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Very complicated Relationship after Friendship Plus
HowToBeSingle
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'll post this here again because the "Love" thread in SE++ very much was not the right thread for this discussion;
"So, before I start, whatever mod looks at this, this is a duplicate account (which I know is against the rules, but there are very obvious reasons and as long as I can post this one thing I've already accomplished what I wanted)
Second, I'm not sure if this is the correct thread but it is very much related
On to things
A few months ago I met this lady who, although around 4 1/2 years older than me (both in our twenties) was pretty much who I would describe as my "soulmate". We filled entire pages with our WhatsApp chats and started meeting regularely. We seemed to get along together so well that we had Sex on our second date, which we both enjoyed very much and decided to go with a friendship plus. All was not well all the time as she quickly developed feelings and I had to shoot her down twice (due to getting out of a nightmare of a relationship earlier and feeling the need to enjoy my freedom at the time). This she claims struck her heavily so she felt the need to validate herself.
Because it was only a friendship plus we both were still active on Tinder and other sites; Me not so much really despite maybe a few very short exchanges. Her a lot more with 2-3 very intense and long-going flirts, which I didn't know about.
Around three weeks ago we fought and "broke up" our relationship, for the second time. She said that it's better if we don't talk for a while and that was that, for a week. That's when I decided to contact her because I realized I thought about her constantly; I knew about one guy that she was dating and that she had sex with.
We talked a lot, spent a lot of time together and decided to bury all our flirts from before and begin a relationship. It was hard but I was actually very happy at first!
And now is where shit hits the fan.
My previous relationship kinda made me paranoid, as I found out by checking my girlfriends phone that she was flirting with another guy who very much wanted to nail her and that she was going to meet him, none of which she told me.
Which is why I did exactly this, again. And I found out that she kept from me that she had unprotected sex with the guy I knew about. Trust broken Nr. 1.
We talked and she insisted that she thought if she told me I was gonna break up with her or worse. I still didn't know how to feel about this. She then explicitely told me that she would not withhold anything from me anymore and that now I knew everything.
Until I found out that she slept with another guy during the friendship plus I never knew about. Same talk, my trust was broken even further and I was feeling pretty horrible. Again the "now you know everything" talk.
Until I found another very intense chat of a guy making sexual advances that appearantly had been in her bed and groped her, much to her liking, and she made it very obvious that she was curious about what else was going to happen and wanted him to not be so shy about his sexual thoughts. Once again the talk.
After that I checked her handy chat for chat. One more thing I found out is that appearantly the sex with guy Nr. 1 (the one I knew about) that she described as a total failure was appearantly "brilliant" at least once.
PA, what do. I'm lost. Scared she'll just cheat on me, probably without even telling me. And she'll probably delete whatever evidence there would be of it due to knowing of my paranoia now - also I do not really want to lead a relationship in which I have to check on my partner to be able to trust them..."
And since I saw someone making a timeline themselves, I'll provide one here for clarification:
TIMELINE:
- Start of the year: Checked my then girlfriends Phone, found out she was probably intending to cheat on me (CLARIFICATION: I had suspicions before and asked her if it was okay to see some chats with her being there. She agreed. This was the second time where I did so WITHOUT agreement). Broke up with her
- 5-ish months ago: Meet who I would describe as my soulmate but am too paranoid and want to enjoy my freedom, shoot her down multiple times
- (Side point: She sleeps with Person Nr. 1, AFTER we start our friendship plus, but tells me instead that they have no contact anymore)
- During the friendship plus she continues to explicitely flirt with mutliple guys, lets one of them in her bed and grope her (Person Nr. 2)
- During the third time "breaking up" our friendship plus, she sleeps multiple times with Person Nr. 3, one time unprotected
- (Side note: During all this time I was completely hoenst about anything love life related on my side, she was not)
- Check her handy three times; Every time it goes about this: I find out about Person Nr. X or something she withheld from me, she apologizes, claims that she won't withhold anything anymore; Rinse and repeat two times with Person Nr. 2 and Nr. 3
- I now have no trust anymore
Addendum: I know completely that what I did was wrong; However, ultimately, all my fears were being confirmed.
"So, before I start, whatever mod looks at this, this is a duplicate account (which I know is against the rules, but there are very obvious reasons and as long as I can post this one thing I've already accomplished what I wanted)
Second, I'm not sure if this is the correct thread but it is very much related
On to things
A few months ago I met this lady who, although around 4 1/2 years older than me (both in our twenties) was pretty much who I would describe as my "soulmate". We filled entire pages with our WhatsApp chats and started meeting regularely. We seemed to get along together so well that we had Sex on our second date, which we both enjoyed very much and decided to go with a friendship plus. All was not well all the time as she quickly developed feelings and I had to shoot her down twice (due to getting out of a nightmare of a relationship earlier and feeling the need to enjoy my freedom at the time). This she claims struck her heavily so she felt the need to validate herself.
Because it was only a friendship plus we both were still active on Tinder and other sites; Me not so much really despite maybe a few very short exchanges. Her a lot more with 2-3 very intense and long-going flirts, which I didn't know about.
Around three weeks ago we fought and "broke up" our relationship, for the second time. She said that it's better if we don't talk for a while and that was that, for a week. That's when I decided to contact her because I realized I thought about her constantly; I knew about one guy that she was dating and that she had sex with.
We talked a lot, spent a lot of time together and decided to bury all our flirts from before and begin a relationship. It was hard but I was actually very happy at first!
And now is where shit hits the fan.
My previous relationship kinda made me paranoid, as I found out by checking my girlfriends phone that she was flirting with another guy who very much wanted to nail her and that she was going to meet him, none of which she told me.
Which is why I did exactly this, again. And I found out that she kept from me that she had unprotected sex with the guy I knew about. Trust broken Nr. 1.
We talked and she insisted that she thought if she told me I was gonna break up with her or worse. I still didn't know how to feel about this. She then explicitely told me that she would not withhold anything from me anymore and that now I knew everything.
Until I found out that she slept with another guy during the friendship plus I never knew about. Same talk, my trust was broken even further and I was feeling pretty horrible. Again the "now you know everything" talk.
Until I found another very intense chat of a guy making sexual advances that appearantly had been in her bed and groped her, much to her liking, and she made it very obvious that she was curious about what else was going to happen and wanted him to not be so shy about his sexual thoughts. Once again the talk.
After that I checked her handy chat for chat. One more thing I found out is that appearantly the sex with guy Nr. 1 (the one I knew about) that she described as a total failure was appearantly "brilliant" at least once.
PA, what do. I'm lost. Scared she'll just cheat on me, probably without even telling me. And she'll probably delete whatever evidence there would be of it due to knowing of my paranoia now - also I do not really want to lead a relationship in which I have to check on my partner to be able to trust them..."
And since I saw someone making a timeline themselves, I'll provide one here for clarification:
TIMELINE:
- Start of the year: Checked my then girlfriends Phone, found out she was probably intending to cheat on me (CLARIFICATION: I had suspicions before and asked her if it was okay to see some chats with her being there. She agreed. This was the second time where I did so WITHOUT agreement). Broke up with her
- 5-ish months ago: Meet who I would describe as my soulmate but am too paranoid and want to enjoy my freedom, shoot her down multiple times
- (Side point: She sleeps with Person Nr. 1, AFTER we start our friendship plus, but tells me instead that they have no contact anymore)
- During the friendship plus she continues to explicitely flirt with mutliple guys, lets one of them in her bed and grope her (Person Nr. 2)
- During the third time "breaking up" our friendship plus, she sleeps multiple times with Person Nr. 3, one time unprotected
- (Side note: During all this time I was completely hoenst about anything love life related on my side, she was not)
- Check her handy three times; Every time it goes about this: I find out about Person Nr. X or something she withheld from me, she apologizes, claims that she won't withhold anything anymore; Rinse and repeat two times with Person Nr. 2 and Nr. 3
- I now have no trust anymore
Addendum: I know completely that what I did was wrong; However, ultimately, all my fears were being confirmed.
0
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I'll reply to this one from the love thread:
I realize very much I have issues. I really do. I said I thought I was "right" but I never thought I was right about violating her privacy.
She practically BEGS me not to end the relationship, for which now I feel like the shittiest human being there is... as in that it's actually not even her fault...
Is the only advice you should listen to. This is pretty much 100% the best thing you can do and everything else, from the details you are hung up on to the fact you were validated, are problems you need to sort out before you do so.
But yeah, this person is definitely NOT your "soulmate" or whatever. If you don't trust her, being with her is going to be difficult at best. You need to break it off, and work on yourself and your trust issues. I don't mean this in a "you're bad, she's good" or any kind of way like that. You were hurt, and being hurt means that you are going to have to heal. Therapy really helps with this, and if you can't find a good therapist, you should find a good (other) friend to talk to.
More generally; You've broken up, from the low committal state of friendship+, three times in the last 5 months. I mean, if you want to take another swing at it go right ahead, but something tells me it probably won't work out.
We've broken up because she was looking for something serious and I was not, but we could never stay away from each other.
Sure, being cheated on sucks. It's happened to most of us in life.
This is the part where you move on and stop being fixated on being wronged.
You've still broken up repeatedly, broke into her privacy and demanded history from her you really weren't entitled to.
I never say never but the chance you can work this out are very slim. It's been said repeatedly but you (like a lot of people) have some serious trust issues you need to work on before you should try another relationship. Being simply aware of them is a pretty great first step.
From the sounds of things, you were looking for something serious as well.
Like, you have put an enormous amount of energy into controlling this person's life, despite allegedly just wanting to be friends. You want to control her sex life, or at very least have her tell you everything that happens in said sex life. You regularly check her text messages. You clearly want to be a significant part of her life.
Whether you realize it or not, you are trying to control this person's life. I would argue in an unhealthy way, on top of that, but even if we don't take that into account, it feels like you want a serious relationship yourself.
I guess you're right.
It's true, and that's why in the end we did decide on the relationship.
I don't know what to do. I really want this to work and so does she, and I've talked about everything with her again and that I realize my mistakes; She thinks that it can happen during the beginning of a relationship that there are truest issues and that it has to grow over time, and she even says it'd be ok if I asked to look at her phone every now and then which I do NOT want to be a thing which I told her. A relationship can't work like this.
But I just am so happy with her and she with me. Fuck.
Like, chase your bliss man, but you do not sound happy to me.
Then do that. But not in a relationship, as that would not be fair to her at all. If you really do care for her you have to let her go. Then spend a few years working on yourself and resolving your trust issues. After that, you will be ready to engage in a romantic relationship, whether serious or casual.
You need to be able to take someone at their word. Especially if you are in a relationship with them. If you can't do that, and the only way you can be in a relationship with them is to have random audits of their phones, the you are no longer their partner - you are their insurance adjuster. That's not a relationship.
You will almost always find something that could look bad... but more importantly it means you feel so strongly that you can't trust them that you need to violate their privacy to find proof and/or justify yourself.
Even if you find nothing, things are still broken.
In this case, she owes you nothing aside from getting tested to make sure her unprotected sex isn't going to pass anything along to you.
That's it, end of story.
As to what you should do now?
Can you honestly avoid thinking about this? Can you avoid it being an issue?
Can she get over you looking through her stuff and digging into stuff that legitimately wasn't an issue?
There's a good chance there's more stuff in her past you may not like, can you deal with that? Can you mark it off as "none of my damned business" and move on?
Even if you think all of the above can go your way, there's still a very good chance it won't. You might be too fresh out of being hurt, you may be too far into issues in this one for it to end any way other than badly.
I'd recommend being single for awhile longer to get over all the crap you have jumbled in your head, but ultimately I'm not you.
Get out, for both your sakes, and then work on your issues.
Relationships are all about building trust yes. She has a solid point there. You can't build on a foundation of sand though. You are demonstrating a pattern of behavior that shows you are incapable of trusting her. You are looking at the flimsiest excuses to try and justify it, but in the end it's because you are incapable or unwilling to take her at her word on almost any subject.
Take as an example her recounting the quality of sex with one of her ex partners. Very few people are going to be fully honest and truthful and that is because, as you demonstrated, the human ego is a bit too fragile to handle the fact that maybe our partners in the most intimate act imaginable might prefer someone else for pure mechanics. Put another way, if you date enough it becomes incredible unlikely that the person you think fucks the best will also be the best for you. Asking for that level of disclosure is asking for constant fights over stupid shit which can only hurt a relationship in the end.
You have the best advice. Walk away. It doesn't sound like you can give her what she wants. Barring that you can try to prove us all wrong. Stranger things have certainly happened. I would recommend couples and/or individual therapy though. The relationship is early enough that it might work but I will say that by the time the fighting is abdaily occurance often the damage is done. I don't know your ratio of good to bad times, but just keep that fact in mind.
It's not going to work.
You may want it to work, but from your description it sounds like the relationship is poisoned and damaged beyond repair. I'm no psychic, so I may be wrong, but the foundation of this relationship seems broken and, in my opinion, trying to glue it back together is just delaying the inevitable. I mean, look at what you came here for. One aspect of this thread is that you want (or wanted) validation in whether or not you had a right to feel cheated on. Does this sound like the foundation of a healthy relationship?
It's broken, gone, kaput. You both can certainly have a relationship anyway but it's not going to be a happy, healthy one based on trust and respect. Sorry if that's harsh but it is what it is.
I was going to write something up but this is a far better way of saying it.
The OP and this girl just need to walk away.
Neither of them are ready to be in relationship.
Noone here knows you and much less her.
YES, ideally you should be at a more confident or trusting or whatever point in your life before entering a relationship. But how does that work out for anyone? It's not really a rational decision to want to be with someone and you can work at fixing or improving yourself for ages without ever feeling truly ready.
BUT if you turn away from this now this might end up being the big "what if" of your life and might haunt you 10 or 20 years down the road. Maybe not, but you never know. You really sound like you want to be with her. I was in a not similar but roughly comparable situation a few years ago and I made the rational choice and I still regret it sometimes during those long dark nights.
Generally speaking, I would not want to trust strangers on the internet when it comes to relationships, that does of course include my opinion.
You seem to be aware of your flaws, try to get therapy if you feel you need it and be open and honest with her. All the fucking around happened before you entered into a relationship, did I understand that correctly?
We're not break up happy
We can look at this from an unbiased external point of view and give impartial advice.
You're right. We don't know either the OP or the girl. And we're all telling him the same thing.
"Maybe he'll get his shit together" and "maybe he'll regret this later" are not a valid reason to pursue this.
It's short sighted
They don't seem to be acting like it.
More than that is needed. He's got to be able to be honest with himself and realistically be able to decide if he's going to:
No matter how much they want to be together, that stuff right there is going to drop a big steaming pile onto the relationship. And that's just the stuff about how he's been acting. That's not talking about any other issues they may have with each other, none of the other common pressure points of a relationship, etc.
It absolutely might work. But this isn't like a 10 year relationship hitting a rough patch. There's no kids involved, no deeply entwined social circles, no shared finances, etc.
This is pretty damn easy to walk away from.
If they really want to make this work... it can, sure. But will it? That's another matter entirely... and a lot of it is going to hinge on the OP making sure he can deal with how he feels in a healthier way than rooting through his girlfriends phone for something to feel betrayed over.
Uh... there are "plans that don't work", and then there is "this relationship is seriously unhealthy." A plan that doesn't work looks something like this: "We intended to be married in a couple of years, but I lost my job so we're putting that off until I have a stable job situation." An unhealthy relationship looks like, "I check her phone for infidelity."
"Really wanting to be together" only works if there's some solid action behind it. Actions like trusting in one another's privacy, retaining honesty between both parties, making agreed-upon relationship boundaries that both parties hold up. If you're not able to have those absolute relationship bare-basics, then no, "wanting to be together" is a big fat nothing. And hey, maybe that means that as a person you just need to not be in a relationship for a while as you go to therapy and learn how to be a healthy person. If they are genuinely "meant to be", then after they've both grown up a bit, they'll end up as a couple again. I
It's not as harmless as you may think, op.
You would be doing her a favor by moving on and yourself by working on your issues.
Initial obsession is not something to base a relationship off of.