I (26M) am engaged to a great girl (27F) but trauma from my previous ex (23F) still negatively affects me…

I’ll explain this dilemma chronologically, but first, I want to provide some context on relationships in my culture. I’m Pakistani American and when you “date” or are in a relationship in our culture, it is generally with the understanding that you are in that relationship to eventually marry this person. It does not have to be right away, but the thought of marriage is always prefaced in every relationship we’re in. Personally, I do not have an issue with this as I know it sets a standard that I’m not here to mess around…

So, about 5 years ago, I started talking to this girl who I had great chemistry with. We hit it off almost immediately and without sugarcoating anything… I truly felt I was in love with this girl. The type of love where you would sacrifice your own interests and quite literally yourself to do anything to be with this person. I was truly willing to do anything to be with her. She knew this too, and I felt that she did truly love me as well. However, the taboo topic was always around telling our parents. I’m not the type of person that likes to hide things from my parents, and although there are cultural and religious stigmas in our culture about being in a “relationship,” I was willing to talk to my parents, just to let them know that I was talking to someone and it was serious because I don’t like hiding stuff. She was also from the same cultural and religious background, and from the start, it seemed her parents were very strict with her. She also told me she grew up in a household where her parents would fight a lot and it would often get really bad. It seemed she may have had traumas from her childhood that affected her. I told her that she didn’t have to tell her parents until she was ready, I’m okay with taking our time as we are still young. I was willing to wait for something this good, because, to me, this was worth it, (at the time) she was worth it. Maybe I was young and didn’t notice, but maybe I was so infatuated with this idea of love and feeling that I had found it. And then… it went downhill.

One day, for about two days, I didn’t get a text or call from her. Complete radio silence. She wasn’t responding to any of my texts or calls… we’d text/call all the time, so to not have her reply sort of out of the blue, I was all over the place. I have GAD (anxiety disorder) and I had been ghosted by a previous girl I was talking to… so this happened to me… my mind was in a million places. Then she finally texted me. She told me that her father figured out our relationship. She told me that he had never been so shocked, hurt, and disappointed. She told me that when he figured out, he actually hit her and that because he had issues with blood pressure, he suffered a heart attack the same day and that she had not been replying because of that. And then, she told me this was all too much, and that she didn’t want to hurt her parents by being with me, so she needed to break up with me. My heart was in a million pieces. I eventually talked to her and told her that we can make a plan to break it to them slowly and I will do anything to help and talk to her parents. I just wanted them to meet me at least and get to know me before judging this. I wanted to know I was serious and that I wasn’t here to mess around. But I didn’t pressure her and told her we can take our time, so we got back together. And then it happened again when her parents still figured it out and she broke up with me for good for the second time, a day after my grandmother who I was really close passed away. I can’t begin to explain the dark place I was in and the amount of stuff I was going through outside of this breakup and my grandmothers passing. I was angry at her parents, that they’d put her through this… it just seemed so unfair and unreasonable. And I was so concerned for her, that she had to go through this and live a lifestyle like this. I cared for her so much. But that was it… we were done. There are a lot of small details as we would never hang out because she told me her parents were so strict and that we could never make time. I barely ever saw her when we were together, but still, I was willing to wait and do anything to make it happen. I was disgustingly in love.

A few years after this, I had randomly come across a picture on Instagram of an account that used to watch my stories. The picture was her kissing another man, and not just another man, but a friend of mine who I knew (they were coworkers after we had broken up). The picture was dated a couple of months after we had broken up. I don’t know if she cheated and I cannot prove that, but with our relationship and me being able to never see her, here she was kissing another man, who I KNEW, and she KNEW I KNEW him just a couple of months after she had broken up with me. I texted her and told her we needed to talk, because my mind was in a million places, and I needed the truth.

Then she opened up to me with the truth. To put it shortly, she lied about so many things during our relationship. Her parents never knew about us, nor did they figure it out. Her dad never had a heart attack. There were so many things she lied about. I was… shocked. But I was still in love with her… I know, simp city. I wish I listened to my mind, but past all the lies, I felt like I was meeting a new side to her and that if I could forgive her, I could get what I wanted all along and that was to just be with her. And so, after taking time to process things, I told her I forgave her and that we could give things another shot, but this time, I wanted complete and total honesty and I set up a way where I could verify things. I wanted to rebuild the trust but I knew it would take time. We rekindled things for about a month, but I felt so much anxiety and while I did truly forgive her (for my sake), I still held in some resentment and there was just so much trauma. I couldn’t do it. I told her I needed time to think things over and that we needed to take a break. She understood, so we took some space…

Now, enter the girl who is my now fiancee. I met her about a year or so before I had figured out the truth about my ex and I came across that IG post. We were in the same friend group and we were nothing other than just friends…I got along with her really well from the start, but I was never looking to be in a relationship with her. I saw her as nothing other than a good friend at the time. As friends, she would open up to me about stuff and I’d give her advice, and I wasn’t always as open as I’m more recluse as a person, but the stuff I did talk about, she was there for me. She’s a little hot-headed at times and stubborn, but one thing I ALWAYS appreciated about her then was that she always kept it real. She always kept it 100 and never lied, she would in fact be a little too honest at times and told me things that I would not mind her not having told me lol. She also has the most caring and nurturing personality, even as friends.

During my break with my ex, my now fiancee told me that was into me and that she liked me. I told her at the time, I was not ready for a relationship mentally and she did respect it. But I thought about it a lot. Maybe my heart wasn’t in it 100% at the time, but I have this girl who was willing to do anything for me and she was 100% honest, caring, and loving as a person. After some time, I decided it was best for me and my then-ex to permanently part ways… the lies, everything… it was just too much to get over for me. I did forgive her, but I couldn’t forget and readily move past the trauma.

I originally did not want to move on fast or really want to seek out a new relationship at the time, but my now fiancee was so great to me. She had every quality I liked and respected. I told her about my ex and I told her what I was facing and I told her I would be willing to give our relationship a shot, but that there was still just trauma there (one therapist even said I had a type of “relationship induced PTSD” in her words). She understood and knowing it, she was willing to give it a shot. Fast forward a few years, and things have gone well.. there have been a few bumps along the way, but we’ve always been there for each other and I do love her and she loves me. We got engaged a few months ago and should be married soon.

However, the reason I spent the time to type this out and go into detail was because even after all these years, the trauma still affects me. I’m completely over my ex as a person, but there’s just situations and triggers that bring that trauma to the front and It just really messes with me mentally. On top of that, I feel so much guilt knowing that I have someone who loves and cares for me, but this past situation is just at times, such a mental roadblock. I don’t tell my fiancee just how much it affects me all the time, because I don’t want to hurt her, and I don’t want her to feel like I still have feelings for my ex, which I don’t… but it’s just trauma that manifests itself in the form of trust issues… my mind jumps to crazy scenarios and I overthink a lot of things… but i don’t always share it because I don’t feel my fiancee deserves that.

Advice needed: Does anyone have any advice to work through this trauma and heal from it.. I don’t want this to mess up the relationship I’m currently in with such a great person…. but keeping this all in has been killing me inside and there’s days when I go through episodes of severe anxiety and depression because of this…

TLDR: My previous ex (23F) lied to me about pretty much everything during our entire relationship and started dating my friend right after we had broken up (lied about that too). I rekindled things with her years later but the trust issues were too much, and I broke things off for good w/ my ex. Shortly after, I started dating my now fiancee after she had admitted to me while I was on a break with my ex that she liked me… (even though I told her this trauma may affect me). We are now engaged, but the trauma from that ex still affects me negatively in the form of trust issues, anxiety, etc. and I don’t want it to ruin a good relationship I have now.