I need advice
Hey. I need some advice as unfortunately I don’t have anyone that I can turn to. I have been with my fiancé for 7 years, engaged for 2 and a half. We’ve had a very up and down relationship, mostly up I’d say. However about 4 years ago I went to use his phone, he snatched it off me, so when he was asleep I went on it and found that he had been using Snapchat (I have never used this so don’t really know how it works but I know it involves photos). Prior to this I didn’t have any trust issues. He said there was nothing to it and he hadn’t sent any photos to anyone. We left it at that. Around 3 years ago I was looking on his iPad because he was acting distant. I found he was chatting to a girl on Instagram.. asking her to send photos on once again Snapchat. This girl was someone he used to fancy in school. When I found these messages he was out running and I texted him that we needed to have a chat when he got back. Funnily enough by the time he had come home the messages had been deleted and when confronted about this he denied it and said he didn’t know what I was on about. Until I started reading the messages I had taken a photo of. Then he remembered and said it was nothing. No apology and said it was a mistake and wouldn’t happen again, and that Snapchat would be deleted, which it was. Unfortunately this is where the paranoia and trust issues started to develop and I would more frequently look at his phone. Moving on in 2019 he had an argument with his dad, to which he was told to leave. So he came to live at my house. Unfortunately this did not end well as he was not cleaning up after himself and was not respecting the rules that were set out by my parents. I went to counselling to try and get help for my trust issues and the constant arguments we were having . This also did not end well as my councillor instead of helping me through was telling me what to do while I was vulnerable. I ended up following her advise and telling him to go back home. Biggest mistake of my life. February 2020 I found that he had once again been messaging girls, this time on Reddit. Girls from different countries, telling them they looked great and trying to start a conversation with them. When I found out and confronted him about this he said it was a mistake and he didn’t know why he did it. He suggested I go to counselling again, I suggested he did, but he didn’t want to. I suggested we go to couple counselling, we booked the first appointment and he was supposed to collect me but turned up 30 mins late so we ended up with half a session, and then he didn’t seem bothered about continuing so we didn’t. I understand that in some people’s eyes this isn’t cheating. To me it is emotional cheating and makes it a bit worse in the fact that someone can easily send messages to another girl and not actually take action. My heart has been broken. I am the one that wakes up every day wondering if I am good enough or if this is going to happen for the rest of my life. Despite all of this I still love him. But I genuinely don’t know what to do. He is aware that I don’t know if I can trust him 100% ever again. If it happened once and he showed he was sincerely sorry maybe I could move on but 3 times.. I just don’t know if it’s possible. It has affected so much in our relationship that our intimacy is pretty much non existing as I just have no interest in it. He has suggested for me to go back to councilling to get through this but I’m just afraid of it making everything worse again. I just feel like we have build so much over the last 7 years, we have travelled the world together and we have a holiday booked in 2 weeks time.
Thank you for taking the time to read, any advice would be much appreciated.
he shows no respect for you.
He makes promises and breaks them.
He is not honest about why he tries to contact other girls.
Now, sit back (or go sit anywhere you like, like, in a park). Focus on breathing. Deep and slow, without putting effort in it. Breathe in, breathe out. Stay focused. Breathe in and out.
When you feel relaxed, ask your true self, your being, your heart what to do. Just ask your heart. No thinking, no reasoning. Ask and do what your heart tells you to.
Take care.
This is a tricky situation and I feel it may come down to what you are okay with or not okay with. Ask yourself truly if you can move past this. To me this IS cheating as I agree with you that it’s emotional cheating and so beyond Damaging to you. For him to continue doing this to you shows a lack of respect for you and your feelings. I think it’s hard to be with someone who would continuously do something that they know would hurt you and it seems like this has taken a toll on your relationship. I know you’ve been in this relationship for a long time and put so much of yourself into it, it can be hard to imagine it not existing anymore but please also remember that you are deserving of respect and for your feelings and boundaries to be cared about and listened to.
@Shytime20
Hi there--I'm going to be honest and say that I felt pretty angry at him after reading all of this. 😊 I'm going to just repeat back some of the things you've shared that express what you're feeling unhappy about.
- 4 years ago, you happened to be casually looking at his phone. He panicked and snatched it away from you as if he was trying to hide something. You looked at it later and saw that he had Snapchat installed.
- A year later, during a time period when he was acting very distant, you were looking at his iPad and you noticed that he was reaching out to a girl on Instagram (who he used to have a crush on in school) and asking her to send photos on Snapchat.
- When you told him that you needed to talk, he knew he had messed up and tried to hide what he had done by deleting the messages. But you had taken a picture of the messages beforehand and read them aloud. He didn't apologize at all. He just said it was a mistake that he wouldn't repeat and he deleted Snapchat.
- In 2019, he came and stayed at your house briefly, but during that time he wasn't cleaning up after himself or respecting your parents' rules.
- When you asked him to leave (at the advice of your counselor), you discovered some time after that he was messaging girls on Reddit telling them that they looked great.
- When you reached out to him about this, he again said it was a mistake and that he wasn't sure why he did it.
- In response to this [this is the part where I started feeling angry lol], he suggested that *you* go to counseling, as if there was something wrong with you. Your response (which I feel is reasonable) is that you turned it around on him and asked *him* to go to counseling.
- You were able to get him to agree to go to couples counseling together as a compromise so that you could work through this together. But, whether intentionally or accidentally, he sabotaged this attempt at fixing the relationship by picking you up a half-hour late so that you missed most of the counseling session. And then afterwards he failed to show any commitment or interest in continuing counseling.
- All of this has taken a significant toll on your emotional well-being, and you now have difficulty trusting people in general.
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"Cheating" is whatever you and your partner mutually agree to define it as. There are people who have open relationships in which both people will have lots of sex outside of their relationship. And that isn't cheating for them because it's within the bounds of what they've agreed is okay. But if you've agreed upon a monogamous relationship and have established a shared expectation that flirting with other girls and secretly sending them pictures is cheating, then those actions would be cheating.
The thing that really bothers me about this story is that this guy repeatedly betrays your trust, doesn't show any remorse/contrition, fails to change his behavior... and then he has the balls to insist that *you* have a problem with trust and that *you* are the one who needs counseling. I kind of don't like this guy. 😊
I can't say what you should do, as there are a lot of different options (e.g. setting clear/firm boundaries and enforcing them more strictly, trying to do couples counseling again, discussing with him to figure out you both want to proceed going forward, ending the relationship if it feels unsalvageable). I also respect that a 7-year relationship with a 2.5 year engagement is a huge commitment and you don't want to throw that away, so I wouldn't feel comfortable pressuring you by saying something like "You absolutely must dump him". I imagine you'd agree though that you're unhappy with the current situation and that you'd like something to change.
Hey girl, there’s a few things I could relate to this story. First of all, I was with my ex boyfriend for 9 years, so I also had a long relationship. Secondly my ex supposedly never cheated but he had a weirdly close relationship with his female “best friend.” He went on a trip with his female friend around year 5 of our relationship and our relationship was never the same after. We went to 2 different couples counselors who encouraged me to be ok with him taking trips with his female friend, and I tried so hard to be ok with it but deep down my gut was telling me it wasn’t right. He ended up breaking up with me because he knew I wanted to get married and he didn’t. It’s been about 7 months from the breakup and I have since then found a wonderful new therapist who completed validated my feelings and she said to be careful when your partner builds emotional connections with others that come between the relationship. She also said people typically have sex to cement an emotional connection so you really gotta look out for any emotional ties that seem really strong because his emotional priority should really be you as boyfriend/girlfriend. I’m not telling you this so that you break up with him, because I know how hard it is to let go of a long term relationship. But I want to let you know that your feelings of distrust is completely 1000% valid. I hope you do what’s best for you. Good luck!!