Member- anon134532
- 3 years ago
My boyfriend and I have been together for just over two years. He is friends with several of his exes, which is something I don’t particularly love, but I have worked hard on recognizing it’s mostly my own baggage that makes me feel that way, as I have been burned in the past. We’ve even discussed it in couple’s therapy so we can work through things together. Anyway, he knows that exes are a touchy subject for me, and as a result, some very clear boundaries were laid out in therapy, which we both fully agreed to. They pretty much all center around open communication and keeping NO secrets from each other when it comes to exes. Which brings us to now.
One day he asked me to text someone back on his phone because he was driving. I opened his messages and noticed that a text conversations from one of his exes had mysteriously disappeared entirely (I send texts for him regularly, so I’m pretty familiar with convos on the list). To be clear, he never deletes anything, almost to a fault, and no other conversations (that I knew of at the time) were missing. So that definitely raised some red flags for me.
I tried to just brush it off as nothing, but it kept bugging me, so I looked through his phone (something we are both allowed to do), honestly hoping it would make me feel stupid for even being paranoid in the first place, like maybe the ex texts were pushed down in the list or something and that was all, but they weren’t there. This fueled my suspicion, so I checked our cell phone bill (I know this makes me sound crazy) to see if I saw anything out of the ordinary, and noticed another ex (who I didn’t even know he talked to) had texed him and they’d had a six-day long conversation that was also nowhere on his phone. On top of all of this, he had also been making plans to meet up with another of his exes for drinks, but had said nothing to me about it, which went directly and completely against our agreement made in therapy. Yet, there he was making plans without my knowledge and even telling her it was “not a big deal” when she said he may want to discuss it with me first or invite me along.
I calmed myself down and did my best not to flip the *** out, telling myself this must all be a big misunderstanding. I brought my concerns to him rationally and calmly and told him I wanted to hear his explanation rather than jumping to conclusions. He apologized about the meetup plans and said he would have told me if they ever were actually going to meet up, but didn’t want me to stress over nothing if they never actually met up for drinks. He also apologized for deleting the messages from exes on his phone, and swears there was nothing said that was out of line, he just didn’t want me “reading into things” and felt it was better to just delete them. He also promised not to delete conversations again and regrets doing it, because now he has no proof that things were all above board in the messages. Nothing shady. Since he’s never given me any reason to doubt him before this, I agreed to move past it as long as he is completely transparent with me going forward. He agreed.
But, I haven’t really moved past this, Bees. I am afraid to look at his phone anymore, even to send a text for him, because I’m scared of what I will (or won’t) find. I still look at our cell phone bill randomly, however, so I do know that the ex I didn’t even know about texts him often, they chat all day long sometimes, and a lot of the texts are picture messages they send back and forth, sometimes even in the middle of the night. I also know he has talked to her on the phone several times, all of which are when I’m conveniently not home (when I leave for the store, while he’s at work, etc.), but *never* when I’m home, like he would do with his other exes.
I know in my gut something isn’t right, and I hate that. I also know I’m acting crazy by looking at phone records, and I don’t like being that person at all. It’s not who I am. But I am afraid to confront him with this again, because just the fact that I even look at phone records is enough to tell him i have not moved past it like I said I would, and that I don’t really trust him. I can’t deny either of those. I also know he will immediately become the martyr and say he’s not good at this, he’s screwing everything up, it’s not what it looks like, he wishes I would just trust him, etc.” and I’ll end up moving mountains to make him feel better and reassure him that everything is okay, as completely screwed up as that sounds.
I love him and I desperately want this to work, but I feel like there are sooooo many red flags here, and I can’t just ignore them anymore. I honestly do not know what to do. 🙁
