Partner went through old phone.. again

[doireallyneedaname]

My partner and I have been together for five years and share a 1 year old.

A few years ago he went through an old phone of mine and saw some historic text exchanges between myself and other men that quite frankly, made him feel like shit. I was a different person back then with the main difference being I was a very open sexually and was a huge flirt.

Anyway, yesterday evening I noticed something was off with my partner and found out he’d been through another old phone going over the same messages.

He was in tears saying that it’s clear I just don’t want him the way I did those other guys, because I don’t talk to him like I did them, or act the same way.

I reminded him some of those messages were a decade ago but he says he feels jealous that I had all these wild experiences with other men and have no desire to do anything similar with him.

Our sex life is pretty standard; although it’s definitely decreased over the last couple of years. Once a month, maybe.

The thing is, we are both quite submissive and I am sure he wants me to make the suggestions. Last night he told me he’d once sent me a photo of something a bit frisky and I ignored it, so he didn’t try again. He said he felt knocked back, but I can’t even remember the photo nor did I know that was an attempt at suggesting that whatever it was.

He says we are not close intimately anymore and that it’s clear I’m just not attracted to him. I am, but I have a lot of anxiety surrounding other issues which he knows about, and honestly that overrules everything and leaves no real desire for any intimacy.

I feel bad but equally I can’t understand why he’s comparing me today to who I was 10 years ago.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

I should add he is a very loving and caring partner, a far cry from my previous relationships which were awful. He said “ do I have to be an arsehole to make you want me” and that makes me sad because he’s such a sensitive, sweet soul. The dynamic is different between us and the people in the conversations he read, I didn’t love those people and I was just a young girl showing off and talking rubbish.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

@5pForAPlasticBag

How is feeling of sexual inadequacy false equivalence?

Your feeling of sexual inadequacy is due to you discovering messages in which your partner was telling someone you weren't sexually satisfying her.

OP's partner's feelings of sexual inadequacy are due to him reading private correspondence in which she expressed enjoying sexual relationships she was in at the time. Before she met him.

Again I'm so sorry you've gone through what you have but it's so, so very different from OP's situation.

@SoupDragon

The messages he read were on Facebook messenger so they go back years.

But why? Just delete them. Unless you are keeping them for a reason, I don't understand why you didn't delete them when this first came up and he said how they made him feel.

If it was a man who had "kept" messages like that he would be slaughtered on here.

But is OP partner the type of guy that will see no messages and come to the conclusion that she deleted them because she was having an affair? Is he the type to find fault no matter what OP does?

OP I think some counseling would help, he needs to see the impact his behaviour is having on you, you cannot be expected to consent to sex acts you don't want to just to boost his self esteem, he is being manipulating. I think counseling for your anxiety would help and only after that would I suggest couples counseling to get your marriage on track.

I couldn’t be with a man like this. Not only should he not be looking through your phones he sounds as masculine as a wet paper towel.

Such a turn off.

@ravenmum

“do I have to be an arsehole to make you want me” Sounds like someone who believes them nasty women are out to treat the Nice Guys like him like shit. In my experience, men who come up with this "women only like arseholes so I have no chance" stuff are resentful and bitter in other areas of their life - it is a personality trait - and their claim to being nice is highly questionable.

This x 100

@Whatisthisfuckery

OP, ask your partner what his desired outcome is here. I can guarantee it is sex. Is this a healthy way to get the sex you want in a relationship? Has this episode made you feel like you want sex? The answer is no, but the reality is that you now feel obliged to offer sex to fix it, hence you are being guilted and coerced.

Why are other posters not seeing this? Why is a man’s feeling of entitlement to sex taking priority over a woman’s right not to be guilted and coerced into sex? FFS!

And this..

@5pForAPlasticBag

        <strong>This is corrosive knowledge</strong> 

well he shouldn’t have snooped then.

I think you’re in a no win situation Op . If you spice up your sex life he’ll probably complain that you’re doing things that you did with previous partners.

Ew, ew, ew.
Reading your old messages which have nothing to do with him and then guilt tripping and manipulating you into feeling guilty about something you did TEN YEARS AGO?!
Vile.

@BumbleBiscuit

I couldn’t be with a man like this. Not only should he not be looking through your phones he sounds as masculine as a wet paper towel.

Such a turn off.

Agreed.

@5pForAPlasticBag

I didn’t claim my experience is exactly as the OPs. Mine involved betrayal whereas hers does not. Where it is similar is that he is judging himself against her previous lovers and specifically her sexual persona with those men. He feels insecure because, on the evidence he is presented with, he is “less” in her eyes than they were. He fails to spark the same lustful response as her previous partners. This is corrosive knowledge.

In what way is any of this her responsibility?

He went through her personal messages from ten years ago. She did not know him at the time. She owed him nothing then. If my partner tried to make out I was making them feel “sexually inadequate” for something I did a decade ago I would flip. I’m sorry, but that’s basically trying to force her to apologise and feel bad for something she did before she even knew him, when he made the choice to go looking for the messages - again!

Hi all, thanks for the replies.

We have spoken about it and he has said he knows it’s irrational, he’s embarrassed that he went through the phone again and he did it because he was already feeling down and unwanted. I have to say I do understand him feeling unwanted as i haven’t been very affectionate as of late due to other worries, especially given the pandemic!

To those that think he is one of life’s arseholes, he really isn’t - which is what makes this so much harder. He’s a loving, giving partner and wonderful father and he looks after us all emotionally and otherwise very well.

I don’t know where we go from here, but I’m going to try and show him a bit more affection so that he hopefully realises I do want him around.

Why should OP (or any person for that matter) delete their past?

Nobody else has a right to access those private messages / fotos / information on whatever medium.

If they do, their problem to solve. It is not one persons job to prop up sb elses ego unless they want to become a carer instead of a partner.

I admit I haven’t rtft...
Is this about him fearing that he isn’t meeting tour needs now, or about the fact that you are not the same as were before him? When I read it, it resonated, as I am totally not the person I was 10 years ago-pre dc, pre this relationship- and if me and my partner were in your situation, I would be saying “this isn’t about you: this is about me and how I’ve changed. You and I live here and now.”

I think it’s his fear that he “doesn’t do it for me” - when in reality he’s a different person that I’m with at a different time of my life!

I have to say I do understand him feeling unwanted as i haven’t been very affectionate as of late due to other worries, especially given the pandemic!

Not least of all the fact you have a one year old baby! If he feels you aren't being affectionate enough, he needs to be adult enough to communicate that to you in a less passive aggressive and invasive way than rifling through your private, personal, previous correspondence and saying horrible shit like “do I have to be an arsehole to make you want me”.

You're sad for him you say, so you are clearly a kind, loving and patient person. Most people would be cross with him for both his actions and reactions, especially when he made that comment so I would make sure you aren't letting his mental health take priority over yours just because he is sensitive / quick to tears.

You have a life previous to your one with his. You have a one year old baby and are living in the middle of an incredibly stressful global pandemic so your sex life and affection have taken a hit. He could do with being more understanding, not you.

You can harp on about invasion of privacy and entitlement to a past etc etc as much as you like. The issue is one one of sexual jealousy and whether you like it or not, it is a very real phenomena and a factor in human nature since the dawn of time. Is it reasonable in the OP’s case? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it self inflicted? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it worsened by the current sexual drought the couple are in or is the sexual drought serving to heighten the sense of insecurity on his part? To an extent it doesn’t really matter. He feels the way he feels and has written evidence and a poor sex life with his wife to support his hypothesis - right or wrong - that she views him as not enough in that very intimate, eye vulnerable respect.

Some people seem to think that if every other aspect of your relationship is good, a less than spectacular sex-life is totally fine. That may work for some. It doesn’t work for all. We tend to focus on what doesn’t work. Look at someone who eats healthy, doesn’t drink or smoke, does ninja-level yoga and is generally as fit and healthy as a racehorse. If that person developed tooth ache, do you think they would simply be able to ignore it simply because the other 99% of them was Gwenyth Paultrow healthy?

I get what you’re saying 5p but the husband looking through the Op’s phone was the catalyst for this .

Or was it the drought they are in that made him look through the phone. It isn’t clear.

@5pForAPlasticBag

You can harp on about invasion of privacy and entitlement to a past etc etc as much as you like. The issue is one one of sexual jealousy and whether you like it or not, it is a very real phenomena and a factor in human nature since the dawn of time. Is it reasonable in the OP’s case? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it self inflicted? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it worsened by the current sexual drought the couple are in or is the sexual drought serving to heighten the sense of insecurity on his part? To an extent it doesn’t really matter. He feels the way he feels and has written evidence and a poor sex life with his wife to support his hypothesis - right or wrong - that she views him as not enough in that very intimate, eye vulnerable respect.

Some people seem to think that if every other aspect of your relationship is good, a less than spectacular sex-life is totally fine. That may work for some. It doesn’t work for all. We tend to focus on what doesn’t work. Look at someone who eats healthy, doesn’t drink or smoke, does ninja-level yoga and is generally as fit and healthy as a racehorse. If that person developed tooth ache, do you think they would simply be able to ignore it simply because the other 99% of them was Gwenyth Paultrow healthy?

This doesn't excuse him for snooping ,not just once but twice.

This does not mean he gets to coerce and manipulate the op into meeting the need that he feels is not being met .

You sound very bitter about your own relationship which you are projecting onto the op situation . In fact you are persistently trying to change the narrative and manipulate it to fit your own resentment .

I disagree. Both that he is being coercive and manipulative and that I am projecting. He is is emotional distress and he wants the dynamic in his relationship to change. He doesn’t sound to me that he simply wants sex on tap. He wants his wife to want him and to for him to feel that she does, genuinely and authentically and to the fullness of her capacity. If that’s manipulative and coercive then I need to get a different dictionary.

And as for snooping. If he were to come to the view that he was wrong to do that, would that suddenly erase what he thinks he knows?

@5pForAPlasticBag

Or was it the drought they are in that made him look through the phone. It isn’t clear.

Mate, he had looked through the phone before. He knew what he was going to find. Them not having sex doesn’t excuse it. Sorry, but I do not feel like “sexual jealousy” is an excuse to invade your partner’s private stuff and make them feel guilty for something they did ten years ago. Gross

He shouldn’t have looked through your phone. Not saying he is a dick - I have done it before myself - but eaves-droppers never hear anything they want to......

But more importantly, you say you are both submissive? Then, in my honest experience, sexually speaking, this ain’t ever going to work......,

Sorry, you sound lovely OP, and I wish you well! Xxx

@5pForAPlasticBag

You can harp on about invasion of privacy and entitlement to a past etc etc as much as you like. The issue is one one of sexual jealousy and whether you like it or not, it is a very real phenomena and a factor in human nature since the dawn of time. Is it reasonable in the OP’s case? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it self inflicted? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Is it worsened by the current sexual drought the couple are in or is the sexual drought serving to heighten the sense of insecurity on his part? To an extent it doesn’t really matter. He feels the way he feels and has written evidence and a poor sex life with his wife to support his hypothesis - right or wrong - that she views him as not enough in that very intimate, eye vulnerable respect.

Some people seem to think that if every other aspect of your relationship is good, a less than spectacular sex-life is totally fine. That may work for some. It doesn’t work for all. We tend to focus on what doesn’t work. Look at someone who eats healthy, doesn’t drink or smoke, does ninja-level yoga and is generally as fit and healthy as a racehorse. If that person developed tooth ache, do you think they would simply be able to ignore it simply because the other 99% of them was Gwenyth Paultrow healthy?

Harp on? It's a discussion forum. You're projecting hugely and repeatedly, you are understandably very angry about what happened to you and I said more than once that I feel for you and that it was a horrible thing to go through. People expressing their opinion more than once does not equal 'harping on'. If it did, you would be quite the hypocrite!

I hope you can find some peace with what happened to you, I do know how awful it is to be betrayed. It's not fair to always use insecurity as a free pass to do things like invade privacy and then claim a sort of chicken / egg defence the insecure person is never accountable for own behaviour.

Jealous and insecurity happen with or without betrayal. It is clear this fella suffers from insecurity and the imagined images that go through his head of his wife’s past (compared to their shared present) are still painful.
When women on MN complain about their spouse suddenly giving them ‘The Ick’, the almost unanimous response is that there is no coming back from that. I proffer that feelings of inadequacy is something of a male equivalent and sadly I think once that notion takes hold it comes to define the man - at least in that relationship - and coming back from that is a hard journey. In my case an impossible one. That’s not to say others wouldn’t be able to.
The OPs spouse may well have gone ‘pain shopping’ by snooping you can argue that yes, but the fact is that he views his wife as being a vibrant and enthusiastic sexual being with others that she cannot be with him. The OP doesn’t say what their sex life was like before children so unless they were swinging from the chandeliers she can’t claim that motherhood has changed her. If that was the case, I’m sure she’d have used that line of argument already with him. Look - having an unremarkable sex-life is one thing. Having an unremarkable sex-life when you think you have concrete proof that your spouse is a bedroom tigress with others...that’s a very bitter pill. You turn that knowledge in on yourself and swing between depression and anger because you just can’t reconcile not being enough for someone you love. Shakespeare got famous writing about this stuff. It’s just how thinks work I’m afraid.