I hope he stays as an ex. I feel like you deserve better. Someone as loyal as you are to your relationship. & I hope you stay proud and firm in that decision. Your ex sounds like he’s not over his ex or just plain non-committal.... and even if he knows it bothers you, he cheats emotionally / physically anyhow ignoring you. Like why waste your time and energy winning over a guy who is still cheating & playing around & won’t stay loyal. He clearly did not respect your boundaries multiple times despite you telling him upfront so nah not an unwarranted reaction. He knew and pressed your button & just spitting out bs now because he regrets that he was caught. My advice is just to ignore, block, and cut him out of your life. The more you spending talking to him, more you’re wasting air. You can spend so much time making yourself happy without him too.
.... I am in a similar situation right now. The timing and the title are uncanny. I am and have been miserable for a long long time. There's no cheating but it's other things. He has been my first everything too. I still want it to work but I am tired of trying, so tired. For a long time he was telling me that it was me misunderstanding things, that any of our problems were solely due to my issues. I looked up gaslighting but that wasn't quite it. I don't know what it is exactly. But I am struggling to know what to do, am I right or am I overreacting? Am I overthinking? Am I too sensitive? It's hard to know. I spoke with my parents at length about the whole thing. It's good to have other people to support and make sense of things. I'm glad you were able to ask the people on the forum for feedback. I still hope things will change, but I'm making moves to help myself, because my situation right now has started to make my mental health worse than it has ever been before. Maybe this will end up as an end or maybe it will get better. I'm still hoping it gets better. For your situation though, I don't think that guy is interested in changing. That's what I'm concerned about with mine. When I make the changes for my own health, and let him know, will he want to bother fixing things? Or will it be too much trouble? I think yours has already shown he's not interested. Sleeping with an ex while talking with you about the love book passages is very..... You spoke about how to fix things, and he continued to do exactly what broke things in the first place, without shame, and said that it 'shouldn't count'. Very odd. Very painful to experience. And shows that he wasn't really trying to fix anything. Nothing can be fixed if it is only one side trying. It is sad. I am sad just typing it. But it is a truth. And truths are important to never ignore.
Do they feel ashamed, or do they know shame is the emotion they're expected to show when confronted for their behavior. Although they could genuinely feel ashamed, like I said their brains are wired weird, logic and commonsense can't be applied to them.
You probably don't need to hear this anymore, but walk away. He's broken your trust, your boundaries and your heart. Why give him another chance to do it all over again?