How to survive infidelity as a younger couple without kids, or marriage, 27M, 25F?

Hey,

I decided to write a post of my own in hope there is some advice here that'd help or at least help me choose the right path.

I've been in a relationship with my girl for 4.5y at this point (27M, 25F; the last two years or so we did long distance due to my job). A couple weeks ago I learnt that she cheated with one night stands found on tinder. The way that I found out is: She said she was feeling sick and will turn off the phone for a bit to unwind. We live separately at the moment and I thought I'd check on her so I went to her apartment and found a burner phone with Tinder on, where I connected the dots and it was pretty clear she's been on a hook-up spree for a bit.

When she came back that evening (I called multiple times, I guess she figured out that I know and came home early) I confronted her and throughout the evening we had a talk about what happened and why. She started this conversation with lying about the hook ups but then I believe we arrived at the truth later (or at least some portion of it?). According to her she cheated (sex) twice (autumn last year and now), but had more dates (sometimes the hook up would happen during the first date).

The reasoning is that she wasn't really happy in the relationship, and that she wasn't feeling seen by me. I admit my fair share of responsibility on that front. I've been neglecting her in the past couple months due to issues at the job (changing now), wasn't sure where the relationship is going and how it would look like in the future, as well as started questioning whether we should be together. We both are very individual and self-centered and have had issues communicating emotions and what we both really need from the relationship. At the moment I believe it hit her finally, what she did and that it was pretty irresponsible from her side (not even talking about the betray here, just on a human level, something could have happened to her). At the same time she is not yet sure whether to continue the relationship and is taking some time to figure it out.

I believe what she has told me so far is the truth about what happened, and we've had talks about the past, where things went wrong, and why we ended up where we ended up. For parts of our relationship we have had to do long distance due to external factors (I need to live in another country for the job, she needs to stay to finish up the studies) and starting 2026 I'll be moving out again (in the country at the moment for a year). I'm a bit torn about what we should do at this point and what would be better for her, me, or us. I've taken some time to figure out my faults about the situation and I acknowledge that I've been a poor partner for her, and so I understand her actions. The cheating part is still hurting me, and I think there were better ways to resolve the problems than this but it has happened so too late to try and course-correct there.

She has answered all the questions I had, took accountability, shown remorse. She explained her thoughts at the time of cheating, but not excused them. At the same time she's not sure at the moment and said that she needs time to process this and come to some conclusions and understand her feelings. She's attending therapy and has been ever since the first time she cheated (I just learnt later the reason as to why she started attending).

From my side I'm trying to process this. I'll start attending therapy soon, and read 'After the affair' book to try and come to terms with what has happened. We're still in daily contact, we've met on couple of occasions requested by either side. My best read on her at the moment is that she's super confused, can't love herself, can't really understand why she did what she did and is blocked a bit mentally in terms of thinking about it. Since the situation is a bit unstable (she also started drinking due to all this) I made sure to contact her best girl friend and she visited to take care of her for a bit, her family is also aware and tries to understand what happened (she told them, haven't made her, but I did suggest it). I realized at some point that things are not so black and white and that due to my and her issues the relationship was just not great and I'm treating this somewhat as a needed wake-up call. When we started the relationship I wasn't in the right head space but we still gave it a go. We never unfortunately really worked through the problems, rather swept them under the rug and both pretended things are fine.

She also had history of doing something similar in the previous relationship and the way for her to get over it at the end was doing the tinder stuff. I also believe this is some trauma she needs to work through since she usually meets with one type of men (much older than her).

I was wondering whether there is someone with similar experience here, or someone that could help in some way how to work on this or whether it even makes sense.

TLDR; got cheated on with ONS multiple times, thinking how to approach this as a young adult