Little deceits

[thegingercat]

Been with a guy for nearly 2 years. Everything going swimmingly. Kids get on well, we get on like a house on fire. Really good together. Never had any reason to suspect anything. I'm not a jealous person and neither is he, but I like to think we are both respectful.

About a year into the relationship, we were having a lovely day out together, just the two of us. He gets a text arrive on his phone, I glanced at it and saw it was from a lady. When I asked him who it was, purely out of interest, he told me it was his work colleague. . I asked him what his work colleague wanted on a saturday afternoon and he stuttered a bit and I then asked him why he was lying to me. He looked very embarrassed and told me who it was and said he just "panicked". Apparently it's a lady who seems to be interested in him and she used to pop round for coffee before we met. Nothing ever happened apparently. I burst into tears and he knows that my ex used to lie about text messages and meetings so I was understandably very upset. We moved on from this and I made it very clear that I didn't think anything was going on but lying to me was very bad and the thing that hurt me the most. I got a big bunch of flowers and he kept saying that he was sorry and that he "panicked".

Anyway about 3 or 4 months ago, he stayed at mine and left his facebook page open on my pc on his messages. I admit to being nosy and found a load of messages he had sent to a woman I had never heard of (but was his friend) asking about her love life, her clean knickers, telling her he loves her but in a jokey kind of way. All these were sent about 8 months into our relationship and about the time he was asking me to move in with him. Obviously I felt fairly sick but it was clear from the messages that nothing was going on but all the same they were very flirty. He had deleted everything from her out of his "inbox" but had forgotten about his sent messages.

Anyway, I've approached him about it and I'm getting lots of "sorry's" but I do wonder if he really understands how I feel.

Am I wrong to be feeling hurt? I know for sure, or as much as I can that nothing is going on but the deceit is making me feel really vulnerable and that I'm being stupid for trusting him.

He'd been dating you for eight months and was sending another woman flirty emails about her knickers and telling her he loved her?

And he has previous?

This guy is a player, I'm afraid.

Look, I have good male friends, and I'm (platonically) flirty by nature, but the day I send emails about my knickers is the day I'm cheating on my husband, frankly.

Get rid before you get anymore hurt than you have been.

Absolutely agree with the previous posters.

These are not 'minor deceits' - they are big fat signals that your bf is indeed a player and not to be trusted. He's sending messages to a woman asking her about her knickers, etc? If he hasn't cheated on you, the only reason will be because of the other women not being willing, not because he hasn't intended to. Sorry.

Agree 100% with what the others are saying, but you say this last deceit happened 3-4 months ago - what's been happening in the meantime? He's been saying sorry for that long?

Doing this so soon into a relationship is indicative of how he will become, I'm afraid. You know instinctively that "friends" of different sexes do not talk about knickers. How would he feel if you were asking a male friend about what boxers he was wearing and whether he'd had any er...emissions?

Hi guys,

Thanks for the replies, although not what I really wanted to hear.

I think the comment about the knickers was actually made before we were together and was a comment about her going on a date with someone else, but I can't be sure - I'm damn sure he will have deleted them now I have confronted him , but the "i love you's" were definetely made whilst we were together, although it was in a jokey kind of way - hard to explain without quoting it word for word. He talked about how he had met me and he was "loved up" with me.

I saw all this a while ago and have only just confronted him. I think I've buried my feelings so hard and now they are so full on I feel physically sick.

And he called her "babe" and "hun" - two pet names he says he hates and would never call me!

Hmmm...it's bad news that this has been festering inside you for 3-4 months. Why didn't you confront at the time?

Who is this girl - could she become a friend to you both? As a general rule, the only safe friendships are with people who are "friends of the relationship" and wish it no harm. Would she fit that category?

He sounds a bit immature - how old is he?

It seems to me that if you want this relationship to work, you're going to have to start communicating honestly about core issues such as trust, transparency, response to temptation and safe friendships. And not letting things fester.

I have a male friend who often knows what colour knickers I'm wearing!

It's just a joke between us. I enjoy flirting with him and am really clear that that, is all it is and I also know he is as clear. His wife and I are friends and I would say that is the difference here. I can sit with a clear conscience in this wife's company.

I wouldn't discuss my undies with many men I have to say !!! but there are some friends who do morph into platonic and my friend has done just that.

I would need to meet any woman that my bloke was exchanging messages like this with and unless she respected our relationship I'd ask him to cease contact because affairs do happen and they happen easily.

I didn't confront him because I felt guilty for snooping and know in my heart that he isn't having an affair.... not that it makes it OK though.

The underwear comment was about how he hoped she had nice clean underwear for her first date with a guy she had met, from what I can make out.

We had a long conversation about trust and transparency and safe friendships after the text message incident, to be fair, this would have been after he had sent those messages on facebook so maybe he has learnt. But a big difference between not wanting to talk to a woman who pesters him and the full on flirting I have seen in those messages. He is 40 years old, holds a pretty responsible job and is generally an all round decent person.

This woman lives 2 counties away and he has met her twice before he met me and they did a lot of flirting on msn apparently. It frightened me just how many woman he was contacting just on facebook let alone through dating sites etc., but as that was before me, I'm not that bothered although it does smack of insecurity in him and I know he hasn't been alone for more than a few weeks since he was a teenager.

I love him to bits and have been hurt in the past and really felt he was someone I could completely trust. Now I wonder if I am just clinging onto the good bits and not being realistic or if I am just blowing some harmless flirting out of proportion. The thing is I absolutely know he would go mad if it was the other way round and in fact I did send a complimentary text to an ex when we first start seeing each other but it was between date 2 and 3 and we hadn't even started sleeping together. The time these messages were sent was at a time when he first asked me to move in with him. Quite different in the timing dept and far more flirty.

I can only say I think it's good that you've discovered this side to your man's personality. FWIW, I don't consider these "little deceits" - I was expecting something more like fibbing about where the pack of Cheddars had gone!

I am very sorry that he's not turning out to be quite as ideal a match as you thought. You must be feeling worried & disappointed.

As you asked for viewpoints: Some of my male friends are prone to inappropriate 'joking', like the business with the knickers, and pushing the loviness a little too far. I don't like it (cheesy & sexist, imo) and I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with a man who thinks/talks/acts like that.

Their wives do, though, so I'm not saying my view is the only one!

lol about the mini cheddars - how I wish I was worrying about that now. .

Joking and inappropriate comments can be OK if they are done in the open and everyone is comfortable with it. Sending private messages is quite a different thing, in my opinion.

The thing with trust is this, once it's gone,you might as well kiss the relationship goodbye because it's pointless. I have a real fear of turning into a possessive psycho because of the lack of trust this has caused.

I want to believe that all this was a long time ago now and maybe he is a little bit inexperienced with the whole flirting thing as he was with his ex wife since he was a teenager for 18 years, so maybe all this is quite new to him and he misses it now he's in a "stable" relationship.

But I also know that those are his issues and not mine to have to deal with.

I keep talking about it to him and to be fair, there's not a lot he can say because whatever he says, if he is a player, he's going to lie to me anyway.

I'm sitting here on mothers day morning on my own typing out a load of stuff to complete strangers hoping that my son (who is still asleep) has actually bought me something because I had to nag him to because no-one else thought to sort it out for me (my ex husband used to sort something but I suppose he thinks it's my BF's dept now) and I wonder if what I have got with my boyfriend is really much different to what I had with the last one who certainly was a player and someone who was nowhere near good enough for me.

Do yourself a favour and get rid of him.

My ex-boyfriend of 2.5 years did this to me. I stumbled across text messages of a similar nature to yours six months into the relationship. I went ballistic but as he was seriously ill at the time I believed he truly was sorry. Over the next two years it just got worse but again and again he kept apologising and saying it was always nothing. I went from being a strong independent woman to a simpering paranoid doormat.

Looking back now all the signs were there. I just chose to ignore them. It was a very difficult lesson to learn. Thankfully I now have a wonderful DH. I don't need to go through his text messages as I trust him implicitly.

There are plenty more fish in the sea. Don't put up with rubbish. If he really cared about you he wouldn't be doing things he knows will upset you.

I'd be less worried about flirting with female friends he's known a long time, even if it seems inappropriate to you (people have different boundaries), than that when he got a text from said friend his first instinct was to lie about it. Why "panic" if you have nothing at all to feel guilty about? I don't know whether he's a player or not, but he sure is a liar. I wouldn't be happy to hitch my life to one of those. In fact, I did hitch my life to one and I wasn't happy. (As far as I know he didn't cheat, but he lied pointlessly and stupidly about all sorts of stuff and it was incredibly wearing.)

Don't try to convince yourself to trust someone you already know you can't trust.

I'm really sorry you're going through all this, today of all days when you're even worrying about whether he's thought to get you something for Mother's Day! It's not great, is it

As you say: you've lost your trust ... and you've also lost confidence. Whatever the story behind the messages, the facts are that his first instinct is to lie and his second instinct was to empty his outbox. So he is dishonest with you, and his promises can't be relied on. With all the good excuses in the world, someone who knows your history should be taking extra care to keep your trust, not acting the same as the previous idiot!! Anything else, and he simply isn't looking after your feelings. Which should be his first thought.

Unless you want to take on the role of nanny/detective/jailer, constantly on the alert for hidden clues (not recommended), you might be better off buying your own gifts and sorting life out with your son.

Hello all,

I'm feeling absolutely terrible. Being torn between wanting to be with him and wanting everything to be "normal" and feeling like I can't really trust him and I'd be staying with him because it's "easier" than walking away.

My ex partner lied and got caught and made all the promises and then lied again and again. It destroyed me and it made me become deceitful in that I would check his phone etc. I was so sad to end that relationship but also so relieved that I could go on to go back to being me, a decent person, who could respect who she was with.

The thing is the relationship is so good in lots of ways. I suppose the biggest thing has been that I've felt "secure". He spends more time with me than my ex because I know he wants to be with me, whereas I just felt my ex was using me for sex, clean washing and a roof over his head. We've had one disagreement, but he's good with my son and I know would help me out anyway he can. He doesn't even have any annoying habits!

The big thing about the relationship is the relationship with the ex wife and I'll be honest, it has been the biggest thing that has been holding me back up to now. I have posted on here about her before and also how the constant stress affects me and our relationship and how it's manageable now but I'm not sure if it will be in the future. Boyfriend has 4 kids and has had the snip and I have had some really hard times coming to terms with the fact that if I stay with him I am not going to have another child of my own (my son is 12 and I am nearly 36). I did a lot of thinking and decided I either had to walk away and try to find a man that could give me another child and accept the fact that it may not happen (I want a family not just a baby. Now I feel that I am going to put all this energy into supporting him throught the stress of his ex wife, dealing with 4 kids that aren't mine, entertaining his family and for what? So he can chat up any floozy that shows him a bit of attention? .

But I still can't help but think in so many ways he is a lovely guy.

And it was his ex wife that cheated on him not the other way round.

ginger, after your latest post, I would advise you to walk away

you had already made so many sacrifices to be with him...and this is your reward ?

Insecurity ? Paranoia ? Feeling unsafe ? All those feelings will intensify as you slowly start to resent the fact he can't give you a baby

You can do better than that