Inappropriate relationship and wedding repercussions

Steel_2

gorgeous_gwen wrote: »

We have also agreed on complete transparency, that is, complete openness on who he is calling, texting, chatting to on Facebook. He is being open with passwords to various accounts, so if I wonder about something, I am able to have a look, and he is fine with this, the premise being he has nothing to hide, has no secrets.

Strange.

I would have thought complete transparency would be complete openness on who you and he are calling, texting, chatting to on Facebook. You and him being open with passwords to various accounts belonging to each other, so if either of you wonder about something, you are both able to have a look, and that you both are fine with this, the premise being neither of you has anything to hide, have no secrets.

Be careful here gwen.

This does not look like trust to me or the actions of someone who is rebuilding trust.

Tiger_greeneyes

gorgeous_gwen wrote: »

The calling at work... He met this girl on an assignment at work he was for a few weeks. She made a pass at him at work, after he told me he said not to worry because he wouldn't be working there again... The next day... yes he was working there again. He usually would call or text during the day but didn't and I knew something was up so I called him when he sheepishly told me where he was. I also found out not long after that although he was afterwards on a different assignment elsewhere nearby, he called in to where the old assignment was to leave little presents for her.

I have to say Gwen - what the hell are you thinking? The list of his misdemenours is growing longer as the thread goes on. So he leaves other women presents (which is almost certainly against his terms of employment), has text-sex with other women, blames the lot on you, implies the problem is all in your head, gets the hump when you try to discuss relationship issues with him, makes you feel as though your feelings are unimportant, you feel he's passively aggressively punishing you, you can't trust him when you can't see him, he was sexting some woman when you were sat in the same room together - that's just the stuff I remember, I haven't needed to re-read the thread.

I'm really struggling to work out exactly WHY this relationship is worth saving?

gorgeous_gwen wrote: »

We have also agreed on complete transparency, that is, complete openness on who he is calling, texting, chatting to on Facebook. He is being open with passwords to various accounts, so if I wonder about something, I am able to have a look, and he is fine with this, the premise being he has nothing to hide, has no secrets.

Don't you see how unhealthy your relationship is? Love is absolutely nowhere to be seen, it's all about mistrust, control, head games, blame - the list goes on. And on.

You also profess to love him enough to want to marry him, but you have all his passwords so you can monitor who he talks to, what he says, what they say etc. Sorry if I sound harsh Gwen - but I'd say the same thing to my closest friend if I needed to, so take it as a compliment but - the two of you are truly incompatible and are bad for each other. I can't recall one positive thing you've said about him and his treatment of you.

From his side of things, he has a girlfriend who doesn't trust him, to the point of having to know all his passwords, call her from work to 'check in', often wants to talk about relationship issues, wants to marry him etc. Have you considered that you might be pushing him into having feelings for other women? I know your existence with him is unhappy but on the other hand, he sounds just as unhappy being with you.

You don't need relationship counselling. be honest with each other about everything. He already knows how he's affected you, it sounds about time he had his say - listen to him. Stop checking up on him and give him a bit more attention - so he won't be tempted to look elsewhere. This is a two-way street and if you both want a happy future together, you both have to start as you mean to go on. No bringing up the past in a negative way, no blame. Relationships don't come with a manual but they require a lot of work, mutual respect and trust, and complete maturity. No more controlling. If you keep going as you are you'll rip each other apart (more than you already have) and totally implode. Treating someone like you don't trust them is a self-fulfilling prophecy - as is pretty much everything that's negative.

This is the first time I've thought you can actually resolve your problems but someone has to make the first move. Starting with his passwords - and tell him why. If he still ends up cheating on you in the future (I don't think he will if I'm honest, not if he is happy at home) then you know you've done everything you can do. If you keep seeing him and treating him as a waster then you're doomed.

I hope you take this in the spirit in which it's meant - you do have the power to sort all this out though, I doubt it's too late, not at the moment

shellsuit

Do you know what I think would be for the best Gwen? For you both to have a break from each other with NO contact, to see what it is you both actually want from the other.

It needn't be long, maybe a week, a fortnight, a month or even a few months. The most important thing though is no contact at all.

I split with my (now) husband in 2006, for 6 months. He left me a letter one day and walked out while I was at work. Said he didn't feel the same way about me and that was that. He wanted to be friends, I didn't so I cut off contact. Then I found out he had been on dating sites for a few months previous to that and had planned to leave me on that day as he'd been in cahoots with his dad. He said that he didn't know what he wanted (we'd been engaged to be married) and didn't asked me to bear with him, but I couldn't.

Then I remembered this from one of my fav films...

Someone once said, "If you want something badly, set it free.
If it comes back to you, it's yours forever.
If it doesn't, it was never yours to begin with."

Cheesy I know, but still, it made a lot of sense to me, so I let him go.

Anyway, we got back in contact by accident (over a parking ticket would you believe lol) and we gradually fell back in love again but we took it slow and didn't live together for another year.

We went on holiday just the 2 of us, spent quality time with each other by making time for each other, then we went on to have a baby and we got married in October just gone.

Have a break and show him what will be missing. The time apart could work wonders, but then again, it might be the end forever. If he doesn't want to make a go of it after the break, then at least you will know where you stand with him.


Feel free to ignore all the above if that doesn't suit you though! x

Tiger_greeneyes

That's a lovely story shellsuit, you two are obviously meant to be together!

I do feel that circumstances are different with Gwen and ***** though. If they both want the same things out of their future and they want them together, then they should start afresh - and start treating each other as they would both want to be treated in a happy relationship. I feel their children would benefit more from seeing their mum and dad getting on well than being passed back and forth between two homes, iyswim?

Generally speaking, people behave as other people expect them to behave. If you think back to the last time someone shocked you by doing something you (and they) never thought they would do, and they don't know why the did it? That is the subconscious getting something they need emotionally. This is why Gwen needs to listen to him and they need to draw a line under the past, concentrate on the future and thinking of each other's human needs.

gorgeous_gwen

I should rephrase: the onus is on him to REBUILD trust. Not for him to GIVE me the trust back iyswim. He needs to show that he IS this trustworthy person he professes to be, because he has shown via his actions that he did not act in a trustworthy way.

Complete transparency works both ways. We both have access to each other's phones, accounts, computer stuff. But tbh this isno different to how it was anyway, it's that now if I have a wobble, or something doesn't look right, I can say I feel like that and verify he is telling the truth. That is all out in the open, he is there when I look and vice versa. He would show me a call, a text, to say, look, that isn't what it looks like.

It isn't monitoring him by any means, I certainly don't check his every move, every call, or text, or anything like that.

If he is not trusted, then that is because he broke that trust yes? Even I'd be a fool if right after this happened I said right, I'm going to treat you exactly as I did before: because I did that and he broke it again and then again. Trust but verify.

It's not about control. There is no way I tell him what to do, he wouldn't have it. I express boundaries (of which I had very few before, thus a lot of this trouble) and what are dealbreakers, anything else is negotiated so we meet in the middle somewhere.

We have btw searched a lot through counselling over why he acted the way he did and we understand more about it: and it's not about me, anything I did or didn't do. It is HIS issue, his problems with self-esteem and feeling attractive, feeding his ego. It is not a lack of anything from me or the relationship, which I did think for a while and really messed with my head.

Tiger_greeneyes

The way I see it is either he strayed because he's one of life's spineless cheats or because he's unhappy about something. Nobody wakes up and thinks "looks like it's going to rain, I think I'll have an extra marital affair today". Only you know whether he's a 'natural' cheat or not. If he isn't a serial love rat, the point is not that he cheated, that's just a symptom. The real point is why did he cheat. That's what needs working on rather than what he did. You can get rid of a headache with a paracetamol but if there's something more sinister going on that is causing the headaches, no amount of paracetamol will fix it. If he strays again then the original problem hasn't been addressed. If he is a love rat - why do you want to be with him if you are going to be cheated on in the future?

As for checking his email, facebook, phone etc to verify he's being truthful, I'm very uncomfortable with that, it's not right - and if my husband wanted to start looking at what I was doing rather than trusting me to do the right thing by him, I'd be seriously doubting whether I would actually want to be with him - and I know that he'd feel the exact same.

One of my ex's used to phone me a dozen times a day and had a set 'questionnaire' - where have you been, who did you see, what did they say to you, what did you say to them, did anyone mention me, why not? Has anyone come around to see you, who, what did they say to you, what did you say to them, did anyone mention me, why not? Has anyone rung you.... .... .... have you run anyone.... .... .... and then he would drive from South Wales to Surrey every night to check my car was in my driveway because I wasn't allowed out. I went to a friends house for a girly clothes party one night - he rang there at 9pm and went mental at me because I wasn't at home where he said I should be. He even went out on a night out with my brother and some of his friends - he ran back home every hour to phone me from his house phone to ensure I was still at home. I only found out that he was running back and forth on the lad's night out because someone had taken photos of the night out. I wasn't even aware there was a lad's night out because he was calling on the hour, every hour. I didn't have the confidence to dump him because he was violent to me - I was 21 then - I'm 44 now. In the end I did dump him and he ended up in court for making threats, almost breaking my back and trying to suffocate me. I'm not saying this is the same as your story by any means, but I didn't cheat on him and all of this started with him suspecting me because I had a male friend (who was actually gay). I have no idea how it would have been if the internet had been around back then, but I'm sure he'd have all my passwords to check up on me, and I wouldn't be allowed to talk to anyone who was male. Creepily enough, a couple of years ago he walked right past me (I was blonde when I was with him, my hair was dark brown so he didn't recognise me), even though I was living in Suffolk and he lives in Wales. I'd put my home town on some profile or another. No amount of checking up on each other is right and it never will be. Trust is trust, checking up on someone is checking up on someone. If you can't trust someone to the extent you have to have all of their passwords (or even one of them) then it's time to either get to the root cause and fix it or quit imho.

gorgeous_gwen

We have been working on the reasons behind this in counselling. Yes, what you say is correct that it is a symptom, but the cause is not always as simple as something lacking in the relationship, or from the other partner.

In my partner's case, it was an ego boost for him. He fed off the attention of this other woman. It was not to look for something he felt was missing within OUR relationship because I provided that for him, and always have (his words.) He needed the assurance that OTHER females found him attractive. He has deep-seated self-esteem issues stemming from his childhood. There is also a fundamental boundary difference where he felt his behaviour was "ok" to a degree because they weren't actually having a physical relationship.

I don't think he is a love rat. I have never observed this behaviour in him previously.

The "checking" - that is a reassurance thing. Let me give you an example. I walked past him and caught sight of a text on his phone. It wasn't sexual but was the type a guy wouldn't send, "love" and "xxx". He doesn't have any female friends who would text him that, and I thought, c*ap, that's not from that girl is it? Has he started texting her again? I asked him, he showed me, called the number: it was his mum. She rarely uses her mobile and has probably texted him five times ever. So there you go, crisis averted. He was happy to do that, it reassured me. He knew I would not have questioned him previously: my insecurity over that is a direct result of what he did and he acknowledges that and sought to reassure me.

I still say, I would be crazy to say, look, I have found out you have been having an inappropriate relationship with this woman, that you have been duplicituous by texting, calling and chatting with her and keeping it secret and lying about it, and made me think I was mad for thinking any of this was happening, and now I am going to say, hey ho, let's carry on like before? I took his word before and he was lying so I should say, oh well, let's carry on and trust him EXACTLY like I did before? What message does that send? That I am a doormat who will overlook his betrayal and there is no consequence for his actions?

He keeps saying, I'm not like that, I'm not a cheat, I wouldn't do that, I wouldn't go behind your back, etc. So I say, well SHOW me. Show me you are who you proclaim to be and not the person you were acting like those months ago. When I can see that he ISN'T repeating that behaviour, there will be no need for him to offer up proof of his actions, because I won't need them. I will trust him. But it is time-limited, this the timeframe, otherwise it's not fair on anyone.

RacyRed

Gwen, do you think the current dynamics of your relationship are helping his self esteem issues?

If you don't work with him on them, who will?

marywooyeah

tiger green eyes that sounds awful! so glad you got away from such a controlling horrible man.
one of my exes had a similar "questionnaire", once my phone died and when I got home he had a go at me asking why I was ignoring him and why I'd "deliberately" switched it off to avoid him, when his phone bill came it was 7 pages long showing each time he'd rang me during that period (which was only a few hours!)

OP if you stay with your man, can you ever see yourselves reaching a place of complete trust? it sounds like both of you are on edge - him trying to placate you with being honest and showing you things - but probably wondering when the next time you will be asking to see things again is - and you for feeling anxious and constantly worrying over such things. he really doesnt sound worth it, sorry if that sounds harsh.

FBaby

This checking up business in my view is not productive at all. What you want, in the end, is for one that he stops doing things he shouldn't be doing, and for two that you regain your trust in him.

The reality is that if he isn't over his self-esteem issue or whatever it is that has caused him to be behave as he has, you checking on him isn't going to change anything. IF it happened again, all he would need to do is be more careful. He could get a second mobile and hide it somewhere and still be happy to show you his regular mobile messages with a big 'see you can trust me' smile on his face. As a result, you might gradually start to trust him again, but it wouldn't be under false pretense since he would be still be untrustworthy.

I would totally forget about it, tell him that you have made the decision to trust him again because YOU want to. If you want to protect yourself just in case, just observe his behaviour. Good observation will almost always catch someone unfaithful.