Trust issues ??

[Bur1ap]

Wanting some help please as this is starting to impact on me. Has anyone else been here? NC for privacy.

I keep having doubts about partner and struggling to trust. Together a year. No kids etc.

For context i have been cheated on previously. Before this i was confident and had no issues with trust. I’m still confident and thought i’d got past my trust issues as i’m a generally trusting and optimistic person (my default is to trust people unless they do something to change that).

My partner hasn’t done anything specifically to make me worry but it’s more the things he doesn’t do and the little things.

He’s not an open person, i’m quite the opposite - i’m very open, will talk openly about friends, who i’m with, if someone has made advances to me, phone isnt protected etc etc. however theres been issues previously where hes not told me things eg meeting up with friends (m and f) and not telling me which for me is just a normal thing to share. It just comes up in conversation with me and things like this. Sometimes i find out afterwards which puts me out a bit. But maybe not everyones like that? He just doesnt really share things.

The main one is secrecy with his phone it goes everywhere with him and i noticed early on he seemed quite secretive with it. Example if we were sat next to each other and he was showing me something hed angle his phone away until he found the thing to show me which i always found off, not experienced it before and didnt sit right. I borrowed his phone once and he kept checking on me and it was clear he felt really uncomfortable me being on his phone.

In every other way hes perfect and he is a good man with strong values and morals and im generally very very happy and want to settle, but this has been troubling me. We have spoken about it and he has definitely been better since we met. Just wanted some advice. Should i be worried or is this just me and need to get some help with my anxieties ? Maybe i didnt ever get over my ex cheating ???

There's a difference between being a private person and being secretive.

Private means that he's not very inclined to share information on his own initiative, mostly because he doesn't see the relevance of the information to you. There's no desire to hide things from you. It just happens because he doesn't realise why sharing things can be valuable.

Being secretive means he's actively keeping things from you, because he doesn't want you to see/know certain parts of his identity or his life.

I get the feeling he's secretive, from the way you describe his unease with you looking at or using his phone.

Has he had very controling girlfriends in the past? That could explain his behaviour. Maybe he's dated girls who have snooped through his phone and created drama over just about everything they could find?

Thank you, this is my worry - that it’s secrecy rather than privacy. I just can’t really get my head around it. I don’t think he’s had controlling partner’s previously so not sure what to make of it!

The phone thing is definately off.

Also...the strong morals and values...how do you know? Through his actions or just his words? Because often those prone to cheating are the most vocal about how awful it is and how they'd never cheat.

The friend thing though...I wouldn't expect my partner to tell me every time he hangs out with a group of friends just because some of them are women. I wouldn't be OK with him hanging out one on one with other women (unless it's a long time bestie maybe) but that's not the same thing.