it was true, and the team and all of our friends didn't take it very well. The school even set us up with a school counselor to talk about what happened, and we set up a memorial of his memory with a cross next to the pole he crashed into. I still visit that memorial every year to pay my respects. After that unfortunate incident, I started re-evaluating everything and Rose was very supportive throughout the whole thing. I mention this because this is when I started opening my eyes to me and Rose's relationship after I had to deal with how her family was taking things after my friends death.

Up till now I thought that me and Rose would be together forever, just like young people in a relationship who love each other would naturally gravitate towards. Here is when I start realizing some things about her. 

She was in college but dropped out for reasons that were unclear, she never told me her major or anything of the sort. She had a job at our local Dollar General as a shop employee stocking shelves and being behind the cash register which I would have to drop her off of sometimes. She never had a driver's license nor did she ever want to get one because she gets driven to places all the time and would have her grandmother or me take her wherever she wanted to go. She would always be at home or hangout with her friend and go to clubs or bars, I wouldn't really ask her what she would do at these places, just if she had a good time and thought nothing of it. Since she graduated from the same school as me she did know a few teachers and counselors. One of them was a librarian that she would always talk with and hangout with in the library at lunch or after school, so the librarian knew her pretty well. Because of that I thought it would be a good idea to bring her after school so that she and the librarian could catch up and see how each other were doing. I can't remember exactly what the librarian said when I brought Rose but it was something along the lines of "Oh so that's who you're with now", talking to Rose. Which I thought nothing of at the time. After Rose left me, the librarian started talking about Rose's past and how she would be with a different guy almost every week since she was a freshman up until she graduated. I thought that it was odd since she never told me that she had so many previous relationships. She also told me that they weren't really relationships, more like she would use the guy for sex for a week and move on to another the next. Which hard to take in, but made since because we would fuck a lot after my 18th birthday, and she told me she has a high sex drive. I asked other people who are or were close to her at that time and they confirmed, which made me rethink our relationship up to that point. I thought about what I should do for a few weeks and started acting a little cold and would notice little things she did that I didn't appreciate. 

Her family was one of the biggest things I started to dislike about her. Her father and her grandmother/his mother didn't get along very well and would never talk to each other. Her father and mother separated. Her mother was a recovering drug addict who would take drugs from her biker boyfriend who would supply her even though the rest of her family didn't approve. Her father was going blind from all the alcohol and presumably drugs he did. Her brother who was living with her and her grandmother was abusive towards her and I've seen it first hand that when he gets angry he takes it out on her. Her older sister had a very nice smart and sweet kid, but lived with her mom and was jumping from bf to bf. Her younger sister who was with my friend who died moved on not even a month later with a different guy and tried to go after me as well, which really upset me. In my head, I didn't want a family with her if this was the dynamic of her whole side of the family. I didn't have a great family on either side of my parents, so I didn't want to deal with any more drama.

Rose of course had her own issues as well, she would regress to a 5-6 year old sometimes and I would be her caretaker which was a trip in itself and would blame everything but herself when something goes wrong. I just couldn't deal with it anymore. After my few weeks of mauling over what I should do, I called her and told her we should break up. I mentioned her family and the fact she didn't have a future that she wanted to pursue and had no plan to change anything about her life and how she isn't the one for me. Of course this was met with denial and tears. I cried as well because I was going to miss her.

One of the parts I wasn't proud of was trying to get my stuff back and then me and her saying we'd be friends with benefits, slept together one more time and we both realized it wasn't going to work out

TL;DR: Broke up with my gf because of her family and her own problems that I couldn't see a future with.

Posted Aug 3, 2026, 10:43 AM UTC · locked

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