Snooped again and feeling worse than ever

[Boatinggirl27]

I posted on here a while ago, been with partner around 9 months. Not sure how to link my previous thread?

in a nutshell, when we started dating he’d told me about an ‘old friend’ who he’d known many years ago and how she’d gone quiet on him when he’d told her he was dating me? She is very vocal on his social media pages, birthdays etc telling him
how much she loves him. A few months ago she popped up on his phone on messenger. He doesn’t know I saw it. I didn’t know they were still in touch so shocked me a little as last he’d mentioned she’d gone ‘radio silent’ and how that was ‘good enough for me’ and how she’s a bit bonkers?

I did a really stupid thing snd snooped again. YES I KNOW I SHOULDNT!!! I really do know I shouldn’t but I have trust issues and this whole scenario made me doubt him.

his marriage broke up nearly two years ago and he’s told me how since, he’s thought about me constantly. Told me how he’d wanted to ask me out a lot earlier than he did.

I looked back at the messages with this woman and late last year they were sharing VERY flirty messages. Apparently he’d stayed with her 20 odd years ago when he went around the world backpacking. She lives on another continent but they obviously know each other from when she lived in his home town all those years ago? These messages suggest they never kissed or slept together and how he’s gutted it never happened. She mentioned how he’d left her ‘high and dry’ or something like that? She suggests he moves over to where she lives he’s said don’t tempt me and only if she’s waiting naked!!! Also he calls her by her first name and his last name!

I know I shouldn’t have snooped but I don’t know how to move on???

And you haven't been open about the fact you've looked through his private messages, including ones that predate when you were even together!

OP this is not a healthy relationship.

You're nine months in.

No financial, parenting or property ties at all.

It is absolute madness to stay with him when you think he's lying by omission and can't get over it... while you're absolutely doing the same thing with a dollop of invasion of privacy on top.

Do you want to be in that kind of relationship? Because that's what this relationship is like.

Does he hide that he is messaging her though? If you needed to use his phone would he be anxious about it?

I don’t know about everyone my DP messages and vice versa. That is because we trust each other. If that changed I’d be out, because once the trust is gone then that’s it for me.
Life is too short to tie yourself up in knots over someone you have only been with for 9 months.

The thing is, if I can get my head around this, everything else is great. We get on, are attracted to each other, he’s everything I want. I just can’t get past this!!

@Shallysally i often use his phone for example if mine is on charge and I want to Google something. He doesn’t bother.

What's your plan then @Boatinggirl27?

To stay with him and intermittently secretly read his private messages when you feel anxious?

There is not one single red flag about this relationship from his behaviour, he fancied someone, he met you, he stopped flirting with her, told her about you and yes, didn’t give you the whole story but who cares. He didn’t need to as you know he’s not doing anything behind your back

you on the other hand are snooping on his phone….

I’ve been with my partner 2 years: I have no idea of his phone password, I have no interest. He does speak to the girl he was seeing before me, I couldn’t care less. He’s with me; I’ll trust him unless he actually does something he shouldn’t

Is it a deal breaker, because if you can’t get past it then sounds like it is.

I don’t know what lie you are seeing here. You didn’t think he literally thought of nothing but you did you? He wasn’t with you, he can’t see into the future, he was single, he was entitled to look around, talk to and flirt with other people.

You are going to drive him away with your possessiveness and jealousy. If you were the man here, everybody would see massive red flags and be telling the other party that they needed to run for the hills.

@Energeticenoch thank you for your reply. Yes you are right he has stopped the flirty messages but since we have been together he is still in touch with her, asking how she is, telling her about his divorce etc. when we first got together he was telling her how he still needed to hear from her as she was there for him, how he loved her (albeit he said as a friend).

OP you have had so many responses to this. But still you are choosing to seee what you want to see.

Is he cheating, no.
Has he done anything wrong, no.
Do you need to walk away and consider your approach to relationships, yes.

You are not ready to be in a relationship OP.

Seriously, you have problems with trust, with boundaries (and I mean crossing other peoples), and with understanding normal relationships. You feel everything is a threat and because it is everything, you do not know where to look first or what to do or how to cope. You are trying to make the threat go away, but in fact the problem is that you feel threatened, not that there is actually anything real threatening you.

If you were a bloke, your gf would be on here posting about how controlling you are. This is controlling behaviour, OP. Yes, you. You are wanting your partner to behave in a certain way all the time because you are deeply afraid and insecure, but no matter what he does you will carry on feeling that. You will have to keep checking, keep on testing him, and you will keep on being afraid.

You actually say "I don't know how to feel". That is true btw - you have no idea exactly what it is that you are feeling because it so totally consumes you, and you have no framework to know or understand what a normal you might feel. You will keep yourself on high alert by obsessing over tiny details of the normal conversation between two normal old friends and trying to rationalise your pathological feelings of insecurity with their utterly normal, banal texts.

If you don't want to live your life like this, if you have some small part of you that can recognise how exhausted and unhappy you are because your life is always like this, then get some help. Find the best therapist that you can afford, that you can trust and work with, and start to put your life on track.

Thank you for all your responses

Why are you paying so much attention to his pretty words, & so very little to his actions?

He's lied to you about this woman.
Coldly & deliberately.
He also made very sure, as soon as you started dating, that you knew all about her.
He set you up to dance the Pick-Me Dance.
He is possibly doing the same with his flirty friend - making sure he tells her all about his relationship with you, keeping her dangling, encouraging her flirtation.
And this calling you by his last name because he wants to marry you 'eventually' is Future Faking.
These men are always expert at telling you what you want to hear.

This man is far too keen to dangle this woman in front of you. Take a moment to think how peculiar his phrasing was -
when we started dating he’d told me about an ‘old friend’ who he’d known many years ago and how she’d gone quiet on him when he’d told her he was dating me
He wanted you to know you had a 'competitor' in the wings.
He lied about his contact with her.

He split with his wife 2 years ago & still isn't divorced.
It's only been 9 months. I think you should cut your losses - this one isn't a keeper. If he was, you'd have had no reason to snoop.

If he was, you'd have had no reason to snoop.

Unless it is normal for you to feel insecure in relationships?
Because - once you have the urge to look through somebody's private comms, you may as well accept that you are in the wrong relationship, & finish it.

I guess I feel really cheated as he told me that he thought about me all the time before we got together and I now know he’s lied

When someone says they thought about you all the time, they mean they thought about you frequently.... not literally "all the time". Do you generally take things overly
literally?

When I've been single, there have been people I've been attracted to and thought about lots, but that didn't mean I thought about them exclusively... that wouldn't have been healthy, especially as things never progressed anywhere with many of those I "fancied", not even to a first date!

Don't you see how it's completely unreasonable to feel someone cheated on you because they flirted with some someone before you even went on a date with them?!

I never realised it was expected that we needed to be exclusive and committed in a relationship before the relationship even started!

Meh I knew a lass once who would batter her blokes exs if she came across them. For daring to touch her man. Some people have an odd way of thinking about relationships.

@Tuilpmouse its not the fact he flirted with her before we got together. It’s the fact he’s told me she’s some sort of long distance friend who he made out blanked him when he told her he was dating me, then said he wasn’t bothered anyway etc, when all along he’s been in contact with her. I don’t think about his ex wife and what they got up to. I know about her she’s not some ‘secret’.

@Boatinggirl27

Did you both talk about next step in your relationship?

I kind of hoped you let this go but saying I know it's hard.
Similar situation and had to see this female friend at events and she even hugged me. I didn't see them talk once but I know they talk on what's app.

There's no proof of anything just your mind playing tricks on you. You could be right they could be something between them but it seems more on her part.

You haven't seen anything bad really in those messages. Please stop looking at them messages and if this truly bothering maybe you need to have a conversation with him about her. I won't lie I want to buy actually don't want to rock the boat.

Each and every conversation you can wonder and wonder what they both saying to each other but it will drive you insane.
You can't tell him to cut her off either. Like you say she live far why worry about it.

Like I said before do the next steps in your relationship. If moving in is what you both want do this but do a trial thing.
If he going to see her constantly could understand why your like you are.

My case there was an event Sunday but he went Saturday to prepare for this event. So I know maybe he spoke to her then and probably said let's talk now as tommorow we can't she will be here. Which annoys me they pretend they don't talk. But in your case your guy don't seem to be like that but you can't expect him to say I spoke to so and so every time they do. And then you would want to know what they spoke about right. He might tell you the truth and it might upset you. My guy did tell me straight up and it upset me. But what she suggested he told her no she won't go for this.

If they like each other and one day they cross the line and you both are together he wrecked your relationship not you. If they truly are friends especially if he shut her down you won't need to worry as he and you will go forward if it doesn't you know something or someone holding him back although he got divorced.

@Boatinggirl27

I meant he might still want to take it easy not rush into moving in or marriage yet. He got divorced 2 years ago.Did you say?

I sat next to my Dp and as he was scrolling down his what's app conversations she was there. So yes I been tempted but what will it do to me.

@Ithurtbad thank you yet again for your reply you do seem to really understand where im coming from.he doesn’t see her at all like I’ve said she lives thousands of miles away. It just bothers me she is texting him telling him she ‘LULT’ (love you long time?) and she misses him and how he is in her mind! As far as I know he hasn’t responded to her, whether he does I don’t know? I can only hope he is wanting to cut contact? He keeps telling me how he wants to be with me and only me.

This man has been bs-ing you about this woman for some time. In addition, he’s been recycling his patter on you too. I wouldn’t trust this. man as far as you could throw him. I bet she has no knowledge of her being ‘a nut job’ and an ‘almost’ Ex friend.

Snooping has exposed his bs, I wouldn’t invest more time on him but you will because you’ve entered a cycle of feeding your anxiety. Walk away because the version of him that isn’t a immature bull shitter, isn’t waiting around the corner.

What she saying to him don't think of at all. It's what he says back that would be an issue.
Even still they say actions speak louder than words. His I miss you back could be in a friendship way. Hers she might be in love with him but he with you.
If he said to you say every month or she was coming here they kept meeting then I be worried. I don't think you have anything to worry about but this why taking the next step might make her back off. For her you not living together planning a wedding she might get the signal from him or think he not serious about her. Like if you were pregnant not saying you should have a baby etc. How serious is she taking you and him by what he saying.
I would say don't look in his phone. Try focus on how good it is now rather than what if.

If a man treated me the way you are behaving I would run.

People probably do think I’m worrying about nothing as she is thousands of miles away but she could live on mars and if he has feelings for her he has feelings for her.

everyone who is saying how wrong I am for wanting him to be ‘faithful’ to me before we even got together are misreading what im
getting at. I’ve known this man for years and years he’s a family friend. When his marriage ended he told me he’d thought about me lots and as early as a few months after they split he’d wanted to ask me out. We’d seen each other at various family events. I’m struggling with the fact that whilst he is telling me that, he was having flirty text messages with this woman who he is STILL in touch with.

he isn’t divorced yet it’s all going thru which is stressful. I am by his side, he hides absolutely nothing from me regarding his ex wife. We go thru solicitors letters together we help each other compose various letters, there’s no secrets. As I have none from him. But this ‘friendship’ bothers the hell out of me.

This. The issue seems to be your insecurity rather than him. Let it go. If you can’t, then let him go, because you will make both of your lives miserable.