A Reader Writes…
I was wondering if you could help me with something that has been playing on my mind recently…
It recently transpired that my boyfriend of 15 months has been looking at girls on a dating website that he used to use before he met me. I found this out after he started to write something in a search engine on his laptop when I was sitting next to him, which brought up his history in the search bar and I asked “do you still look at …(dating website)”.
At first, he replied that he has a couple of times, and then when I was unsure whether he was being honest, I asked again and he then said a couple of times a week. He said that he only looks at it to use the function where he can look through it and he can click on “yes” or “no” (i.e. as he says whether they’re “hot” or “not”). He says that he always clicks on “no” even if they’re good looking. He reassured me that he was not going on there to look for girls, but just to look at their pictures.
I told him that I found this a bit weird that he is going on a dating website to look at other girls, when supposedly he is in a relationship with me. He said that he didn’t see anything wrong in it and it meant nothing. I told him how it really upset me and how disrespectful I found it, especially as it was a dating website. He responded with saying that although he didn’t see anything wrong in it “it’s nothing”, he could see that it had upset me and so when I asked him to delete it, he went ahead and deleted his account. I also asked if anyone has contacted him on the website since he’s been going out with me and he said that a couple of girls have but he hasn’t replied to them (he also let me see the messages).
I know he is committed, as he tells me that he wants to be with me and although he looks at other girls, including girls on a dating site, he tells me has “chosen” to be with me. I feel really confused though, as he told me that he used to do this (“yes” or “no” thing on the dating website) before we started a relationship almost just to fill the time I guess. He also told me that the reason he’s started doing it again recently was because he’s bored whilst he’s staying in hotels.
The thing is that it’s now really niggling at me and I feel like he’s broken my trust. I feel like I’m in the “normal” (whatever that is) range of trusting partners, even though my last relationship of 9 years ended when he left me out of the blue for another girl (I know this is probably and subconsciously a fear of mine that this will happen again in a relationship, as it was such a shock). I feel really confused, as my current partner used to tell me that he only had eyes for me and he was (my name-)sexual/asexual, as he stopped looking at other girls in that way.
After this all came out about him looking at dating sites, he seemed to take this all back and reminded me that he is heterosexual. I understand that we’re all human and we notice the opposite sex, but I just have lots of questions running through my mind now like “was he being genuine at the beginning?”, “is he such a sexual being that when I’m not there, his eyes wander and therefore will he cheat on me?”, “what if he goes on other sites to look at women? I’ll never know if I’m not there”, “can I really trust him now?”, etc.
I have also wondered in the past whether we have different boundaries in terms of sex, as he has slept with more people than me (about 20), whereas I have only had 2 sexual partners (him and my ex). He has also slept with friends, which I find a bit strange, as it goes over that friends/lover/feelings boundary, and admittedly I have been hung up on this issue with him in the past, but kind of accepted our different histories now.
I’ve spoken to a male friend to try and get his perspective and he reassured me that it is typical male behaviour (including looking at porn, which my partner – to my unease – and male friend does). Is this typical male behaviour and I am just unable to see beyond my own female perspective? If it is, what things should I be asking myself or focus on to try and stop my mind from going over all this stuff in my head? Should I be feeling so insecure or do I just need to let it go? I know this has made me feel insecure and I hate it, I just want to enjoy being in the relationship again!
I have some of your books including “resolve your differences”, “are you right for me?”, “heal and move on” and “learn to love yourself enough”
I would really appreciate any advice you have or to point me in the right direction with your books, as I find your site a great resource for relationship issues and whenever I type it into google it comes up with all sorts of unhelpful forums.
Andrew Replies…
This is a really tough one because where do you draw the line between normal and dangerous – especially as technology has made the line much more blurry. In the past, we might actually look at contact adverts in the back of newspapers for a bit of fun imagining what it might be like to meet these people. However, in the old days we would have to find a photo, write a letter, post it to a PO Box and wait for a reply. It wasn’t very likely we were going to do all that unless we were truly interested in meeting that person. Today, we can contact this person at the touch of a button and in an idle moment might send off a “Hi Sexy” message. As you can imagine this can lead to all sorts of problems.
The other big difference is that our homes are much more porous than before. What do I mean by this? In the past, there was one phone and we knew who had called. Now, your partner could be texting someone else in another room and you don’t know. Other people can come into your house – via emails and Facebook – 24 hours a day and you aren’t any the wiser. It’s not surprising that we are on alert more than ever before. Sometimes this can push over into being over-concerned and sometimes we are too trusting and don’t realise what is going on under our own noses. This is why I find it very difficult to draw the line between between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and whether your reaction is normal or over-the-top.
Moving on to your particular letter, if your ex boyfriend left you for another woman out of the blue, you’re going to be on guard and anxious. A little bit like a dog that barks when the postman delivers a letter two doors down. I’m concerned about your language; you’re moving on to very strong terms very quickly, so looking at a dating profile of somebody else is ‘disrespectful’. Emotive language and that is going to make you highly emotional and the whole situation becomes more charged.
Under these circumstances it’s going to be harder to have a rational discussion – about what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. Your boyfriend will just close down the argument by agreeing, but secretly he may feel something different and you won’t discover know his true opinions. The other problem with such powerful language is it encourages over-thinking, because if he’s being disrespectful this is the highest level red alert. Your mind is going to go into overdrive and it’s not helpful.
When it comes to ‘looking’ at other people and the jealous feelings that prompts in us, there are three approaches. The first is say nothing and hope for the best (which is what most people favour). The second – that I think you favour – is what I call the “asexual road”. Here we turn ourselves and our partners into two maiden aunts who are not allowed to find anybody else attractive or get any visual or emotional stimulation from anybody else. The result is we start to switch ourselves off and that makes it much harder to become sexual. In effect, when you’re with our beloved, you have to tell yourself ‘it’s OK now’ and take your sex drive out of cold storage.
Finally, there’s a third option: Simmering. You’re allowed to find other people attractive – either on TV, billboards or even someone you meet at a party – but you feed that energy into your relationship. In this way, your engine is already running when you’re alone with your beloved. I suppose the best way to describe the difference between shutting yourself off and simmering is the 50 Shades of Grey phenomena. Lots of women have been reading this book and finding it such a great turn on and they have leapt on their partner. I explain more about simmering in Make Love like a Prairie Vole. I think you would find this book helpful.
The other way to deal with the more porous boundaries into our household is to make certain that you have a better relationship rather than take each other for granted. The vast majority of people have affairs or look around because they’re unhappy and dissatisfied. I explain more about this in How Can I Ever Trust You Again? So instead of taking your relationship for granted, you make certain that you can communicate properly and if your partner is unhappy about something he will talk to you about it.
So summing up, it’s difficult to tell whether you should be concerned or not. However, by worrying you are putting a big barrier between you and your partner. If you learn from the experience and take the advice of your friend and try to get into the mind-set of men and my advice and learn more about relationships, I think you can turn this temporary glitch into something that will strengthen your relationship.
Jessica Barcelos says
Hello,
I need some advice;
I’m Jessica and I’m having a hard time dealing with my emotions right now. I’m kind of obsessed with every single site about affair recovery. I also bought some books about it and I’m trying to understand what happened to me. The thing is that I don’t feel like my case apply to any of those I learned from. I just wish to have experienced people opinions about my situation.
I’m 26 years old, but I’ve never had a boyfriend before my fiancé. I’m Christian and I was saving myself for my husband. That really influenced my life, because not that I find my decision wrong, but the way I handled it made me really innocent, right now I even feel stupid.
I never really wanted to date someone who wasn’t like me or who didn’t share my beliefs. But when I met my fiancé I was disappointed at life and he showed me such affection that I had ever experienced.So we went out in a couple of dates, but after that I tried to finish things saying we were too different. He was so frustrated and really insisted that we should be together because we had something special. My parents didn’t approve because he was once married (his wife left him for another man and took his child away) and I should be with someone like me. He felt really bad, because he knew that I liked him and even so I was letting him go. He was always very sweet to me so he couldn’t understand my reasons.
After a couple of days I decided to face my family and say that I would be with him and I did it. He was really happy, but I was too scared because it was a big step and I knew we were too different. He said he would do anything, so we kept going. The one thing I told him was that I was saving myself for marriage and he agreed.
Then it all started. We would do things that I felt wasn’t appropriated and then would blame him. The problem is I was involved in the moment too. Sometimes I really tried to change the way he were just to my family to approve him more. I wasn’t even seeing I was doing that. I accept the way he were, but I wanted my family to love him. We started having big fights almost every week about our differences, sometimes about my fears. I even tried to break up with him a lot of times, because he was getting angry at me. I felt guilty and sometimes I would read stuff about how to make someone fall out of love, just for him to leave me as I couldn’t leave him.
But my family eventually accepted him, but my mother didn’t take well when she found out that I lost my virginity to him. I felt really guilty about it. Sometimes I went to his house and we had sex, but the other day I would feel guilty and say we would never to that again before we are married. We had a lot of fights, because he said that he felt really lonely and he needed me. The fights never stopped, because I tried to get him to be more like me in terms of beliefs. But he wanted to marry me to make things happen, he never stopped planning on marrying me. We got engaged on February 2016.
Then on March 22 I found that he cheated on me with an ex. I was devastating, because I read everything that talked online. I know he was having a hard time, because the grandparent who raised him was with terminal cancer, still I can only see the lies and cheating. First time he talked to her was on April 2016. He talked about sex they had on the past and asked her to have sex with him again, the only thing they talked was about sex! Then on September 2016 I broke up with him, the same day he talked to her about sex and asked her to come see him in his town. He even paid her tickets. We came back together the next day, but he didn’t cancel her trip. So she stayed with him for three days. He said the treated her badly (she confirmed accidentally) and that it meant nothing, he was just feeling really weak and lonely. But when he was with her, he went to my house to give me presents with our names on them! Now I think he went there so I wouldn’t suspect anything, and that’s exactly what she told me.
At the time I didn’t know anything. So we kept going on our wedding plans and still we were fighting about lots of things, because the divorce papers from his first wedding were not with him, and he had to make contact with his ex wife and that was really stressful time for him. Another fight we had was because he wanted to marry me before the civil wedding and I refused because it didn’t feel right at the time. He said I was selfish because his grandpa was dying and it was the only chance of him seeing him getting married. Until now he blames me for it.
On December we had a fight because he went to the city of his grandparent and tried to talk about sex with me on the phone (he probably was addict to it because of the other) and even tried, but I felt so dirty that I told him to stop. Then he said we would never work out, because I always made him feel like garbage. He decided to continue with me, but some days after that he called her to come to where he was (she lived there too), she went and he cheated again. Then he called me to go there to be with him and I went. We were fine for 10 days, his grandpa was really bad and feeling pain, he was really sad. When I came back home before new year, he cheated with her again. Then he came back to our city and I think he stopped talking to the girl. At least it how I understand. When he was out of town working he got the news that his grandpa with die within some few days, the same day we had a fight over a stupid thing. He blames me forever for that. He went to see his grandpa and broke up with me. I couldn’t come to the funeral, but the next day I said I would go see him. The next day I was there and he treated me really badly (the other had appeared in the funeral), I even suspected he was talking to a woman on his phone once. Then we had a big fight, he humiliated me and was so angry. I just had to come back home and I did. I knew he was devastated and broken inside, but I didn’t have the strength to stay and be treated that way. It turns out that he went out with her a couple of times there. And even appeared drunk at her house saying he would never forget her. Meanwhile he was calling me saying he was sorry for the way the treated me and still wanted to get married. I knew something was up, because she started posting old pictures he took of her on their old dates.
I was really angry and confronted him, he denied everything. But one of the pictures was the same he had on his instagram and I asked him to delete it and he always told me it meant nothing, he had just forgotten (the woman couldn’t be seen clearly on the picture, just the landscape). Once he came back we went out and I went to his house saying that I was decided to change my ways and make our relationship better. We had sex and promise to be together again and get married. He deleted the picture and blocked her as I told him to. Only that she was so angry that she told me everything. She called me bad names and threatened me. I was really scary, angry, sad, disappoint and terrified. I couldn’t understand why he did it, she wasn’t a person to be even trusted. She is known in her town as a reckless young woman who would have sex with anyone. Even a friend of mine confirmed that when she was dating my fiancé she cheated on him many times. She was kicked out of her job because she had sex with her boss’s husband! How could he even develop feelings for her? Saying he would never forget her? Or even missing old times where they had whatever adventurous sex it was?
Now he said he was just feeling weak and lonely and didn’t feel loved. He was feeling suffocated with my expectations He said he didn’t know if the relationship would work out, but he couldn’t really break thing with me. He tried, and couldn’t. He said that I have to accept that he also has needs.
I feel like forgiving him. We went to counseling. The therapist said that I have to see what he did as a pathology, something I can’t cure. She said this is up to the therapist. She said if it wasn’t for this situation with his grandparent she would be a lot of hard on him. She said I would never find anyone perfect, and even in a new relationship I wouldn’t have guarantees.
I would really like some opinion on this. Because I don’t know if I can forget the images from the conversations I’ve read. I don’t know if I can be happy with him, even though he has a lot of qualities. I think that if we get married he will not be satisfied with me and search for someone more sex driven. I’m really afraid he would do it again. Even though he’s trying hard to make me feel safe, I just don’t seem to get over it.
I would really need some help. I’m really sorry about the size of this story. I have trouble getting to the point.
Can you help me, please? Some people are telling me that there’s no way he’s going to change. While the therapist says that if I want I should try start from zero. Two friends of mine said to me that it’s up to me for trying. They said I had abusive behavior with him that might get him suffocated and frustrated.
Andrew G. Marshall says
It sounds like you care a lot about other people’s opinions on what to do next: your parents, your couple’s therapist. And it feels like you’re asking me to vote too. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide if your values and your of your fiancés are too different and whether you can forgive or not. Perhaps you might like to consider some personal counselling to help you take a step back from the drama of the story and take a long hard look at what happened and what is right for you (not everybody else).
hawalove says
I think since we just met we should take our time and am sure things will be better if you really dedicate our self to each other and make this friendship into a great opportunity that we never thought of or ever dream of. What do you think?
Unknown says
My boyfriend is going the exact same. Èxceot he gets angry or avoids deleting the apps. He says their deleted but i highly doubt the accounts are. He probably still has an active email account which is linked to all of them. I know and I’m not stupid. I had a baby shower and he proposed and I found out from texts 10 days before… Arrangements to meet up with people. He said it never fell through. I contacted one of the contacts and they said they didn’t meet up. Even though it was sought to be discrete anyway…. But they said they didn’t. Its the same thing. ‘I love you, I chose to be wit you. I would never act on it. Its boredom.’ I would like to see it all deleted for peace of mind. But everytime it’s confronted he gets angry. Clearly he doesn’t want to deleted. I feel so unimportant. I feel to do the same as him. But I don’t desire this lifestyle. Its not me………!!
I beleive him he doesn’t want to, he says it is as a habit… I know this will happen again at least years down the line. I cant deal with the mental torture, im driving myself crazy.
Andrew G. Marshall says
How does he feel about being a father? I think the two of you are talking about the wrong issues.