long post, but i have no one to talk to...

[lyra]

i'm having trouble trusting my bf. we are in a very strange place right now; we've lived together for 2 years and i've just recently moved back to my parents' house- 350 miles away from him and all our friends. ostensibly i'm living with my folks to save money, but we also need some time to work on things. i need to work on my art and to try to live a healthier life... he's kind of doing the same. we love each other and get along dandy...

except:

his ex.

she was his best pal since the 7th grade. he was secretly in love with her and they dated for 6 mo. or so 3 years ago. they had a weird open? relationship where they both cheated? on each other. she moved to another state and later broke up with him on his birthday. he and i met and started dating about 3 mo. later. i know he was still working through his disappointment in their relationship when we got together. he didn't want to talk to her, but he wanted to still be pals with her.

i have my own jealousy issues, but i laid them aside so he could work things out. she contacted him often, and didn't seem to understand why he wanted space. he finally agreed to hang out with her when she came up to visit new year's 2006-2007, little more than a year into our relationship. we did a couple things with her: went to a party, a bar, thrift store shopping, and things were pretty cool. a little tense, but cheery. she wasn't really interested in talking to me, which was kind of chilly, but i can understand.

she went back to her state and he neglected talking to her to awhile (he does this to a lot of people). she started sending him snippy messages and bugging him. this is where things started to get anxious for me.

yes, i snooped. we were sharing his cellphone at the time (i have my own now) and i found texts from her. he was staying up and texting her at 3 in the am... she was being a bit too intimate with him and i got upset. he reassured me. then i found a text that said "check your email". i'm an idiot. i checked his email.

it seemed like she was responding to something he worte, but what, i'm not sure. she said she noticed him looking at her longingly at new year's, and said she hoped he was happy (with me) but if he wasn't, she wouldn't mind. she ended the email with the words "i am unable to forget you- i'll meet you in new mexico". (nm being a dream of theirs once upon a time.)

i confronted him, he said she was speaking of things from a long time ago. he kind of confronted her, she apologised to him (not to me.) after that, she did the increasingly more irate message thing again, which i told him i wasn't comfortable with. right before i left for my parents' at thanksgiving, i found a message she left in his voicemail, rambling about how she missed him and it ended with "i love you". i told him he couldn't leave the situation the way it was. he told me he would take care of it.

when i left, i extracted a promise from him that he wouldn't have her in our apartment or "hang out" with her.

which brings us to now. i've visited 3 times since thanksgiving. she was in town for both thanksgiving and christmas. he hung out with her twice, in our apartment. he had a photo from each time. one on his phone, and one on our camera. what the hell? i wanted him to talk some sense into her, but i didn't want them to have a swell ole time together, which is what it looks like in the photos. and why didn't he tell me? he waited til i asked about them, and then told me he saw her. to find out the particulars, i had to ask specific questions, like he wasn't going to tell me unless i guessed it. what??? i'm kind of freaking out, but he gets really upset whenever i talk to him about it. fine, she was his friend. but she treated him like crap and was very disrespectful of our relationship. i just wanted him to stand up for us. i think he wasn't trying to hurt me, but i'm hurt just the same.

how do i get over this? this is a stressful enough situation without his ex barging in (which is what happened the 2nd time she came to the apartment... he was ignoring her calls so she just came over. i told him i didn't want her knowing where we lived for a good reason... harhar.)

[Comeback_Kid]

He probably still has feelings of some sort for her. If you jut pester him about it and be naggy t willl only lower your value in his eyes. You need to make it clear that he might lose you unless draws the line... but i promise you, his feelings aren't entirely gone for her

[Aleadragonhawk]

This situation seems a little fishy to me. Yeah, there are crazy exes, and we see them all the time - but he's got to be encouraging her some. Things like texting her at three in the morning and having her over in his apartment when he'd agreed not to aren't okay. If you've both agreed that a person is having a bad influence on your relationship and needs to be told to stop that behavior, then that conversation needs to actually happen, rather than them hanging out and taking pictures of it.

 

I agree that you need to clearly draw a line here.

[Cathy86]

I know how you feel >

I can't escape that jealous insecure feeling sometimes too. It may sound complicated but what others said is true. Make it clear to him that he may lose you then he'll get scared and come running back to you hehe ;p

Afterall, a relationship is a two way road, you can't live like this forever

[hueman84]

I dont know if I am the #1 person for you to be talking to because if you see my other thread about how I am paranoid with girls since my Ex...you may understand.

 

But I agree with Comeback_Kid. It seems like he probably still has some kind of feelings for her, because he really has done nothing at all to diffuse the situation. It even seems like things got worse since you went back home. It may sounds cheesey, but I would give him an ultimatum...either he cut communication with the ex or he loses you. I can understand how this is probably hurting you, and if he really cared about you, he wouldn't hurt you by talking to this girl still.