AITA for outing my ex as gay after she told everyone that I cheated on her?

A Redditor (M) shares a situation where their ex (F) rejected their proposal, claiming she was gay, and then publicly accused him of cheating. In retaliation, the Redditor commented on a Facebook post outing her as gay, which led to a backlash from both sides. Now, they wonder if they were in the wrong for exposing the truth. Read the full story below.

‘ AITA for outing my ex as gay after she told everyone that I cheated on her?’

I know the title sounds absolutely terrible. My ex and I were together for 5 years. I decided to propose, but she rejected me. The next day, we had a talk. She realized that she was gay, since “I’ve been trying to hard to please myself from men”. We broke up.

The very next day, I get bombarded with text messages. My friends asked if this was true, and they linked me to a post. It was a Facebook (who uses Facebook) post (exposing me) about me cheating. She said that’s why we broke up. Now I usually am not evil, but this pissed me off.

She was destroying my reputation, for god knows why. I simply commented that the real reason that we broke up was because she is gay. People didn’t believe me, until my ex literally screamed at me for outing her.

Then a lot of people started to call her out for her lies. I know I’m probably a huge a**hole. Though I feel like she deserves it.. But alas, AITA?. No. I did not cheat on her. Yes. I did have s** with someone the day that we broke up. But it was after.

Let’s dive into the reactions from Reddit:

TigerTreats −  NTA, this wasn’t revenge. She was telling lies about why you two broke up, you simply corrected them. Your reputation was being destroyed; just denying it wouldn’t have been convincing so outing her was necessary.. Also, she **did** deserve it.

DuskShades −  NTA, that was key info about your break up which clears your reputation of being accused of cheating.

AirKidd −  NTA. I understand everyone saying everyone sucks but honestly what the f**k was she expecting? She could have AT LEAST ran it by you first. You two could have collaborated on a way for her to stay in the closet while also coming up with a decent, non-blaming reason why y’all split.

So while I understand the every sucks votes, I think they’re wrong. She tried to save face and ruin your reputation. All you did was defend yourself.

Binky390 −  NTA I was going to go with ESH because I think outing someone is a horrible thing to do, but I can’t. She attempted to ruin your reputation to hide her sexuality. That really isn’t fair. Should you have outed her? Absolutely not.

But she opened that can of worms. Why not just say “we broke up.” Even divorce agreements have the “irreconcilable differences” option. ~~INFO Did you actually cheat on her at some point or was the whole thing a total and complete lie?~~

bgk67 −  NTA. What the F**K did she think was going to happen after she slandered your name?!?

bgk67 −  Why did she feel the need to go ‘Full Nuclear’??? Couldn’t just have said, “it didn’t work out”??? Why would anyone spread a vicious rumor about someone, if that person could potentially expose you???. NTA

[Reddit User] −  NTA. She lied about you cheating to do only one thing… gain some pity. She could have just as easily said you mutually split and left it there, but no… she decides to smear your name for who’s benefit other than her own ego? She threw an unprovoked punch… whereas you merely told the truth.

Silentowl08 −  NTA. As a gay man I am generally against outing someone. It’s their business and you have no part in it. In your situation though she made it your business by telling a horrendous lie about you.

She could very easily have said that you two realized you both wanted/needed different things in life and parted amicably and remained friends. All of it would have been true without outing her, but instead she decided to paint a picture with you as the villain.

You had every right to defend yourself, which is what you did. The fact that it ended up outing her was on her. Her actions led to this as she started the whole thing. I’m sorry this happened but know that you didn’t do anything wrong. Leave things at just correcting the record and if you can try to move on, though I know this likely stings quite a bit.

HowDroll −  INFO – something about this story isn’t adding up. She had a reason for posting on FB that you cheated, regardless of whether that reason was justified or not; that’s a hell of a lie to make up when you split due to her sexuality.

You said in the comments that you didn’t cheat on her but did sleep with a FWB a few hours later. Were you in contact at all with the FWB between her rejecting your proposal and actually breaking up? Did she know you slept with the FWB? And if so, how did she find out?

I think there’s more to the FWB situation than you’ve shared (especially since there’s no mention of it in the original post), and even if you were 100% faithful during the relationship itself, there was some assholery present that made her choose the nuclear option of accusing you of cheating.

ITworksGuys −  NTA. She was literally trying to destroy your reputation. All she had to do was say “It just didn’t work out”. You aren’t the a**hole for defending yourself.

Relationships and breakups can get messy, especially when public accusations come into play. Did the Redditor go too far by outing their ex, or was it justified given her false claims? What would you have done in this situation? Share your thoughts below!