He’s talking to “an old friend” and i cant deal

[AnonymousMama1]

I have nobody to talk to about this and im probably going to sound like a terrible person but I can’t help feeling the way i feel.

So my partner of almost 4 years (we have a young son together) has “reconnected” with a female friend that he hasnt spoken to in maybe 9-10 years. She is single with 1 kid.

They spent 2 days constantly messaging between fb messenger and snapchat and he told me that he spoke to her for about an hour the other day when he was out walking the dog (but i looked at his call logs and it was more like 2 hours). Now usually im not bothered by him talking to other women but there is something that makes me uneasy about this.
I have spoken to him about how i feel and he says he understands but thinks im being unreasonable. He says i dont trust him and no matter how many times i say i trust him but i dont know her, whats shes like or her intentions he brings it back that i dont trust him.
He says he has told her about me and “how serious we are” and that if she tried anything he would reject her.

I know they “miss talking to each other” within a short time of not messaging and i can see when i search her on fb that she once posted “love u” to him on a msg telling him how handsome he looked in a picture and he replied with love u too and a tongue poking out face. And he has told me that they send each other hearts in messages.

He told me that he has said to her that we had a big fight and that he wouldn’t talk to her for a few days and “she understands and can talk to her anytime, shes not going anywhere”.

Im just so uneasy about it all and the more i try to think about it all makes me feel worse and its driving me crazy. Ive tried to push it aside but in my mind i just cant make myself feel ok with everything and it doesnt matter what he says.

For the last 3 days we have barely spoken and i have been feeling physically sick due to this. Im talking nausea and alternating between diahorrea and constipation (tmi i know, sorry) i have also barely eaten.

How would you feel about this if you were in my place?
And please dont be too hard on me, im in a really dark place right now and feeling extra sensitive.
Thanks for listening.

Sorry to say but I think your being played. If he can't see the upset and anxiety this is causing you he must be some sort of selfish sod investing so much time in this other woman. As his partner you and your child should come first and be his number one priority.
He's obviously quite besotted and taken with this other woman. All this let's play 'happy families' bullshit and go out for dinner is just a farce. Personally I'd say it's her or me...I wouldn't stand for it. You had a life and a relationship before this woman came along and if he still wants one then knock it head.

Start a WhatsApp group and invite them both in and you can all chat together. She’s already expressed interest in wanting to meet you.
Give her the opportunity right here and now (Covid rules) to do so virtually.

Women aren’t stupid, she knows she shouldn’t be constantly messaging a man who has a partner and child, particularly if she knows it makes you feel uneasy.
So because she’s ignoring that, I wouldn’t have her as a friend. And neither should your partner. He should be putting your feelings over her’s every time ; you’re his partner and mother of his child.

Start a WhatsApp group and invite them both in and you can all chat together. She’s already expressed interest in wanting to meet you.

This is a great idea and their response to your suggestion should tell you all you need to know.

Thankyou everyone.
Its nice to know that its not just me and many others feel the same.
I will be having a talk with him later tonight when both kids are in bed (our baby is but not my daughter) and have written down a list of things to talk about to try and remain calm without getting too emotional.

You don't say love u to your friends. You say it to your loved family members.
Friends do use hugs, kisses and love emojis but it's a bit different.

I think number one - reverse it with ‘how would you feel if I did - heart emojis, love u’s , 2 hour conversations, deleted texts, texting loads while sat with you , discussing our arguments - all with a guy who had been back in my life less than 2 weeks . Please remind him of the fact you had to cut contact with a guy previously because he felt uncomfortable! If he said that it’s fine if you did all this - it’s total bs . Show him the responses on here that for 99.9% of us that is not okay at all!
I like the idea of either totally cutting this woman off as obv toxic
Otherwise , dialling down massively the contact or setting up a whatsapp group . Although he may text and ring her outside of this .
I had a male friend , we kissed once years before I met dh but it made dh so uncomfortable ( as he thought the guy liked me and I think in retrospect that was true) I did just dial down the contact and the friendship just kind of petered out . I did that for dh and because he was on edge and it was wrecking our relationship. If he did the same for every male friend I wouldn’t have that but the fact it was this particular one - I understood . Dh was more important than me being stubborn or whatever . I certainly wouldn’t be putting up a fight like this to stay in contact with someone I reconnected with for a couple of weeks ! X

@Awomanwalksintoabar

He’s the one “throwing everything away”. The reason you can’t make yourself feel ok with this is because it’s not ok. You’ve been very clear that him dedicating time and energy to another woman upsets you, but he’s prioritising his conversations with her over your happiness. Other people are more qualified to advise what you should do next. But I just wanted to come on and say: you’re not wrong to feel this way, so don’t bother to twist yourself in knots trying to reconcile yourself with it. Feelings validated! Rant away. It must be incredibly frustrating.

^^100% this

Good luck Op.
I had a similar incident in the early stages of the relationship with my husband. It was a work mate who called continuously. He stopped returning calls after a few weeks of the nonsense and years later he said he realised that I was quite prepared to walk. I wasn’t upset or angry just coldly detaching. It wasn’t good enough.
It can be turned at this stage but there is no room in a marriage or relationship for ‘friends’ who clearly have intentions to cause trouble.
Be strong !

He says he has told her about me and “how serious we are” and that if she tried anything he would reject her.

I don’t go around telling people if they tried it on I would reject them? Surely this is a lie that he even said that or he thinks she would try it on? X

He’s going to talk to her no matter what or he wouldn’t be trying to make you feel better.
he’s ‘focusing you on’ that good of him not like your his partner or anything.
He sounds abit of a knob to me.

To be honest I'd end the relationship over this. No ultimatums, just end it. To me he is clearly violating the boundaries of what I have in a normal relationship. I couldn't live with the uncertainty of at what point he started to share personal things with her that stopped him from confiding in me and started to pull away from me towards her. If he wants a friend I'd be expecting him to reconnect with men or couple friends or a therapist if he needs to talk.

If it looks like a turd, feels like a turd and smells like a turd, it's a turd.
You know something isn't right

I’ve read all your updates @AnonymousMama1 and it sounds like an emotional relationship. He sounds very defensive. Don’t let him gaslight you.

The Snap chatting is odd. How old is he and did he frequently use Snapchat before getting in contact with this old friend? Most people don’t send kisses and hearts and “I love you” to friends of the opposite sex.

He’s overstepped your boundaries. I hope your talk goes well.

So he's willing to choose talking to someone he hasn't spoken to in years over his partner? that's basically it. It would be over for me. You deserve so much better.

So i asked him about the i love u from 10 years ago. He said he was single at the time and he “loves her as a friend”
I asked if he has told her that now and he said he has reminded her that he does. But hasnt told me the exact wording.
I feel even worse.

Huh? So he said ‘I love you’ 10 years ago and his justification is ‘i was single’... so was it a non friendship love then? Seems so.

So why is he still saying it? He loves her as a friend now hmmm .. someone he just started speaking to about five minutes ago . Does he tell his male friends he loves them too. Come on . This is total crap . I’d be showing him the door now , his explanations just dig him deeper .

Reading this has made me so angry. He is completely out of order. This is not innocent at all. Hearts, ‘love u’s speaking on the phone for 2 hours. This is not an appropriate friendship of the opposite sex. Emotional affair written all over it. She’s blatantly sending posed pics of herself. He shouldn’t be this close to someone of the opposite sex. This is not a friendship this is blatantly on the cusp of an affair. How dare he try and make you feel unreasonable. Throwing the old ‘my ex was controlling about friends’ card in your face. Men have a terrible habit of making out like women are ‘crazy’, ‘controlling’, ‘manipulative’, ‘psycho’ for rightly objecting to out of order behaviour. They think if they can keep a paper thin cover of friendship over it then they can’t be called out on it. He doesn’t respect you and he doesn’t value your feelings. He’s straying. He’s accepting and enjoying her advances. He’s leading her on. I would leave. Don’t take his bullshit OP. Stand up yourself and hold your head high. You deserve better. Holding your hand x

Ah @gannett, you have the same confidence I had 6 months ago in my own double figures relationship... we're now in counselling because the "just a new friend" was in fact someone coming on to him, which he lied and gaslit me about for weeks before confessing in dribs and drabs that yes, he had kept it from me, ended up instigating chat and playing on her obvious feelings for him. He slipped into it and didn't go looking, sure, but this is often the cheater's way. Add in a "lovely" new woman egging them on and normalising the whole thing and hey presto... If you are not normally jealous of his female friends OP then I say go with your gut. Book some counselling, he should be happy to talk it over with a third party if he is invested in you and solving this issue.

OP always trust your instincts, if something about this friendship is making you uncomfortable then there will be a reason why.

There is nothing wrong with sitting your DP down and saying ‘look this situation has made me feel very uncomfortable, you need to end the friendship’

If he decides that he doesn’t want to end the friendship or gets the hump about being given an ‘ultimatum’ then he isn’t that bothered about you anyway and you would be better off without him (sorry because that sounds really dismissive of your feelings but trust me it’s true)

And can I just say to the posters who always come on to say ‘I have lots of male friends so you should be ok with this’ why don’t you have a think about why you are so invested in getting other people to ignore their instincts. Our instincts exist for a purpose and we need to learn to listen to them.

So sorry you are going through this OP, sounds so stressful. A few (somewhat contrasting) thoughts I had:

• when you reconnect with an old friend (of either gender) the messaging often does in my experience start off quite intensely, as there is a lot to catch up on, and usually calms down after a while.

• however, there ARE limits. I have male friends I message quite a bit, but not all day every day, - I wouldn’t spend a whole evening sitting next to my partner doing it for example. It would be more likely just a bit when I was bored on a train journey or something. I can see it feels like he is neglecting you for her.

• he sounds like he DOES have lots of female friends, so it’s not like he is a “man’s man” suddenly displaying a close friendship with a woman for the first time (that really would be worrying),

• I do say “I love you” to close friends, actually, of both genders, but I am quite unusually verbally effusive generally. Is he?

Overall, really really hard to say whether you have anything to worry about or not, but my instincts would be not that he’s cheating/looking to cheat, but that he is still being unkind spending SO much time messaging her when he could and should be spending some time hanging out with you!

If he showed you all the messages would you feel better? He might not want to do that of course - I wouldn’t be happy if a partner asked to see my messages to a friend, because they are personal and the friend might be telling me confidential stuff, for example...... But you could ask him again about this if it would help you, see how he feels.

What a tangle - really hope you are ok. X

I think TriflePudding has given you excellent advice.
I agree too about the folly of advising people to dismiss gut instincts. Your instincts sound spot on OP.

My husband was messaging a work colleague, at weekends too, always a kiss at the end of a message too, she sent him a passage from ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ too, that was the last straw and I told him I was not happy or comfortable with it and told him to stop. If he refused to stop, that would have been the end of our marriage quite frankly. Female friends are fine but there’s a line you don’t cross. If both parties are becoming over invested messaging each other that’s a huge red flag for me. Make sure you set some boundaries within your marriage.

@AnonymousMama1 I’m so sorry this is happening.
I agree wholeheartedly with @TriflePudding here.
Good luck to you.

Out of curiosity, is she recently single? And who got in touch with who?