vicious circle of anxiety and trust being broken

I cant stop obssesing about my partner staying in touch with an old lover. He has been secretive about it and I've snooped his phone. He knows. I feel bad about it too but proves my fears. I wake up anxious at night. Is our relationship ruined? We have been seeing eachother for more than 2 years, we had a miscarriage right at the beginning of the relationship, the pregnancy was unplanned.. ive gotten over it and we have understood we shouldn't put ourselves in that scenario if things are so shaky. He's fantasized about having 2 partners and even though I thought i could deal with at the beginning, I realized im emotionally uncapable. I told him I couldnt and wouldnt do it.

I have too many insecurity issues and I distrust my partner. He's stayed with other people in touch he was involved and says he doesn't want to be told what to do. But that he wouldn't cheat on me. He says he's not fully happy about us. Ive become quite controlling and passive aggressive and I dislike myself for it. Im trying to work on it. We've said we would try it over and over again but the fact is, i don't trust him. I have never trusted anyone in my life before as I have been hurt many times already.

Weve been meditating together and say we will be sincere to each other. I want to set my boundaries and Im trying but I feel like it may be too late. We've gotten to the point in which he's supposed to move to another country with me and I believe he might end up cheating me with someone who lives there from his past. I've been seeing psychologists, Ive been meditating, trying to set myself goals and always end up in a rabbit hole of self pity and anxiety about him not respecting our relationship and setting boundaries with other women. I know all the theoretical stuff about how I should be behaving..., ask myself what kind of relationship do I want and try to work towards that but sometimes it feel like its not enough. Sometimes I feel like Ive compromised too much and weve lost respect of eachother. How do you change something like that? Were both in our late 20s beginning 30s and he wouldnt want to see a therapist together. He doesnt want it.

I feel that if we dont figure out our stuff itll just keep on happening in other relationships... am I lying to myself? Also, I know snooping isnt cool, but why is there distrust? its a reaction. Also at the same time I wouldnt have a problem with him going through my stuff because I simply have nothing to hide. I feel like I wanna have that kind of closeness. He absolutely KNOWS I wouldnt do that, in a way I feel that might be the problem. I even moved countries for him and I just feel like in a way I dont even know if he will actually move countries for ME next year.

I just have so much distrust. I guess I just need some perspective. Im supposed to leave for 1 or 2 months back to my home country for a while. Very uneasy about what thatll mean... how to let go and just let things unfold without feeling like Im forcing so much?

He's got to go. It doesn't sound like a relationship based on mutual respect and your gut instincts are hollering at you, even screaming out. Trust is the foundation for any relationship. I do think you are lying to yourself trying to make this work.

You need to split up with this guy. You clearly have zero trust in him and trust is the basis of any relationship worth having.

If he won't go for therapy, go without him as you really need to get to the bottom of your trust issues or you are doomed to live your life like this, not trusting anyone, ever.

... am I lying to myself?

Yes, very much so.

All the meditating and therapy in the world isn't going to make any difference when you're with the wrong guy. The reason you're so anxious and unhappy is because you're hanging on to someone you should have let go the moment he told you he wanted 2 partners. Instead, you've twisted into knots trying to make yourself accept this poor relationship and ignore your instincts which are screaming at you to get out of this.

So instead of asking yourself how to trust him and shove this square peg into a round hole, ask yourself why your self-respect is so low that you have such a hard time letting go of a guy who is no good for you.

He has told you what his boundaries are and that is pretty wide including keeping in touch with exes.

So I don’t think he will conform to yours which are a lot narrower.

The problem with laying down boundaries too late in a relationship is simply that it’s too late.

He probably wouldn’t ever physically cheat on you as he says , but what he is doing in your mind is emotionally cheating on you and that’s what you can’t handle.

He might or might not be emotionally cheating and simply keeping a very platonic relationship with these women. In his mind that is ok.

Some partners are ok with that and go on to live very happy relationships.

But you are not one of them. You need more than what he is willing to give but on the flip side he also wants you to give more than you are willing to.

It’s basic incompatibility. You want him to be someone he is not and vice versa.

Your boundaries don’t align and never will.

If that was to happen it would have by now.

Time to part ways.

You likely knew this 6 months in but held on to a glimmer of hope that he would suddenly be the person you want and need him to be.

He possibly has a few narcissistic traits but he is who he is.

Sorry!!

I can’t understand why you are with this guy!

You could save yourself thousands of dollars in therapy if you ended this situation.

Get to a doctor for an evaluation of the anxiety and depression. However, you'll need to get rid of damaging factors, like this relationship.

I want to set my boundaries and Im trying but I feel like it may be too late.

If you actually set your boundaries, you're gonna lose him. Plain and simple. So.... set your boundaries as soon as humanly possible!!! For the love of god, save yourself!! You're dating a parasite. This is terrible.

I'm always fascinated by how much people (yourself included) blame themselves for other people's bad behavior. Like somehow you're the defective one, and not them:

I cant stop obssesing

I realized im emotionally uncapable

I have too many insecurity issues

I've been seeing psychologists, Ive been meditating, trying to set myself goals and always end up in a rabbit hole of self pity and anxiety

I just have so much distrust.

Im forcing so much

In a way, you are making yourself crazy by committing to somebody like him. But you aren't defective for feeling this way. ANYONE who is in your situation would be feeling this way!

In fact, I think many people would simply leave. I would certainly leave. But you are not leaving. Why aren't you leaving?

And why are you going to therapy? He's the one with the accountability issue. You can't treat yourself and expect him to stop lying. That makes no sense.

Sometimes I feel like Ive compromised too much and weve lost respect of eachother.

I would argue that you never respected each other. He openly defies you, and you set standards and expect him to fail (which he does).

YOUR big problem is simply that you are staying in this relationship. You don't need to find out the root cause of why you are staying; you just need to stop staying. Break up. Be done.

Look at what this relationship is doing to you. You have to stop lying to yourself about what is really going on and leave:

I've snooped his phone

I feel bad about it

I wake up anxious at night

Ive become quite controlling and passive aggressive and I dislike myself

You can philosophize over the root cause later, when your feet are out of the fire.

You could save yourself thousands of dollars in therapy if you ended this situation.

So true!!!

In past i have been in relationships that would end up being devoid of trust & with loads of lies, betrayal, cheating. It turned into a situation where i started lying to myself and my friends to save the relationship. I had to go through therapy where my therapist kept asking me things about my past, why i felt to be in such relationships, why i didn't love myself to walk away from hurt and abuse.

The answers to your issues are there within you and your experiences with him, you have been in this relationship for 2 years and he has shown you who he truly is.

Would you like to continue like this for the rest of your life?

Be brave and dont be afraid of taking tough decisions for yourself , your life.

We all deserve happiness and happiness is in the choices we make in our life.

Good or bad sometimes things doesnt work out and we need to move on.

Be it a house, a car or even a life partner.

"Weve been meditating together and say we will be sincere to each other. I want to set my boundaries and Im trying but I feel like it may be too late. We've gotten to the point in which he's supposed to move to another country with me and I believe he might end up cheating me with someone who lives there from his past. I've been seeing psychologists, Ive been meditating, trying to set myself goals and always end up in a rabbit hole of self pity and anxiety about him not respecting our relationship and setting boundaries with other women. I know all the theoretical stuff about how I should be behaving..., ask myself what kind of relationship do I want and try to work towards that but sometimes it feel like its not enough. Sometimes I feel like Ive compromised too much and weve lost respect of eachother. How do you change something like that? Were both in our late 20s beginning 30s and he wouldnt want to see a therapist together. He doesnt want it."

I think you're using all this psychobabble and meditating and therapy etc to avoid basics, common sense, simplicity. Like the others said. You can shout from the rooftops all day how you "know" what you're supposed to do according to meditation and therapy - you can tell yourself you're taking action this way but really you're just spinning your wheels. How you should behave is not theoretical -what you are doing is woo woo stuff in this case. Because if he were right for you you might still need meditation and therapy but not because the core, the foundation was all wrong -because you needed to tweak your interactions, change behaviors so that you could return to the core and the foundation that was still there. That's the point - you lack the basic core and foundation of a healthy relationship so you're just wasting time and money trying to do the square peg in round hole.

You sound like a number of Facebook friends I have who knee-jerk turn to "diffusing essential oils" or "buying [MLM] skin care products" or hiring this or that "sleep consultant" because what really needs to be done is far simpler, but much more complicated - you know why? Because self-honesty is hard. Doing the right thing can be very simple but really hard. Yesterday I really wanted to buy more chocolate cake. I knew I shouldn't. In covid times it's hard to resist. I needed to assert boundaries and not buy it. So I made the very hard but very simple decision to walk away from the chocolate cake. Instead I could have stood there and meditated on it, summoned my inner child, questioned why and bought it because "somehow I end up in a rabbit hole of self-pity and anxiety" - I could have made the same excuses you do. Yes it's a good analogy - life is full of just these sorts of basic common sense choices that you are trying to dress up with fancy woo woo language. Don't allow yourself to lie to yourself this way

You know why he doesn't want therapy? Because people move towards pleasure and away from pain. He doesn't care enough about you or the relationship to invest in therapy -not because it would be painful for him -it likely wouldn't because he wouldn't put his all into it - - so he's saying no as one of many ways he is telling you that he is not really invested in you/the relationship.

So where are you at with your therapy? What do you really discuss? Your childhood? I get a sense of that you experienced abandonment or neglect of some kind. In times of stresses like that a young mind will fantasize as a way to cope. Then when you become an adult, you latch onto someone even tho they don't have healthy boundaries, you let yourself be taken advantage of, and sacrifice all self worth just to stay in the relationship. You think this is the only person that will save you from loneliness, and any attention no matter how negative it's something you feel you need to hang onto. You start to fantasize that with some ray of hope, you will have it right with this person and live happily ever after....but now it's starting to unravel and all those feelings/fears when you were a child are coming back. The anxiety/insecurity, snooping, trying to rationalize his behavior. It's all starting to slip away, and it's frightening to you that you will lose it all again. You know the right answer is to remove the problem...him, but your fears are making you clutch on even harder.

A lot of what you're going through is self inflicted. Everything you wrote, tells you exactly what you need to do. However, you're trying to convince yourself to stay with this guy. Which is the cause of all your pain. If you showed yourself love and respect by dumping this guy, sure it would hurt. You'd mourn the relationship etc. However, your battles with yourself would stop.

This isn't the relationship you want, its not going to be. Learn to recognize lost causes when you see them. And a person that simply isn't willing to put you first, isn't willing to put in the work, is a lost cause.

It makes no sense to say, "I'm involved with a guy who I don't trust because of his untrustworthy behavior, and he won't change. So I'm meditating and pretzeling myself to try to be okay with it."

You can't reconcile the irreconcilable.

If you want peace, walk away from people you can't trust. Once you teach yourself that you can do that--and survive it--you'll never believe yourself to be at the mercy of someone else's lousy behaviors again.

Until then, you'll just keep holding onto a sinking ship. You'll stay miserable, he'll be miserable, and he'll pull the plug for both of you.

...and then he'll drive his next GF crazy by staying in touch with you.

Head high, move forward and don't settle for less than you want and deserve.