Secrets, Lies and Screen Capture. Advice please.

[recoveringidiot]

Let me start by giving a bit of background. I am 25, my girlfriend is 24. We'll call her Marie for anonymity. My girlfriend lives in France with her parents (common for europeans to live with parents) and is moving here at the end of March. We met when I was studying abroad there 3 years ago. We see each other about 3 months out of every year, during breaks and such. We love each other very much and until about a few weeks ago everything has been fine. This is a long one so bear with me if you're still interested.

Secrets and Snooping: read on.

While I was there during the holidays, I discovered that she talks a lot to a guy at the internship she started 3 months ago, just about every night in fact on facebook chat for about an hour. She did this while I was there, and I thought nothing of it because we have always trusted each other. Well, one night in particular, we were about to go out, and she was on her PC just chatting away, so I asked her who she was chatting with. I had already seen on the screen that it was this guy, so I expected that as the answer. However, she lied to my face and told me it was a girl friend from work. I said are you kidding with me, because I saw that it is Mark (we'll call him Mark for anonymity). So, then I asked her why she would lie to me about something so silly and what does she have to hide. She said nothing, so I said let me see the conversation then. She refused, and when I tried to open her laptop to read it, she ran into the bathroom with the laptop and exited out of the conversation and came back out. I was shocked and did not know how to interpret this. Perhaps I should not have pressed the issue by attempting to see the conversation, but this sowed doubt into a previous seemingly perfect relationship. We talked it over, and she basically decided that she overreacted and she should have showed me the conversation because it was silly. However, she rightly viewed it as an invasion of her privacy.

Now, here is where I start to make mistakes. If you go looking for trouble, you normally find it right? Please don't comment on why I should not have snooped on my girlfriend. I know that it was wrong, and it achieves the opposite of building trust in a relationship. However, as many people will probably admit, once the doubt is in your mind it is hard to avoid it. So, I snooped. I set up a way to view her screen from my iphone without being in the room, giving her the illusion that I could not see what she was talking about. I lived in her parents home, so I slept in different rooms. She would tell me how she was tired during the week when she had her internship, so we would go to bed about 12am. However, just about every night during my stay, she would connect to facebook chat with her door closed, thinking I had no idea what was going on. Basically, I had no reason to believe she was actually cheating, but she would talk about everything with this guy, and I mean everything. Each time, they would flirt on facebook chat, mostly innocuous things, but often times sex would be the topic of conversation. Nothing about sex with each other, but basically stupid crap like, Jon at work has a crush on you and I bet he gets his dick hard when you walk buy in the morning. Or, if Mark didn't go to work that day, he would say, did you miss me? And jokingly, crap like, you can't live without me etc etc.

I am finishing up law school now, so I am ready to start my life with this girl. I am an idiot because I started snooping. Of course, I realized that if I brought this up, it would not go well for me, rightly so. Breaching someone's privacy is typically not taken lightly, again rightly so. So, I endured all this. I came back to the States after this holiday break, but I continued to screen share when I saw she was connected to facebook chat. Sure enough, about every night she would talk nonstop with this guy for 30 minutes to an hour. This guy basically gets to talk to her more than me. (note my jealousy). Long distance relationships are tough, especially when you're an insecure idiot like me. So now it finally reached it's breaking point. Tonight this guy talked to her about how he would like it if he could put a girl down on all fours and hit it from behind while he was watching soccer. She laughed at this. Then he talked about how he misses having a girlfriend on lazy boring Sundays so he could have sex. My girlriend just laughs at him and seems thoroughly entertained. She has never indicated that she would like to be that girl to be fair to her. Or today, she said jokingly to him that he should tell her more often how pretty she looks when she comes into the office. Basically from what I can gather, she likes to be desired and likes the attention, but what girl doesn't like to be desired and be showered with attention, right?

Basically, it is flirtacious commentary that could possibly go nowhere, and I am probably reading into this as I am an insecure idiot. However, it bothered me so much today that I asked her who she was talking to while we were on skype. She lied and said she was talking to her friend. I could tell perfectly well this was not the case, so I asked her if she would ever lie to me. Again she said no. At this point I revealed that I know she was talking to the same guy that caused the problem before (I didn't yet say how I knew). I then asked her, how do I know that you don't talk to him with sexual inuendo, etc. She said sex or sexual references have never entered into the conversation. I then basically told her I knew about the conversation, sexual inuendo, etc because I have been sharing her screen in observation mode. Her excuse: this guy talks like that to every girl and he is just a big jokester etc etc, and he is funny but ugly, and I would never never etc etc.

Bam. There it is now, right out in the open. Of course, she did not receive this news of invasion of privacy lightly as well she shouldn't. She did, however, agree that talking to this guy every night, long conversations with sexual inuendo, is not acceptable. She lashed back at me with "so now you're going to spy on me every day then." She feels like she broke my trust my lying and holding these inappropriate conversations, and that I broke her trust by what I did. I agree with that. I should never have done what I did, and I know it. In fact, I regret saying anything, and I should have just kept my mouth shut and stopped snooping. But, I could not do that, and I am where I am at this point. We agreed that she would block this guy on facebook chat, and we would try to repair the damage. I am a very cynical guy by nature, however, and I still have my doubts about our future, even though I without a doubt in my mind would like to someday marry this girl.

I guess, what I would like to hear is advice. Please don't tell me how I am an idiot and never should have snooped. I know that. It was wrong and it doesn't solve anything but rather makes things worse. You can tell me what you would have done, but that won't really help me now. I'd like to know if you have any experience with anything similar, and how you handled it. If you have no experience with anything like this, I'd still like to hear your thoughts. I screwed this up big time, making something bit out of something small (although still not very acceptable in my opinion). I am deeply in love with this girl, and I would like to believe she feels the same way (she has told me that she does). Be honest with me. How do you repair the trust? How do I get over my insecurities. What should I expect out her, and what should she expect out of me? Thanks in advance.

[doppelgaenger]

Instead of snooping, you should have just broken up with her. Don't try to "repair" trust.

[recoveringidiot]

3 years man. I've been with her 3 years. I love this girl and I don't want to give up on this. This situation is driving me nuts. I'd like to think that trust can be repaired, but I've never been in this particular situation.

[SelflessnHumble]

The dude above you just gave you all the advice you need.
IF you are a glutton for punishment AND you obviously cannot learn to control your emotions then it is quite clear
things will exponentially get worse...If you are having to spy on her just to find out the truth: SHE DOES NOT TRUST YOU.
Without trust in a relationship it's like trying to get pregnant without sperm to fertilize the egg.

It doesn't matter how many years you've been with her.
Trust can be repaired BUT it starts with trusting HER to trust YOU enough to tell you the truth.
Since you cannot do this since you breached it...how can you repair what you will always resort to just to put her ass in check?
Exactly...it can't be done.

[baberz]

i kind of went through the same situation. well the trust issue. when me and my boyfriend first started dating, he was so used to being "single." He did things that he thought were okay and innocent like flirt and text girls constantly saying things like "hey beautiful" & "oh i bet guys hit on you a lot because you're so attractive" etc. I sat him down & talked to him about how things like this is NOT okay. He didn't understand at first but i realized i had to make him imagine he was in my shoes, then he understood. Throughout our relationship he keeps making the same mistakes with things that he thinks is innocent and okay. Of course this puts a lot of strain on our relationship but i love him very much so i believe him when he tells me he's trying. things are good for us now, but i still get really jealous. it's hard to earn my trust back after you've lost it. i think it's perfectly fine to snoop. my phone and computer are open to him to snoop whenever he wants and his is open to me. i mean, what's the problem if you have nothing to hide right? when we first started this rule, i snooped constantly, but now i don't feel a need too. it definitely helped out our relationship. i'm still insecure but he always assures me that i have nothing to worry about. sometimes i get nervous when he goes out with his buddies to the bar or something similar. i question him like crazy when he gets home, but now he's proven to me i can trust him. i think that is all you can do. you're going to be insecure for the longest time, maybe forever but you have to put faith into each other or you're going to be paranoid and drive her away. sometimes you have to just bite your tongue and hold down your insecurities.

[doppelgaenger]

3 years man. I've been with her 3 years. I love this girl and I don't want to give up on this. This situation is driving me nuts. I'd like to think that trust can be repaired, but I've never been in this particular situation.

Is that supposed to change my perspective somehow? Unfortunately for you, that's 3 years of your life you will never get back... don't even waste another second pondering over it. Break up with her and be done with it! Life's too short for this kind of crap. Don't subject yourself to a crappy relationship

[recoveringidiot]

My reply got lost in transmission apparently, and I don't feel like typing it all again so I'll be brief. She still wants this to work out, as do I. She recognizes her error, and that our mutual trust has been severely shaken by this. I should have just quit snooping, and had some blind faith until proven otherwise. But, I am a cynical person by nature, and for that very reason I am agnostic. I have my doubts, but in the end I want to try to give it one more shot. I agree, that life is too short for crap, but I feel like giving this once more chance is for the best. Typically action with regret is better than inaction with regret, in my experience. @ Baberz, and maybe you have my solution. I am being insecure so maybe that would relieve my insecurity. Who knows. We'll try something anyway.

[MerryH]

I know you want advice on how to make it work out, and I wish I could give you that, but...

I really don't see how that's going to happen for you. I don't think there's any fair way to earn someone's trust again. You've both given reasons not to be trusted. How would you even begin to fix that? She can agree to have you monitor her phone and internet usage, which is ridiculous and invasive, but that's not going to make you trust her. You'll still wonder if she's hiding something somewhere else. As for you, I don't even know what you'd have to do to prove you won't violate her privacy again. It certainly wouldn't entail you monitoring her. You can both forgive each other, that's easy, but you're both going to always have problems trusting the other from now on.

A relationship has failed when trust is gone. That's it. Fin.

[doppelgaenger]

You should have quit snooping, but you didn't. You had doubts, you were cynical about it, and yet you wanna give it one more shot??? I don't see the logic in this. What makes you think it's going to work out? Can you even list one reason why it's in your best interest to continue and try to work things out? Bahhh. You just feel pressured to continue because you invested 3 years of your short life into this relationship, even though you already know full well that you'll never be able to trust her ever again. And why should you? You think that just because she 'lasted' for three years, she deserves some kind of reconciliation for her dishonesty?

If you're seriously going to give it another chance, then you never wanted advice at all. You just wanted us to listen to you whine and then tell you everything is going to be okay. But it's not.

[VincenzoG91]

She's a liar and you're a snooper. And now those are the issues that you two are wrestling with instead of the underlying weakness in the relationship that led to this situation. Add in moving in together in two months, and you've got an unstable situation. I think that you two should call this relationship off before the move happens. It will save you both some time, money and trouble.

[HeartIsAching]

You've both broken trust. It's damned near impossible to get trust back. You're pretty much hosed, dude. Move on.

FYI - you did NOT trust her. If you did, you wouldn't have displayed abusive behavior by snooping - and that's what it is. Additionally, she did NOT trust you, or she'd have been open and up-front about her conversations with him. She'd have been able to trust that she could say what was going on without you getting upset about it.

[HeartIsAching]

If you're seriously going to give it another chance, then you never wanted advice at all. You just wanted us to listen to you whine and then tell you everything is going to be okay. But it's not.

You nailed that one.

[recoveringidiot]

yeah, you all are right. there is no way out of this one except out the door. I am cynical already so your cynical attitudes just fuel my fire. I don't believe in love anymore. I think I'll tell her tomorrow that this is over. I don't know what I'll do if she comes crawling begging me to take her back though. I fell in love with her exoticness. She is French. She probably fell in love with me for the same reason. I hate this situation. I hate that I could have just said nothing and continued with her. Maybe her conversations with this guy truly were harmless. I'll never know because tomorrow is the day it all comes to an end. 3 years is a lot in short life, true. Especially since I believe that this life is it. This is my only shot. I will turn into dust at the end, and the only thing I will leave behind is my legacy. There is nothing after this life. I think I'll focus on finishing school, making money and living life to the fullest without love. Yeah, I'm jaded as hell. Thanks everybody.

[Aniphilia]

I was snooped at the beginning of a relationship. He found a vid of me webcamming with my ex boyfriend. I had previously told him I had never webcammed. I forgot about that one, I thought he meant with a stranger anyway. But I really didnt think of it at all. It was also taken before new bf and I went from friends to bf/gf. He confronted me and we argued/talked about trust. He had been in a terrilbe relationship with the mother of his children. But you know something, we fell in love and got over it. Six years of love in fact. Im now no longer with him but I just wanted you to hear that. It can be done.

[recoveringidiot]

Yes, you worked it out then it was fine for six years and it ended? Why? That is exactly what I don't want, to work this out only for it to be a temporary fix.