ex in touch

[ings123]

sorry for the rant before it has begun. My partners ex got in touch with him on facebook. The messages were quite flirty, discussing how she lost her virginity to him all those years ago,. I am and always have been very insecure and found it difficult to cope wit. For the first time ever i asked him to give the correspondence up which he did very reluctantly. We tried to improve our already dodgy relationship and i was feeling mucvh more positive because he had put me first for once. However , accidently, i found numerous emails from them both hidden in a file since the date he said he had satopped communication. I feel betrayed. Even though they had not met i feel he has cheated mentally. He has turned it back on me and now my head is a mess. I know i am irrational and should have trusted him initially. Please help

Ooooh that's kind of tricky. What was the tone of the messages he hid from you? Were they also flirty?

It's worrying that you say the relationship was 'already dodgy' and imply that he never puts you first. Normally I don't have a problem with people being friends with exes--if you don't turn it into something 'forbidden' or get jealous about it, it makes it less interesting (am I making any sense?).

However, in the case of this particular guy, it kind of sounds like it's just one more thing on a list of things you're unhappy about. Are you sure you really want to be with him?

Just to clarify - so he's been continuing to email her despite saying he'd stopped? And she's been emailing about losing her virginity to him? I'd say you have good grounds to be v pissed off, I would be in your situation. I'm not a particularly paranoid person, but if my DH's ex was flirting with him via email and particularly harking back to how he took her virginity, it's just entirely inappropriate and i'd expect him to give up the emailing for my sake. And I'm sure my DH would. If it was purely friendly, no flirting and no reminiscing over virginity loss it would be a different matter and I wouldn't have a problem with it.

If the relationship was strong enough, he'd be able to deal with her or have contact with her and not lie to you about it and you'd be able to be fine with that knowing that you have a strong relationship anyway.

He stopped contact to make you happy and keep you quiet, because you asked him to, not because he wanted to.

I wouldn't have asked him to not contact her but I would really expect him to act in a nice way (off his own back) that kind of says 'look, I'm not interested'. If he was not interested, then you would have nothing to worry about.

Flirting IMO is pretty harmless but it is the fact that he is hiding it. And he is hiding it because you asked him to stop and he didn't want to stop for whatever reason. Now if you ask him "why did you hide it?", he will say "because I didn't want to hurt you, there is nothing going on" or "I knew you'd react like this", ie, i think he'd make out it was your fault not his.

He doesn't sound worth it IMO. Especially since you say the relationship was rocky beforehand.

he needs to respect your feelings, cut off the relationship and regain your trust. These ex email things never go anywhere good, IMO.

Not saying exes can't be friends, but certainly not when it's about reigniting some fantasy of what was and might have been.

you should be discussing with him why he is intrigued by this fantasy, and what he may feel he is lacking in his current relationship.

When you say that you are 'very insecure' has he a history of cheating on you? If not, but f you havea history of suspecting cheating and looking for it, he may well be covering his tracks out of resentment as much as anything - it is very difficult to live with a permanently suspicious and jealous partner and sadly many people who have tried all the reassurance and modifying their behaviour quite often end up cheating out of sheer irritation (feel they are being accused of it so they are going to do it...)
If he is a serial flirt or serial cheater though, you will have to accept that there is very little you can do to stop someone who is determined to cheat on you and if you really hate it, it may be time to walk away from the relationship.

but it isn't really about trust is it?

flirting like this and encouraging this sort of communication is disloyal and disrespectful to you you. and now he is abusing you by trying to make you think you are in the wrong and this is your fault?