I Don't Want To Be A Fool

[mcnugget]

Hello all,

 

Some background: I have been with my man for over a year. Things have been generally very good and I have tried to be trusting despite my past experience with a cheating ex. My boyfriend has some issues opening up, which he claims is due to his past. He says my patience is helping him work through his issues. I’ve now met his family and we discuss marriage and have plans to be engaged and move in together within the next 8 months. However, he still isn’t comfortable saying “I love you.” He says his feelings for me are deep and that he cares about me greatly. That he sees us married and having kids. He claims he is scared of being hurt, but he’s almost ready to say the words and he’s thanked me for my patience. One day I finally broke down and told him that he was breaking me. He said that he does love me, but that was a month ago and he hasn’t made those words part of his vocabulary. We currently see each other 4 or 5 nights a week when he’s in town (he travels a lot), but he won’t give me a key. He keeps giving me his keys on long term loan (a few months at a time) because I need them for practical purposes, but he is resistant to letting me have a key until we officially renew his lease together in a few months. We are both around 30 and I am his longest relationship.

 

The issue: His friends keep getting married which means lots of bachelor parties. I am not really OK with strip clubs. Every relationship is different, but in this particular relationship I’m not comfortable with naked women grinding on my turned-on man’s lap. His justification being that he’s only being teased. I can guarantee that if I went to a club in a ty outfit and danced with a guy or sat on his lap and let him “tease” me, boyfriend would not be ok with that. Gosh forbid I was actually found grinding with a man where one of us was naked. The fact that it’s in a strip club so he’s going to the club for the sole intention of paying for what I consider to be cheating does not give him a free pass. Anyway, I know I can’t stop boyfriend from going with his friends and don’t want to be the evil girlfriend so I don’t forbid him, but I do ask that he look and not touch. Buy the bachelor a dance and have a beer, but a lapdance is cheating in my book. He went to 3 strip clubs this past weekend. What I have pried out of him is that he didn’t “technically” get a lapdance, but a stripper sat on his lap and he bought her a drink and flirted with her. He thinks he played by my rules because he didn’t get a dance and a lot of his friends went to the back rooms. I still feel like he crossed the line. I know that he could have done more and I’m glad that he didn’t, but I still feel grossed out and disrespected. I don’t know that it’s worth ending the relationship over, but I just feel the heeby jeebies when I think of it. I don’t feel like he should really be putting himself in those situations to begin with and I really have no way of knowing exactly what happened. If this lap sit was at one club what happened at the other two? What about the other weekends? I feel betrayed.

 

There is something else nagging at me. In my bedside table at his house we keep assorted things including some things of mine and a box of condoms. We haven’t used the condoms since very early on in the relationship. I always kind of kept a rough count on how many were in there (5/6). I wasn’t too worried about it because I trusted him, but it was one of the first things I noticed was off when my ex started cheating. I was in the drawer about a week ago to grab something and I noticed that the condoms were outside the box and there were only 3. That seemed really off to me. I thought maybe I had miscounted in the past because I really hadn’t looked at the condom box in a long time. I confronted him about it and he simply said that we used some early in our relationship and had kept some on then nightstand (true), but he never kept count. I let it go, but it kept nagging at me a little. Yesterday, I checked the drawer again and I found 2 more condoms hidden under a wallet of his and some other things. The missing condoms could have been there previously as I didn't give the drawer a complete toss before and they were well hidden. I told him I had found the missing condoms and he said he was glad. I asked him how 5 condoms in a box would have become 3 and 2 condoms outside the box separately and he said that he goes through the drawer hastily sometimes and could have accidentally torn them.

 

I do not think he is a bad guy out to purposely hurt me. I know that my past might be coloring my views. My ex went to strip clubs and cheated on me with someone who did porn. My boyfriend hasn’t tried to flip anything back on me as I have confronted him about these things. We’ve tried to talk everything through. Everything is all kisses and cuddles right now, but I am worried that I’m letting too much go. I don’t want to be a fool. I don’t want to let myself be disrespected and cheated on. I love him and I want this to work. I really do want to vomit when I think of him at a strip club. The condom thing isn’t necessarily evidence of anything, but it is odd.

[Liraele]

You don't actually trust him, and you may be right not to...but the fact that you really don't, already, means that there are issues that need to be addressed, at the very least.

 

The strip club thing is a non-issue to me, as for the girls it's a job. If he were going to a club and a random club-goer was getting him riled up and he was allowing/encouraging it... THAT I'd have a problem with. Otherwise, you can't really equate the two.

 

That being said, if it's a deal-breaker for you that he's going... that's OK. You, though, have to make that decision and live with it. No idle threats, no grief to him - just tell him how you feel about it. If it's relationship-ending behavior for you, then follow through.

[catfeeder]

There are two forms of mistrust: one is specific to a person who behaves in ways that provoke suspicion, the other is a blanket mistrust based on past experience that can be projected onto anyone who hasn't walked on eggshells carefully enough. The second kind is deadly to bring into ANY relationship and will eventually kill it even while it rips up your stomach lining and keeps you finding misery where an otherwise healthy and happy relationship could thrive.

 

You're the one who will need to decide whether it's partner's behavior or your own that's causing your problems. Either you trust him, or you don't. Neither answer is 'wrong,' because we each have private bars for what constitutes respect, commitment and integrity. It just makes no sense to put one foot in the trust camp and the other outside of it, because you can see what it does to your head.

 

In your shoes, I'd decide up front whether partner is trustworthy enough to invest in him for a happy long term relationship. If the answer is no, then the next question becomes, "So then, when do I leave to open my options for a fully trusting relationship someday?" If the answer is yes--he's trustworthy--then the answer becomes, "So when do I stop behaving to the contrary? When do I stop drilling into mistrustful thinking that has ME behaving in ways that provoke unnecessary conflict?"

 

If you really do trust the guy, then you'll need to stop drilling into mental spins that only set up a 'no win' outcome for both of you. In such a case, THAT would be the behavior I'd identify as foolish and acting out of alignment with your mutual best interests.

 

If no matter how you slice it, and no matter how much you wish otherwise, you simply do not trust your partner, then I'd boil this all down to having nothing left to lose by taking extreme action. I'd identify which specific behavior (the love language? the keys?) that is driving my mistrust to the degree that has me interrogating BF over bachelor party details and condom counts. I'd tell him that I don't wish to live this way, and so I'm walking away while we both still think highly of one another. If he ever decides that he wants to resolve (the specific behavior) in order to have a fully trusting relationship with me, he can let me know. If I'm still available then, we can meet to catch up. Otherwise, I'd wish him the best.

 

I wouldn't do this without full willingness to lose the BF for good, but if I honestly can't trust him, then the only outcome I'm really 'losing' is one where I turn into a raving shrew and a bottomless pit of insecurity. So yes--I'd walk away from that.

 

Head high, and write more if it helps.

[Unreasonable]

If strip clubs are a dealbreaker, then they're a dealbreaker. You're not wrong to not like it. And he wouldn't be wrong if he wanted a girlfriend that accepted it. Diff'rent strokes. Also the excuse of "everyone's getting married" seems a little flimsy for going 3 times in a single weekend, isn't it? I went to one a couple times. I ended up feeling bad afterwards, and used. Seems like unsatisfying prostitution. I wondered why I was paying money to feel this way. Some others might feel differently. But you are certainly within your right not to be comfortable with it.