When I met “Ryan,” I knew he had a girlfriend because I met them both at the same time. From the moment I met Ryan, I could tell he was attracted to me, and though I was attracted to him, I put up a lot of barriers to make sure we never got closer than friends. He and I ended up developing a close friendship. We did art together, played music, and talked about just everything under the sun. I always invited his girlfriend to come along, but sometimes it was just the two of us. In an effort to create more barriers, I told Ryan a lot about my past heartbreak over men who were in relationships but actively pursued me without ever leaving their partners, and how I wasn’t interested in repeating the same mistakes again.
To make a long story short, after a few months, Ryan ended up telling me he loved me and that he wanted to leave “Ashley.” I told him I loved him too, but that I wanted a type of love he couldn’t give me because he was in a relationship and I wanted to tumble, with no restrictions, madly in love. Ryan said that he wanted the same thing as me and told me that I was the woman he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. I trusted that, considering everything I had told him about my past, that he had listened to me when I told him exactly what I wanted.
We started sending love letters to each other. We spent time together reading books out loud and going for aimless walks. We started being physically intimate. Ryan told me he didn’t want Ashley to know that he and I were in love because he wanted their breakup to just be about the problems that they had together and not to drag me into it. Ryan then got “confused” about what to do and repeatedly asked me to hold on to what we had, even though he hadn’t broken up with Ashley. This went on for six months. He continued to send me love letters. Ryan then decided, to my surprise, to stay with Ashley and cut things off with me. And he hasn’t told Ashley about any of this and says he plans to “wait until things get better” between them. I’ve cut Ryan completely out of my life because he knowingly brought me into a situation I explicitly told him I didn’t want. He has lied to me, his girlfriend, and himself.
None of our friends know about what happened, and I feel like Ashley should know so that she’s not stuck in a relationship with a man who intentionally lied to her for almost a year (and continues to). Should I tell someone so they can tell her? I know hearing it from me would not be the best idea. I have no intentions of pursuing anything with Ryan in the future, so this is not an attempt to get her to break up with him so I can swoop in. I’m just wondering if this is a situation where I can perhaps share some information so Ashley can make her own decisions about what to do.