Am I doing the right thing believing him?

[Swiftkitty]

I say believing him...I really mean, taking his word for it and trying to get past the hurt and nagging doubt.

We've been together for two years but it's been fairly casual. Not intentionally; he wants more and always has but I'm not in the right head space to be getting into a serious relationship.

Around two weeks ago we slept together. We were 'together' at that point but the following week I ended things, over a few things from the past playing on my mind and my doubt that I can give him a 'proper' relationship. This has happened before and we usually get through it. After a few days I realise I still care and can't be without him etc.

Anyway. This time, we had a bit of a row and I said some things that upset him (he's a people pleaser and I called him weak, snapped at him for "going on" about his hayfever when really he was just being chatty but I over reacted).

I then blocked him. Again, done before as it's the only way I can stop myself contacting him and he knows this.

On the Saturday he dropped some flowers outside my door with a note asking to talk, which I ignored.

The following Friday we got talking again. I didn't know what I wanted at this point but he was saying he still felt I'd been the love of his life, wanted to try again, etc.

We carried on talking via text message and then I mentioned something about his social awkwardness (which he admits he suffers with). He then told me that he'd joined an app and started talking to someone to check he isn't as 'weird' as I seem to think he is.
Obviously I knew the someone was a woman, he admitted it was and it transpired that he had joined an app called BeFriend (so not tinder or anything obvious dating app), swiped and matched on a few people and this one matched him back. This was on the Thursday, so the day before we got talking again and five days after he'd left the flowers at my door :/

He told me she had asked to come off the app and onto WhatsApp but swore it was just intended as friends and he was "using her as a science experiment" to practice social skills, conversation and see if this woman flagged him up as weird or not. He said the conversation seemed to be going well so either he was normal or she was being overly nice to him for no reason. I got upset and asked to see the conversations and he did show me.

It looked an easy, comfortable conversation... he started off by making a joke about wanting to say "how you doing?" Like Joey from Friends, she laughed and said he could if he wants to, he said he liked her nose ring and wanted a tattoo himself one day, she thanked him and said it hurt as she's such a baby and "maybe now is your time to get one" meaning a tattoo...his reply was "I saw the word baby and maybe now is your time to get one and thought, hold on love, that's a bit fast 🫣😆", to which her reply was she's in no rush as she already has two. He also asked if she had a partner (he says as he isn't what to tread on anyone's toes) and said he was divorced after two years of separation but didn't mention the year long relationship with me after the separation, which I found weird if he only wants friends. She also sent him photos of her children on WhatsApp and they talked for a couple of hours every evening. When I went to see him on Saturday (after I'd found out about all this) he was still in the middle of a whatsapp chat with her. Anyway I basically told him to block and delete her and come off the app and he did.

He now wants to try again properly, saying she was genuinely just a friends thing and to see if he can still talk to people.

I know we technically weren't together when he 'met' her but it hurts a fair bit and I keep thinking about although he was blocked, clearly I can't mean very much to him if he wasn't thinking about me the whole three days he was messaging her.

He seemed convincing when he was talking about not fancying her, not being interested in a relationship or dating and it was purely friends.

Should I even care, as we technically weren't together at the time?

He's done literally nothing wrong at all, and you are treating him like shit. You're critiquing his personality and making him paranoid about his social skills while also repeatedly dumping him and then deciding you want him back. The moment it transpires that he actually is perfectly OK at chatting to women, and could clearly easily meet someone else, you've realised you don't have as much power over him as you thought you did.

In your OP you said this was a fairly casual relationship because you didn't want anything serious. You've then gone on to drip-feed about him having contact with other women and using that to justify your repeated abusive behaviours towards him.

If it was a casual relationship, why do you care so much if he's been in contact with other women?

OMG that poor man. I can’t believe you’ve read the huge amount of replies that tell you you’re being abusive and this makes you want to commit to him? Leave him alone and stop torturing him. The problem here is you.
Let him find someone who respects him before you break him completely.

First reply nails it.

Because all along, all I've had is he wants to marry me, he wants to move in, he loves me more than anything and couldn't imagine being with anyone else. I tried to get him to move on but he always told me he wanted to continue to pretend we were together to make himself feel better and give himself motivation to be a better person. He's kept the relationship status as in a relationship the whole time, never told anyone we split, but told his friends that I blocked him and confused him as he didn't know why - but he did, it's because I started off saying we needed to end it because of another lie I'd found out about and he didn't take responsibility for, then he would beg and plead and knock my door until I eventually blocked him.

Then my tolerance became lower. I do love him so I kept convincing myself it was only me that was the problem, kept being consistent but he would still do silly things like telling me when this woman was staying over, tell me "I'm so uncomfortable with the birthday card K (a female friend) has just sent me" when in reality all the card said was "happy birthday, love K xx". It's been insane and has messed with my head so much.

I've just had a conversation all day where he can't seem to grasp that the app was the last straw - and I really don't have the spoons to explain it anymore so will leave the thread.

But thanks everyone for your insight. Genuinely mean that. I'm just tired, now.

@Swiftkitty i know you are not coming back to the thread but to your original questions and queries

You haven’t appeared to have committed to a serious monogamous relationship with this man, and there are a lot of break ups so it is not that unreasonable that he would explore other options with other women during this time rather than just waiting and hoping you come back. Or not wanting to hurt his ex wife’s feelings over a relationship that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. They were together 10 years and you don’t want to be in a serious relationship with him so I do think it’s somewhat unreasonable to expect that he proves his love for you by cutting everyone else off, burning bridges or having no options. As you were also friends with him for a long time you have experience that friendship turns into sex and that’s what bothers you. I do think you want something from him he cannot give you - validation. It makes you feel bad about yourself that he says one thing and does another but he sounds like a people pleaser and the push pull is too toxic you cannot go back to your friendship and there is no trust now. Why have you argued with him all day about this silly app - he wasn’t with you when he joined it and he doesn’t owe you anything at all. From this thread you don’t seem to have picked up anything people have said so I assume it’s a waste of time. Look at it from another POV - you have wasted days on end picking over every single conversation a single man had with another woman after you dumped him then decided to take him back when he gave you flowers. It’s insane

I know, it is. I really did try to commit and at the beginning we were getting on. Then the lies - or as he calls it; withholding information (still a lie to me) started, along with his wife/ex wife texting and calling and telling me he had lead her on, blindsided her, etc. I don't actually know what's true because he's done so many things; including apparently TTC 'a couple of times' a few months before he left her but his most recent revelation on that was that he pulled out last minute as he didn't want to get her pregnant and pretended he'd slipped out. Everything he says just sounds so unbelievable that it's been difficult to get past it each time, but I felt strongly for him so I tried.
I don't even know why I'm typing this out as it makes no difference.

Anyway. He's still saying that if I hadn't blocked him he wouldn't have signed up to the app. But I blocked him because I felt like I couldn't trust him, so I think that's why it upset me so much - just the fact that it feels like my suspicions about him were right - that I never am enough for him and he always has to have another woman on the go somewhere.
Full disclosure, he's had 'female friends' all through his marriage that he was inappropriately close to. Me being one of them. Just things like mild flirting and starting messages with "hey sexy" when he'd only been going out with the woman that became his wife for a couple of years, but still things that I feel if he was doing it to me, I'd feel it had crossed a line. This is all while he seems to be baffled by the idea of people dating multiple people at once in the early stages (going on a couple of dates a week with different people)

So I guess what goes around does come around and he's just done the same to me as he always does. Thats why it bothers me.

Thanks for your reply though. It helped.

Having read your updates, just end it.

This isn't a healthy relationship. He has lied/withheld information and you know how he behaves with other women in a relationship because you were one of those other women.

Yes, blocking and ignoring are abusive behaviours on your part but, with context, its obvipus why you do this. And, mainly they are just unhealthy and not the basis for a proper relationship.

It isn't going to improve because, let's just imagine, that you're the woman who is going to change his past behaviours (you're not because he's continuing them), you're never going to feel.emotionally safe with him or trust him. So what's the point?

This is so toxic and abusive on both sides OP he doesn’t love you but a version of you that doesn’t exist and he is holding you in this relationship with it

it has to end it really does for you and for him and possibly his ex as it is all so enmeshed

This doesn't sound at all healthy. You're both treating each other badly. Just walk away and stop playing games with each other.

Agreed. Honestly who could be bothered with so much drama, game playing and toxicity?

Its completely a waste of two people’s time to continue with this shit show

It is a waste of time, I agree. But you know how it is. He begs for me to trust him and believe what he's telling me, he keeps messaging, I don't know what to say but feel bad for him so I reply and I end up with what I've had today (and yesterday), where he's swearing blind that he only joined the app and chatted to that woman because he wanted to recreate our conversations with someone and see if they saw him as 'weird' too.
Because he was desperately trying to fix himself and fix us. But he didn't tell the woman he was attached, which I'd have done if I was sure I only wanted friendship, he says he didn't tell her because he didn't want to "scare her away". I know we technically may not have been together but he's always told me that when I block him, he still sees us as together and like I said, he makes out to everyone that he is still with me.

After a full two days of constant begging and leading and trying to convince me he's right and I'm being unreasonable, I either agree to try again or I've had enough and I block him.

I won't block him now because I know it upsets him, but he keeps messaging even though I've quite clearly told him I can't continue with the relationship because it's unhealthy. But this is the sort of messaging that goes on and I keep replying because if I ignore him, he then says I'm being abusive by ignoring.

Poor guy

Leave this poor guy alone.

Block. 🙄

I’ll be blunt as given what you’ve said to him I think you can handle it. If you can’t, perhaps you should reevaluate how you speak to others.

you’re the problem. I think you’re behaving in a really manipulative way.

leave this man alone, he knows what he wants let him find it

work out what you actually want, do some work on yourself before you start anything with anyone else.

Bloke here, let the poor guy go, he deserves better sorry.

Oh my God, just stop it! He sounds very immature and you sound like a drama queen. This is all ridiculous, the pair of you. Are you both 15?

What's wrong with how I spoke to him? He's crying because I'm annoyed that he chatted up another woman while he was telling me I was the "only one" for him and won't believe his BS that he was conducting a "science experiment", as he put it. I'd have had more respect for the man if he had told the truth, that he wanted a bit of a flirt with someone.

He chose to message and tell me that he'd signed up to an app and talk to this woman...he didn't actually need to tell me, did he? So it feels like he tried to make me jealous to be fair. Am I not allowed to be annoyed and hurt?

Plus I've known him 20 years...no need for airs and graces around him I don't think. He didn't like it when he ex-wife told him some home truths either and accused her of 'bullying' him, same as he's saying to me.

You’ve emotionally abused this man to the point he wants to message other people to see if they think he is weird! That’s awful and you need to really work on yourself to be a better person, if my son was being treated like that I’d encourage him to get rid of you pronto

Totally agree.your just playing games with his head. Maybe he’s turning the games around onto you.

what's wrong with him flirting with another woman when you've blocked him?? It's not like you were in a committed relationship. You can't keep ditching him over and over again and expect him to remain faithful. I really don't blame him for wanting to form connections with other women.

Because every time he is blocked (and I reiterate; I only block him because he begs and pleads for me to try again, or because I've found out yet another piece of information he's withheld from me about his ex wife or another female friend), he continues to tell his friends we are still together, still keeps the relationship status on Facebook as us being together, drops flowers outside my door saying he loves me (as he did five days before he downloaded the app), so all of that tells me he does still see us as 'together'.

He was blocked because he lies over and over again about women and cannot seem to see that telling me one thing but doing another and then lying about it, is wrong.
So his way of fixing us was to download an app without my knowledge (even though the day after he downloaded the app we were speaking again and he was telling me he loved me... he had chance to tell me then), and then chat to another woman, the exact same kind of conversation he makes such a big deal about only ever being able to have with me. Then randomly tells me about it and gets upset when I'm not thrilled.

To my mind, all he ever had to do was commit fully to me and not have one foot out the door.

But no... He told his ex wife that he left me for her (which was a lie he told to hurt her and I didn't realise he'd said), then decided to deny we were actually together and said we were just friends, leading her to text and phone me looking for answers, then when I picked up the phone to her she told me a bunch of things be hadn't told me about, like going for meals with her after he'd been over there doing DIY jobs (the DIY I did know about), having showers over there, cooking for her, basically acting like they were still married but apparently without the sex, all this while he was telling me that she had abused him for the last few years of the marriage - but then he retracted that, eventually admitting that he'd 'gone along with' everyone thinking that she was abusive but in reality - he actually said she had been! We didn't start thinking it until he said it! He randomly told me once that he thought one of his female friends fancied him and then let me know everytime she stayed at his other friends house (where he was living) and that she offered to cook for him, told me once how mortified and uncomfortable he was with what she'd written in his birthday card then sent me a photo as 'proof' (which I didn't ask for), it just said "to M, happy birthday! love R xxx"

There have been so many things where he has planted seeds of doubt or asked my advice what do do about his ex wife who wanted him back then ignored that advice and did whatever the hell he wanted anyway, which was basically lead her on, that now ... I've lost the ability to ignore and move on from it.

And yes I should've blocked a long time ago but I miss him when he's not around. I really do. But he's bad for me and I'm obviously bad for him.

I've skimmed but drop it now. What's the point for either of you in dragging this on? Leave it.

Actually reading those messages he sounds awful - you need to tell him you can’t be his girlfriend and it’s over and he needs to accept that and move on

and then get therapy and move on as eell