Why is it OK to say "I was relieved to have passed my exam"?

it's not logical, as for me, because the first part is in Past simple and the second is Present Perfect, but not Past! could you please explain why it's so

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Best answer

In your example "to have passed ..." is not Present Perfect Tense, it is an infinitive form - a perfect infinitive, which is not a tense. But you can rephrase it like this "I was relieved that I had passed my exam" if it sounds logical.

  • Because ''I was relieved'' is a passive clause, and ''to have passed'' means that it happened in near future, and you still feel the effect of passing the exam (the relief).

  • Yup we can use past simple and present perfect but ‘to have passed my exam’ is not even a caustive. You have to change the sentence.

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  • And I completely agree with the explanation of teacher Domingos👇👌

  • The most common way to say it is simply "I passed." You can also say "I've passed" or "I did pass." If you want to be more specific, you can say "I passed with a score of "

  • The sentence combines past simple and present perfect to convey a sequence of events: passing the exam happened first (present perfect), followed by the feeling of relief (past simple). This construction is grammatically correct and effectively expresses the chronological order of the events.

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