As I said, this is quite long. I thank you for any help.
I met my girlfriend in the summer of 2013 (over 1.5 years ago) through an online dating site. Our chemistry was immediate and soon led to romantic road-trips, passionate intimacy, and an undeniable mutual desire. Without delving into too much detail, suffice to say we went ‘all-in’ during this time and it continued for several months. Now, nearly a year and half into our relationship, I am considering ending it all and moving on for several reasons. Most notably, despite my appreciation and love for her, I am having trouble trusting her.
Why don’t I just end it then? Well, I can’t tell if my mistrust is rational or if I being the same over-thinking, beta guy I have always been. Over the course of our almost-18 months together, we have shared great memories, and built what I consider a ‘mini’ family (me, her, the dog). On the other hand, enough red-flags have come up to set off my ‘bullsh*t’ alarm and cause concern. I’ll address each individually:
Early Warnings
Two occurrences early in our relationship stirred my discomfort. The first occurred on the night we first met (a year and a half ago). When I walked her back to her apartment from the bar, a man approached us from the parking lot. He walked up to us, stared at me and said in an irritated voice, “Hi..”. He then paced around the apartment entrance and went inside when someone opened the door. I had no idea who it was until the next morning: it was her ex-boyfriend.
The next morning, I received an odd text. Apparently, she gave him my number to stop him from getting upset, and he wrote me saying that she was his girlfriend, and that he came up to ‘patch things up’ with her. Now, I don’t believe everything he told me (ex-boyfriends can probably say whatever they want to make another dude go away), but I was weirded out enough to basically want to walk away. However, I gave it some time, and in a couple weeks he was totally gone and she wanted to get back together and meet with me. Realizing we just met and she didn’t really owe me anything (plus we weren’t exclusive), I decided to give it a shot. Thus, our relationship began.
The second early red flag, which was less pronounced but still very unsettling, occurred during a road trip about 3 months into our relationship when things were still very passionate between us. We went to a beer festival with some friends of mine, and I discovered that - at some point during the day - she gave a guy her number. Of course nothing happened, but I found out later on that this guy did text her that night and ask her to come to his condo. She didn’t, of course, because she was with me in the hotel room, but the act of giving her number seemed very suspicious. I don’t believe she had deceitful intentions, but it struck me as odd to do that while on a trip with your BF, even if she had innocent intentions.
Intimacy Slowed Down
Less of a red-flag perhaps, our intimacy slowed down and still is rather stagnant at least in the sexual/affectionate form. It began about 5 months into our relationship when I noticed she said ‘no’ to sex more often, and where she used to share the initiation of intimacy with me soon became totally my responsibility. Other things slowed down, too, and admittedly instead of manning up and standing my ground, I pouted like a bitch. Eventually, we talked things over and I understood her reasoning more, but for a long time it caused me a lot of pain and feelings of inadequacy. I think, from this, I ‘turned her off’ because I made her feel guilty about turning me down. We’ve made considerable progress there, but it was another thing that caught my attention.
She Betrayed Me
Every relationship has its ups-and-downs, and during one of our ‘downs’ (about 8 months together), she went on a vacation with 3 girlfriends to Mexico. I stayed at her apartment and took care of her (‘our’) dog. When she returned, I came over and spent some time with her. Shortly after we started talking, she told me that she made out with a stranger when she was drunk one night at a club. I was heart-broken, and she was actually in tears telling me. I don’t know if it was tears of guilt or if it was being sorry for what she did, but she seemed to genuinely regret it.
I was 95% ready to walk away at this point. She knew this would hurt me, and in a moment of drunkenness she betrays my trust. Ultimately, I chose to try and forgive her, but I’ll admit my trust has never completely returned (I don’t think). However, I told myself that I would stay and see how/if my wounds would heal. They did get better, but like I said: I don’t think it ever returned to 100%.
Caught In Lies, At Least Partly
Between the betrayal on vacation on now, things had continued pretty well in many ways. We fight like most couples from time to time, but I’ve made strides in improving my sense of self-worth and I can see it reflected in how she treats me. I still get tested, teased, etc, but she has begun warming up to be again as I have matured and taken steps to become more confident and ‘alpha’. I control myself better now, I keep my cool, and it’s been working. Self-help books have really put some things into perspective.
But something else is wrong…
After several months of ‘peace’, where things felt like they were going well, I discovered something in November (2014, a couple months ago). While attempting to leave her a ‘love note’ on her iPad, I came across (without ‘snooping’) a document that appeared to be a draft of an online dating profile. In essence, it looked like she was brainstorming things she’d want to add to her current/past profiles. I confronted her about it, and asked flat out, “I was attempting to leave you a note, and there was another document already open that was clearly an edited dating profile; a new one. Are you looking to date other men?” She told me, flat-out, ‘NO, I am not. I was trying to clean up my documents on my iPad, and I spent a bunch of time last year before meeting you trying to brainstorm profile ideas. I didn’t want to lose all that just in case sometime in the future I need to make another one, so I was copy-pasting things I might want to keep just in case’.
While this reason seemed bogus to me, I suppose there is a very small chance that is true. Plus, knowing her, the idea of cheating in such a way – actively trying to defy me and date other men – would cause her so much stress that I highly date she’d do that. She’s already so bogged down with work, her dog, money problems, that the added stress of an affair I think would be too much.
But she said something else during that confrontation that caught my attention. She commented, “By the way, I’m sure if you look around plenty of stuff can look dishonest out of context. I mean, I still go on OKCupid when my best friend dates new guys to check them out, but it’s not like I’m looking to date anyone. I could never pursue other people when I’m still with you.”
For some reason that statement, coupled with the coinciding discovery of that edited profile, struck a nerve with me: WHY would your friend, an adult in her late 20’s, need you to screen guys for her? So, in an act of total disrespect, I managed to guess her login info and read the messages she was getting on that site. Sure enough, she had been going on there, and while she wasn’t really responding very actively to the majority of the messages, she did respond to a few. In fact, in a couple cases, she exchanged numbers with guys and agreed to go to Happy Hour.
Granted, nowhere in those responses did she say, “I am single”, “Let’s go on a date”, or anything explicitly indicative of an intent to cheat, but the implication is obvious: this site is primarily used at a dating site, and my GF hadn’t updated her status (she was still ‘single’), and it also stated she was looking for “New Friends, Long Term Dating, and Short Term Dating”.
Clearly, it was a lie to say she was ‘only going on there to screen guys for her friend’. Plus, her friend is now exclusive a guy she met from there, so there’s no need for her to ‘screen’ anyone anymore. Even if she hasn’t cheated or even met up with any of them, her statement was false.
Because of her lie, I dug a little deeper and started exploring other free online sites to see if I could find a profile from her; I found one. There was another site on which she joined, again in November, two ‘singles’ clubs on a community forum. It didn’t look like she was actively using them/participating, but it set her join date as only 2-3 months ago while we were clearly still together. So, even IF she was just on OKCupid to screen guys, even IF that edited profile with her saving stuff for the future, how can she explain joining singles clubs? Clearly it’s not for a friend… so WHY? I have not yet confronted her about this.
Ex-Boyfriends as Friends
Finally, almost all of her male friends are ex-boyfriends. This in and of itself does not bother me at all. However, what does bother me is that all of her ex-boyfriends who are now friends act inappropriately in my opinion. I’ve overheard conversations between them wherein her ex’s, knowing full-well she’s in a relationship, suggest they make out, come over to have sex, etc. Granted, it could all be in jest, but just knowing how guys work I question her motivation for maintaining friendships with the type of men who would actively try to get a women to cheat on her SO (me). In all cases she turns them down.
.....That is my story.
What I am struggling with is how her words and actions around me now conflict completely with the red-flags I mentioned above. For instance, on Saturday night after a double-date, I needed to go home to get some much needed rest. We spent hours in her apartment talking, drinking while, cuddling, and she was very affectionate and ‘loving’ to me. In fact, when I got up to leave, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “I’m going to miss you so much, even though I’ll see you in a couple days”. When I left, she hugged me for about 10 seconds, pulled me in vigorously to make out, told me she ‘loved me’ and how ‘lucky she felt to have me in her life and part of her ‘family’’, and looked back when I was driving away.
With all the improvements I’ve been making, she seems so happy when I’m around her. We have so much fun on double-dates, dinners out, even just staying in and cooking a meal together. But at the same time, there’s the dating profile I found, giving her number to other guys, and the whole joining of singles clubs online. In the best case scenario, she’s telling the truth about the profile on her iPad, the OKCupid phone number exchanges are innocent attempts to just make new friends, and the dating sites are just a cry to attention (or something). But it’s so far-fetched… so suggestive of intent to betray again.
At the same time, she seems SO clearly into me right now. I am utterly vexed here and I don’t know what to do.
If I confront her about the messages, I’ll have to admit I snooped into her account. If I bring up the singles clubs, again I’m going to look creepy. However, there is – however small – a chance that she isn’t doing anything ‘wrong’. But my trust is really being stretched here.
If you were me, what would you do?