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 you really need to get over yourself. Get thee to therapy and stay away from women while you do it, no woman needs an angry jealous man.

OP I'd be fuming at the snooping. If he's really a decent guy why did he do it.

And good luck with your echo chamber of idiots how mature

@pinkyredrose

And good luck with your echo chamber of idiots how mature

An echo chamber except for the two insightful 'idiots' who agreed with him

Hi OP

I am sorry you must be really fed up of this. This is absolutely ridiculous and I really wouldn't stand for it.

I can completely understand that you were a different person back then and quite frankly it is none of his business what you got up to and what you said to whomever back then.

I think you need to erase everything from your old phones and get rid of them so that he cant keep getting upset about this. I would let him know that you are doing this and why.

I think he needs to accept that everyone has a past. It really isn't fair that he keeps punishing you for something you have done/said/ before you had even met.

I do think you need to talk about your sex life as I think its clear he does not seem happy with this and why he is getting so upset about these messages.

what a very frustrating situation... he had no right going through your phone.. new phone old phone it really makes no difference... he had no right...

His response to what he found is his own fault...

I have no sympathy for his snooping 🌺

Good old MN men/women hypocrisy at its finest on this thread

Everyone has a right to a past. If your talking 10 odd years ago and you've had dc since then, then of course you're a completely different person. Blimey, dc can have a massive impact on sex lives, plus if you're both submissive then neither of you are likely to take control which won't help.

Might be worth you both talking to someone about your sex lives. But your dh needs to get a grip! This really is a case of 'curiosity killed the car'

I have been in a similar position here. I think when the focus of "intimacy" is limited to the physical it can put pressure on you and make you want to do less of it.
Why not ask if you can make the starting point of intimacy outside of that. It sounds like you need more fun...build a bucket list together. Bake a cake blindfolded. Re-create your first date. Have a nerf gun war. Google the worst jokes you can find. Be kids again. And that spark will come back .

I was your DH in this scenario

5pForAPlasticBag No you weren't. OP's DH is getting himself in a tizz over decade old messages.

Sadly OP I don't think men so hung-up on the past/long ago ex-partners ever truly get over their insecurity. They'll revisit it for years until they kill your relationship, at which point they can say 'See, I was right you don't want me as you wanted them'.

I do think you should have deleted the messages but having said that - to find old messages via FB Messenger takes some doing, and a lot of time. It's not a case of blithely scrolling back, doesn't work like that. Especially to go back 10 years you can't just stick a date in and be rewound back.

& After the 1st time he sought out messages, whatever you do will not appease him anyway

He IS an arsehole.
It’s totally unreasonable to hold you up against this version of yourself THAT DOES NOT EXIST. It’s really not far from him being annoyed at you for something you did in a bad dream. It’s totally unfair and controlling. He CHOSE to go through your phone the second time knowing what he would find. He was LOOKING for a stick to beat you with. He needs to stop the silly games and grow the fuck up. Either he wants you as you are now or he can piss off.

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.

Nope!!! Seems to me that he’s just jealous that his partner is not the naughty minx with him, that she was in those messages from 10 years ago. He assumed she wasn’t like that, because she’d never been like that with him, and he was just fine with that UNTIL he went snooping and read those messages.

All those messages prove is that she was like that once, she is not that person now, and that’s fine people change. However he does not seem to recognise that what she has with him is so much better, deeper and more important (considering she’s spent 5 years of her life with him and had his child) instead he’s all butt hurt that she’s not the sexual minx he thinks she was a decade ago!!

Honestly I would be so angry if I was OP, if he had issues over intimacy he could have brought that up and discussed it and made an effort to improve things. Making her feel bad for messages she sent a decade ago, long before she ever met him will do nothing but make things worse because she can’t be what she was 10 ago and I sorely suspect that’s what he really wants.

I agree with those saying he's manipulative. If someone read my old diaries and tried to throw what I'd written in my face, it would be unforgivable.

@5pForAPlasticBag. If you could stand back, as a 90 year old couple, looking at your lives, would you think it might have been worth you making an effort to make both of you enjoy a fulfilling happy sex life?

Your passive-aggressive punishment of her is cutting off your nose to spite her face. You have made a declaration that nothing she does can make any difference to your determination to be miserable for life, and to stay in her life and ensure she gets no happiness either.

And that, 90 year old you will say, was a triumph?

Get over yourself. The things you declare are just that, declarations. There is nothing unchangeable. You are deliberately refusing to attempt a full and happy relationship. You have declared that even if and when, with you, she lets you see she is excited and passionate, you will choose, and it is a deliberate choice, to declare to yourself and to her that she is 'faking' .

I cannot think of a good analogy. The nearest I can get is to suppose you both would love good food, both would be willing to cook, either together or sometimes one cooking to delight the other. And yet, because she once cooked for and with another man, you have declared both of you must go without any home cooked food. That there is no point her making any effort to get round your lifelong ban or change your hurtful, pain inflicting, life-damaging mind. That you have decided and announced in advance, no matter what, that you will invariably sneer at anything she does cook, or anything you cook together.

P.S. She is staying for the sake of the children, but also for the sake of her marriage to you. If all she wanted is a raging sex life with every man she sets eyes on except you, she would have left long ago.

In the end, you will destroy the relationship and when you have achieved the empty 'triumph' you are putting so much effort into, by forcing her to go, you will sit back alone and bitter and convinced you have proved yourself right.

Wrong.

You will have thrown away the love of a good woman. Mother of your offspring. Life partner. What's more, a potential sex bomb. Work at your marriage, and especially your sex life, you foolish foolish man.

@5pForAPlasticBag

I was your DH in this scenario.

I’m sorry to say, that for me, it has eaten away inside me for most of our relationship and intimacy has become toxic between us because of it. The details were that she faked every orgasm with me for 6 years then had an affair and I found her diary detailing the multiple orgasms she had with her AP and how uncontrollable her attraction was for him. You read stuff like that and a part of you you never knew existed breaks. She did what you did - claimed it was exaggeration and that she was lost in the whirlwind of an affair. It didn’t wash then and it doesn’t wash now.

When you sense that a woman is capable of operating at such a high level of lust and sexual drive with other men - just not you - you feel like a failure beyond redemption. You feel like you’re a convenience, a compromise, a sperm donor, an ATM and a social accessory. It has blighted all aspects of my life: my relationship with her, my friends, my career, my family. I stayed because I fell for the commonly touted lie that a bit of counselling and talking and time would restore trust and intimacy. I fully invested in all that but it failed. Nothing she can say can convince me she is attracted to me. When we rarely have sex I’m not into it. It feels like pity - she says it’s not - and I feel worse afterwards. Even if she could summon up the genuine enthusiasm to be the sexual person with me that she was for him, I’d assume it was an act. I fantasise about never having met her even though we are a “magazine cover perfect” family of 4.

Don’t underestimate the impact this has on him. I don’t have any advice on how to fix it. Not sure if it actually can be.

No you weren't

I would tell him that in future that any discussions about your current levels of intimacy or sex life or closeness are not to include any references to your past sex life which is completely irrelevant and not helping anyone.

Whether he intends to be manipulative or not the effects are still the same so that's not acceptable.

God, the incels are even coming on mumsnet now.

I don’t see how 5P said anything to imply women should have sex they don’t want?

I actually agree with his sentiment, and my DH felt the same about perceived relationships of mine that never actually happened. He thought I’d had sex with one of his friends (his friend told him we had for some reason) and he was insanely jealous over a complete lie. Nothing could convince him otherwise, but I HAD previously been attracted to this friend, and he knew this, and so assumed this friend was the one I really wanted.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel that you are the one your partner wants.

I think the issue with what Osirus said is that he's completely sympathising with what the OP's partner is feeling, while not really offering any advice or acknowledging that this is the OP's partners problem to solve.

He's clearly able to put himself in the partners shoes but there isn't any empathy for the OP. He didn't share any advice for what the OP might be able to do to help, really most of it should fall on her partner and she should support him....but if you just share a story about how completely awful he must be feeling and just keep repeating that then that can make the OP feel like shit and feel pressure to perhaps force herself to do things she doesn't want to do just so he feels lusted after!
She will have her own negative feelings and thoughts and emotions on this and her feelings are just as important as his!

If he couldn't deal with this years ago then he should have left, not just let him eat him up.

Also the OP has said that they are both quite submissive, that kind of dynamic is probably the least likely dynamic to ever inspire much lust. Surely he should realise that? If one of them was more dominant then it would be easier to have that passionate dynamic but he seems to want it all to fall to her because it doesn't sound like he is doing much to create that lust, he once sent her a picture of something and felt knocked back and never tried again....that's his issue. He can't blame everything on her past because it's simply not her fault and he can't wait for her to fix the problems that he has in his own head!

Sorry that should have said the issue with what 5P said!!

I think the pp has the point covered , how do you move forward from this?

You clearly love this man, have chosen to have children with him, therefor he is special. He should not have looked through old phones, I don't know many men that could be arsed with doing that.

He obviously want's to be 'your world', christ that's what many women want to be no 1, his insecurties are there because he loves you and doesn't want to loose you and your connection.
There are many men who loose their confidence just as many women do.
Is it a crime to reassure someone that they are loved and wanted, without throwing accusations that someone is demanding sex, intimacy is important for both sexes, unless there is mutual agreement and security that ends that, especially with younger couples.

Move forward, in time he will forget, reassure him, and maybe in the future if some life event throws you into a similar state of lacking in confidence, he will be there to catch you and lift you up.

Be kind to one another.

Exactly the same issue here. The way partner feels, not the phone.

Previously, he's seen contact between myself and other people. That and stories he's had from me (all that he asked for) have left him with this lingering insecurity.

We're a family unit. We have a baby in the same room as us. He expects me to be the person I was when I was 18 and single and had a massive drinking problem.

He sees it as a reflection of my desire for him but genuinely it's a reflection of my love for him. I much rather the deep intimacy I have with him to the throw away nights of passion I've had with others.

All you can do is reassure.

And delete the messages. Stop allowing him to shop for pain.