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My boyfriend didnt cheat, but definitely crossed a line.


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So here is some context, currently we are dealing with the COVID-19 situation and because of this I hadn't seen my boyfriend for over a month. Weve been together for two years and overall things have been great. I can admit I do have trust issues based on previous relationships and things from my past and that's a problem I am trying to work on. However he's never really given me a reason to 100 percent not trust him. Yes, he does have a lot of girl friends and it does kind of make me uncomfortable but at the end of the day I cant and don't want to control him. Sometimes though I do get very insecure and I hate to admit it but I have looked through his phone before, only twice in the two years we've been together because I always feel awful doing it. But sometimes a feeling of burning curiosity comes over me and i just do it, mostly as confirmation that he hasn't done anything because for the most part I don't really think he is the cheating type.

 

Well, just this week I was able to see him again after so long (well long to us, the most we've gone without seeing each other was like a week and a half) and that was really wonderful. However during the time apart I was worried of a distance forming between us because as time went on it felt like he didn't really want to talk to me as much and i don't know he just seemed distant. and i got a little insecure because what if the physical distance made him lose interest or something? i don't know but something felt a little off for me.

 

Yesterday he spent the night at my house and we were hanging out today just relaxing. Well he fell alseep in the livingroom, his phone was in my room charging, and due to me having such an odd feeling about what was going on when we couldn't be together i went on his phone. I wasn't expecting to find anything as always, however this time I did. It was on his snapchat, there was a girl he was messaging and no shame to any kind of sex workers but she was a girl who clearly sold pictures of herself and I'm sure you can fill in the rest. what made me notice it was that her username said "[her name] ($ for nudes)", so obviously I was like what the..? The chat was only him messeging over a span of a few weeks, she seemed to be ignoring him or something. It was just messages like "oh i found your snap through a group chat you looked amazing" and "i can see your reading my messages why arent you responding" and such. it just seemed very fishy so i confronted him about it and was like what is this, who is this, what were you trying to do. and all the while he wasn't responding, just shaking his head no. I asked him why he wouldn't explain what was going on and eventually he said I'm not going to explain something that didn't involve anything wrong. I just wanted to know what his intentions were with her and what was up. he ended up getting really mad at me and said he didn't even want to look at me. so he left to go home. I don't know if I did something wrong because he got so angry (which he never really does, i was shocked when he said he didn't want to be around me) or what going on. I just don't understand because he was the one who had sketchy stuff going on, if it wasn't sketchy or wasn't what it looked like then why couldnt he just explain it?

 

I know he didnt cheat but a boundary was definitely crossed and it is very hurtful. Because he knows without a shadow of a doubt that doing that kind of stuff is a no-no in our relationship. I let a lot slide, but that is something I am not comfortable with. So the fact that he would do that anyway just makes me feel like he doesn't value my feelings.

 

I don't really know what to think, so thoughts?

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Your boyfriend has a secret life. He not only has no qualms having a lot of girl "friends" but also enjoys his sleaze on the side; the tramp mystery woman on his cell phone. :upset:

 

You can't trust him. He is two faced. There's a face for you and another face in his world without you in it.

 

Emotional cheating is betraying your trust in him. He doesn't have integrity.

 

My husband and I don't have extra opposite gender people in our lives and we both agreed to this principle and unspoken code of honor, respect, devotion and loyalty to one another. (We're fine if other couples have opposite gender friends if they agreed to it and they are entitled!)

 

You need to think long and hard. Only you know whether or not your relationship with your boyfriend can endure or not.

 

No, he doesn't care how you feel. He's extremely selfish, self-centered and self-serving. He won't change for you. He only knows how to deny and do as he pleases despite what you think. Your opinion and wishes do not matter to him.

 

Either accept your boyfriend as he is flaws, character defects and all or be with a MORAL man who knows how to treat you with respect, love, consideration, empathy and virtues you hold dear. Think about it. Don't you deserve better?

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I really detest going in to other people's belongings - I've had a coworker who did this to me, an ex who did this, a roommate who did this- so I'll do my best not to project.

 

If you can't trust the person you are with, then you shouldn't be with that person.

 

A strong relationship is built on trust and respect (of each other and each other's personal properties) and when you breach that trust, there is no going back.

 

You crossed a line too and you paid a price for it.

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What a jerk! He does wrong and instead of owning up to it, he turns the tables on you. Don't buy into it, it's not your fault. He was the one doing wrong and his anger is from being caught.

 

Don't go running after him, you will only end up looking weak.

You need to seriously decide if you want to remain with a man like him.

 

For the record, he was cheating. If you're in a relationship, you don't go looking at someone else's naked pictures nor do you try and chat them up.

I'm not sure if it's society or because you might be insecure, but when the heck did you ever get the idea that what he's doing, might be okay?

He is being disgusting and yes, it is a type of cheating.

 

But at the end of the day, only you can decide if you want to stay with him or not. But don't chase and don't beg. Despite what he tries to make you believe, it was him who did wrong.

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He couldn't explain it because it was already all there: he's looking for other women on the side, and got caught. The anger is simply a deflection of the guilt. He doesn't know what to say because he knows he can't deny it, and he's not mature enough to take accountability.

 

Your suspicion that something was off was correct. Going through his phone wasn't great, but you found what you were looking for. The bigger problem is that you've discovered that he isn't in fact committed the way you hoped.

 

I would not continue dating him. He's not the guy you thought he was.

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I will preach what I always do, and if it's not everyone's cup of tea, so be it. NO one is going to look out for you. NO one will save you from a liar and a cheater, so if it means looking on his phone, do it!!

 

You need to be careful in this day and age, and god knows what he might bring to your bed if this is the type of filth he is into.

 

If something doesn't feel right and his phone is there, look, by all means. You will save yourself a lifetime with a loser who will only lie to you and hide things from you.

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Yes, normally i would feel very bad for looking at his phone because i don't want to be seen as that crazy jealous girlfriend, it seems like people who look through there partners things are portrayed that way. but in this case honestly im glad that i looked instead of continuing on oblivious to what was going on behind closed doors.

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I don't view it that way. In this life, people will lie to you, hide things, etc. What would you rather do, choose to look to make sure it's all good and feel slightly bad over looking, or don't look and spend many years with someone who is lying, cheating and might even be bringing you STD's?

 

For me, the choice is obvious. Because I tell ya, no one is going to fix anything for me if I choose to not look and some man destroys my health and my life.

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yes thats very true. for us it was always like whats mine is yours and whats yours is mine, so going on each others phone for whatever reason wasn't really seen as big deal. i guess i just always felt like i was abusing that freedom to snoop through his stuff the few times that i did do it. he would always say that he didnt care and that if he didnt want me on his phone then i wouldn't know his password. and yea, anytime i looked through his phone i always felt bad but relieved because i never found anything. unforyuantly this time was not the case and that really threw me for a loop. in my mind i was thinking, "watch, you're going to look through it and find nothing and feel like an idiot for looking" but then the first thing i see is him being disrespectful. sucks, but at least i know now.

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yea this was just such a shock to me that at first i really didnt know what to think. at first i did feel like maybe i was in the wrong completely and i was feeling guilty because i thought i was the one who messed everything up. however, after collecting my thoughts, thinking about it and talking with people about it i came to my senses. he was the one who messed everything up by being so utterly deceitful and disrespectful.

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He's not a nice guy. He is into trashy women, (that's never a good thing and it's upsetting to find out). He doesn't think there's anything wrong with being involved with one, even if he has a gf and he will blame you if you find out what's going on.

 

That's not the type of man you should be investing your emotions or trust into. He could do much more damage down the line if you do go back.

Next time it could be a hooker he actually slept with.

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I will preach what I always do, and if it's not everyone's cup of tea, so be it. NO one is going to look out for you. NO one will save you from a liar and a cheater, so if it means looking on his phone, do it!!

 

You need to be careful in this day and age, and god knows what he might bring to your bed if this is the type of filth he is into.

 

If something doesn't feel right and his phone is there, look, by all means. You will save yourself a lifetime with a loser who will only lie to you and hide things from you.

 

Although I've not looked through someone's phone myself, I agree that it could save years of wasting your time on unknown lies and deceit (or, it could reassure you that your fears were unfounded, of course). It's all very well saying you should trust your partner and that the relationship is effectively over if you snoop, but the partner has the same responsibility to behave appropriately within a committed relationship, so it could be said that it was over when he starting contacting dodgy women. He crossed the line first and was clearly intending to keep doing so for as long as he could get away with it. When confronted he had nothing to say because he hadn't prepared for being found out... because he believed his partner should just trust him and not look at his phone.

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He got mad because he got caught.

 

Why is he pursuing this girl?

 

There are so many images of naked women available on the internet for free. He has no excuse.

 

To me, this does enter into the realm of cheating. I would definitely have a problem with it!

 

I let a lot slide

 

Like what?

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he was the one who messed everything up by being so utterly deceitful and disrespectful.

 

This is correct.

 

He messed up. And my guess it's not the first time, but the first time he got caught. He clearly was feeling a little bold if he was messaging someone like that knowing you have his password. Either he's very stupid not at least attempting to hide it (which of course, is actually a positive for you) or he's managed to get away with it until now and forgot to bother deleting something inappropriate.

 

Either way, I would be done. There is no way I would trust him again.

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Yes, please don't let him convince you that it was you. He's only trying to shift blame because he knows he was caught behaving badly.

 

Between what you did and what he did, he was a million times worse and he shouldn't have been getting involved with a girl like that.

 

I'm sorry he treated you like that. You deserve better.

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As others have said he's just shifting blame. So don't fall for his crap. hes mad at you. no. he's trying to manipulate you, into putting up with bad behavior.

 

Dont kid yourself that this is the first time or the only thing he's up to. chatting for WEEKS! asking why she's the one not responding. what the heck, OP!

 

You've let things slide and that's your fault. You should be done with people when the very first sign of disrespect happens. Its the only way to weed out bad people. We're too brainwashed about forgiveness... The very first time... I would say no! I'm not mad & there's nothing to forgive, because I know what fidelity and loyalty look like and I'm done with your foolishness.

 

There are just way too many other people in the world. You have to find the ones that don't just talk the talk, they gotta walk the walk.

 

I'm sorry he's a schmuck and it hurts. move on. focus on healing your trust issues by trusting yourself to walk away when this happens. Don't expect him to act better. FIND BETTER

 

PS... Dont feel bad you checked his phone. I think in general, if you "need" to look, you will find. Find a guy, that you don't feel the need to look.

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Do you think he wanted you to find it? Or he thinks online flirting etc is fine? BTW this policy is poor and violates trust and privacy. Think twice about needing to go through anyone's phone and more importantly your own boundaries and privacy.

 

People who police each other have major issues, so this finding is only a symptom of that.

for us it was always like whats mine is yours and whats yours is mine, so going on each others phone for whatever reason wasn't really seen as big deal.
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Does the means justify the end???

 

That depends on your perspective? You NEVER trusted him.

It doesn’t matter whether he was trustworthy or not.

YOU stayed regardless of your mistrust.

You claimed you trusted him but you didn’t. Your supposed trust was based on never finding evidence in his phone .

Trust is trust without proof.

 

Those that say you were right to not waste years of your life by snooping , are those that are not strong enough to trust their own instincts and walk away without evidence.

 

You did wrong by snooping. Not wrong by him necessarily but by yourself.

 

Do you feel justified?

Or do you feel crap by not trusting your own instincts???

 

Never ever snoop. The only reason you do is because you don’t trust your partner.

 

And there is nothing worse than to have an untrusting partner. Irrespective of whether justified or not.

 

Hopefully in the future you can be with someone that you can actually trust without needing evidence.

Because needing evidence is actually the opposite of trust and would break down any relationship.

 

Your admission to snooping has absolved him from his crimes. In his mind your behaviour was worse, many would agree.

 

You clearly can’t continue with him so end it before he does.

Keep what dignity you have .

Good luck!!!

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I'm sorry to hear you're going through this.

 

Although he may not have physically cheated, if this is something you both see as a form of betrayal, I do think he has cheated, at least emotionally.

He is angry that he got caught.

 

I am in a similar kind of situation, and I understand how easy it is for outsiders to give you advice, but having to actually deal with possibly losing someone you love regardless is incredibly hard. Realise, you love who you thought he was, not who he actually is.

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He got mad because he got caught.

 

Why is he pursuing this girl?

 

There are so many images of naked women available on the internet for free. He has no excuse.

 

To me, this does enter into the realm of cheating. I would definitely have a problem with it!

 

 

 

Like what?

 

I regards to what i meant by "i let a lot slide" i didnt mean it as i let him blatantly disrespect me. i just meant i gave him his freedoms, like if he wants to have friends of the opposite gender thats okay. of course it made me a bit jealous sometimes but he let me have my guy friends and i know he got a little jealous too. so it went both ways. basically, i meant i just didnt police him because i was his girlfriend not his mom.

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Do you think he wanted you to find it? Or he thinks online flirting etc is fine? BTW this policy is poor and violates trust and privacy. Think twice about needing to go through anyone's phone and more importantly your own boundaries and privacy.

 

People who police each other have major issues, so this finding is only a symptom of that.

 

It wasnt really a "policy" we had set in place. neither of demanded to know each others passwords it was just something we shared. it was never really us policing each other. what i meant by it not being an issue to be on each others phones was that it was normal for us to use them. like if he needed to use my phone, laptop, or other personal item then he could and visa versa. i didnt mean it as it was the norm for us to go through each others things to see who were talking to. because on my end, that rarely ever happened because i just didnt really feel the need to aside from the rare other times. i cant say he didnt go through my things, i dont really know and dont care as i had nothing to hide.

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So here is some context, currently we are dealing with the COVID-19 situation and because of this I hadn't seen my boyfriend for over a month. Weve been together for two years and overall things have been great. I can admit I do have trust issues based on previous relationships and things from my past and that's a problem I am trying to work on. However he's never really given me a reason to 100 percent not trust him. Yes, he does have a lot of girl friends and it does kind of make me uncomfortable but at the end of the day I cant and don't want to control him. Sometimes though I do get very insecure and I hate to admit it but I have looked through his phone before, only twice in the two years we've been together because I always feel awful doing it. But sometimes a feeling of burning curiosity comes over me and i just do it, mostly as confirmation that he hasn't done anything because for the most part I don't really think he is the cheating type.

 

Well, just this week I was able to see him again after so long (well long to us, the most we've gone without seeing each other was like a week and a half) and that was really wonderful. However during the time apart I was worried of a distance forming between us because as time went on it felt like he didn't really want to talk to me as much and i don't know he just seemed distant. and i got a little insecure because what if the physical distance made him lose interest or something? i don't know but something felt a little off for me.

 

Yesterday he spent the night at my house and we were hanging out today just relaxing. Well he fell alseep in the livingroom, his phone was in my room charging, and due to me having such an odd feeling about what was going on when we couldn't be together i went on his phone. I wasn't expecting to find anything as always, however this time I did. It was on his snapchat, there was a girl he was messaging and no shame to any kind of sex workers but she was a girl who clearly sold pictures of herself and I'm sure you can fill in the rest. what made me notice it was that her username said "[her name] ($ for nudes)", so obviously I was like what the..? The chat was only him messeging over a span of a few weeks, she seemed to be ignoring him or something. It was just messages like "oh i found your snap through a group chat you looked amazing" and "i can see your reading my messages why arent you responding" and such. it just seemed very fishy so i confronted him about it and was like what is this, who is this, what were you trying to do. and all the while he wasn't responding, just shaking his head no. I asked him why he wouldn't explain what was going on and eventually he said I'm not going to explain something that didn't involve anything wrong. I just wanted to know what his intentions were with her and what was up. he ended up getting really mad at me and said he didn't even want to look at me. so he left to go home. I don't know if I did something wrong because he got so angry (which he never really does, i was shocked when he said he didn't want to be around me) or what going on. I just don't understand because he was the one who had sketchy stuff going on, if it wasn't sketchy or wasn't what it looked like then why couldnt he just explain it?

 

I know he didnt cheat but a boundary was definitely crossed and it is very hurtful. Because he knows without a shadow of a doubt that doing that kind of stuff is a no-no in our relationship. I let a lot slide, but that is something I am not comfortable with. So the fact that he would do that anyway just makes me feel like he doesn't value my feelings.

 

I don't really know what to think, so thoughts?

In bold is a big, "but why?"

 

You're free to draw your boundaries wherever you like. Personally, it sounds so bizarro world that he'd be insistently hitting up one specific cash-for-porn account on Instagram over the course of weeks with no response. Honestly, it sounds much more like spam messages that would be coming his way, not from him. I hope you're dead sure that isn't indeed the case.

 

To get to the point, "only" going through his phone twice in two years isn't some badge you should be wearing with honor. Not to suggest this guy's a peach, but making it a habit to placate your own insecurities by going through other people's things is a terrible habit that will ruin your chances with any healthy and self-respecting men in the future. In this situation, he may have been mad because at least by your account it appears he was caught, but I'd be right out the door if I spotted a girlfriend of mine going through my phone. Life's too short for trustless relationships.

 

But insofar as you did go through his phone, why not act meaningfully once you do find something incriminating? Not that there's really ever any good excuse to invade someone's privacy, but doing so just to find issues to have a discussion over is among the worst. For instance, while I can't necessarily defend it, there's some level of understanding I can have for, say, a wife and mother who has some very evidence-based suspicions she'd rather do her best to confirm before flipping the family and household on its head with a divorce. But multiple times with just a boyfriend only so you can ask him, "Who's Tara?" I'm not one to pretend snooping is the end-all, be-all ultimate transgression. But if you're going to do it, you'd better "hope" the sin you uncover is greater than the one you're committing. And really, I'm not sure him hitting up an Instagram model for nudes is much if at all worse than your having invaded his privacy multiple times already.

 

As others have said, there was never any trust to begin with. Now that this has happened, it certainly isn't going to magically manifest itself. And that's not saying in this particular case, he may not have been a "worthy victim," but it's not a good standard to operate on. I'd acknowledge it for what the relationship for all it ever was and take this opportunity to heal and move on.

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In bold is a big, "but why?"

 

You're free to draw your boundaries wherever you like. Personally, it sounds so bizarro world that he'd be insistently hitting up one specific cash-for-porn account on Instagram over the course of weeks with no response. Honestly, it sounds much more like spam messages that would be coming his way, not from him. I hope you're dead sure that isn't indeed the case.

 

To get to the point, "only" going through his phone twice in two years isn't some badge you should be wearing with honor. Not to suggest this guy's a peach, but making it a habit to placate your own insecurities by going through other people's things is a terrible habit that will ruin your chances with any healthy and self-respecting men in the future. In this situation, he may have been mad because at least by your account it appears he was caught, but I'd be right out the door if I spotted a girlfriend of mine going through my phone. Life's too short for trustless relationships.

 

But insofar as you did go through his phone, why not act meaningfully once you do find something incriminating? Not that there's really ever any good excuse to invade someone's privacy, but doing so just to find issues to have a discussion over is among the worst. For instance, while I can't necessarily defend it, there's some level of understanding I can have for, say, a wife and mother who has some very evidence-based suspicions she'd rather do her best to confirm before flipping the family and household on its head with a divorce. But multiple times with just a boyfriend only so you can ask him, "Who's Tara?" I'm not one to pretend snooping is the end-all, be-all ultimate transgression. But if you're going to do it, you'd better "hope" the sin you uncover is greater than the one you're committing. And really, I'm not sure him hitting up an Instagram model for nudes is much if at all worse than your having invaded his privacy multiple times already.

 

As others have said, there was never any trust to begin with. Now that this has happened, it certainly isn't going to magically manifest itself. And that's not saying in this particular case, he may not have been a "worthy victim," but it's not a good standard to operate on. I'd acknowledge it for what the relationship for all it ever was and take this opportunity to heal and move on.

 

well i think you may have misread part of my post, he wasnt messaging some bot it was an actual person that he was trying to catch the attention of. and when did i ever say that i think only going through his phone twice in two years is some badge of honor? never did i say that, i know it was wrong of me but theres nothing i can do about that because whats done is done. i was only giving context for the situation, not trying to justify anything because it was only twice.

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