I’m 25 and my boyfriend is 26. We’ve just celebrated our 3rd anniversary and everything in our lives is so far going well. I love him, feel comfortable around him like I have with nobody else, trust him and genuinely feel like he’s my closest friend. We’re almost inseparable and have a healthy communication style (for context, he’s also my first boyfriend).
There’d been no problems in our relationship or reason for me to doubt his trust, up until June of this year. He went away to another city for a couple of nights with two of his friends - they went to a concert and stayed together in an apartment. Anyway, he came home and all was normal - I didn’t think anything of it.
A couple of days later, I had a strange inkling. I don’t know why exactly, but I just thought I’d check his phone out (some may think this is wrong, and yes I can admit that I invaded his privacy). He’d been talking about his weekend non-stop and came home on such a high, showing me pictures of all the people he’d met and hung out with and how much fun they’d all had.
Anyway, I looked through his messages and saw a conversation thread with his best friend on WhatsApp, who also accompanied him on the trip. There was a girl - let’s refer to her as ‘Hannah’ (not her real name) - who he’d met early hours of the day he was due to drive home. They met after the concert, as they’d all be out drinking and roaming the streets. There were 6 of them in total - my boyfriend and his two pals, and ‘Hannah’ and her two friends.
On the message thread, my boyfriend was confiding in his best friend. Referring to ‘Hannah’, he said that he wanted to reach out to her and have her as a pen-pal and was worried about whether or not he should text her, thinking it could be wrong of him. Her full name and work address was stored in a locked note on his phone, and he said he was considering sending a gift to her work address with his return address on it, so that she could send something back. He was talking to his friend about them all potentially meeting up, and going to visit her and her friends at her work place (a casino in another city). To top it off, he said he was confused about the way he feels and that he “falls in love at the drop of a hat”.
When I read these messages, my stomach turned. I felt angry, silly and betrayed. I confronted him immediately and didn’t speak to or see him for 4 days. He slept outside my house in his car, would constantly call and text, and begged for a chance to explain himself. The thought of him losing me made him spiral. Anyway, we talked about it and I won’t get into the nitty gritty of if it all, but things are seemingly fine now. However, I just cannot stop thinking about it. I guess the doubt has been implemented and it’ll always be there - what happens if another girl gives him attention and he becomes entangled? I don’t think he would have cheated on me if he went to visit ‘Hannah’ and her friends, but I do think he would have become infatuated and wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about her.
What do you guys think? I don’t know how to feel, really. When I wrote about him wanting to send her a gift, he actually asked me how he’d go about posting it, pretending that it was going to one of his old work mates who moved to another company. Any advice would be helpful.