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Boyfriend suspicious after I put my phone on airplane and he couldn't locate me

alibabac

By alibabac
in Relationship Advice

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MissCanuck Grand Master

MissCanuck

Posted
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Many people share their locations with others 24/7 nowadays, perhaps it's a millennial thing. My BF and his boss were even sharing their location (my BF's suggestion again). When my BF stopped sharing his location with his boss, the boss sent him a frowny face because he enjoyed seeing what he was up to. I warned my BF that sharing his location with the boss would make their relationship strange, and he did feel the pressure of his boss knowing his every move.

 

This is also very strange, if your boyfriend is not using a company phone or leaving the office on company time. Why would your boyfriend suggest this, and are you sure that's even the whole story? I hate to say it, but guys like your boyfriend will often fabricate or change details to prove how "normal" their controlling behaviour is. They will try to convince you that other people do this too, to manipulate you into believing that you are the one with the problem for not wanting to comply.

 

The problem with this "fun" location-sharing is that your boyfriend has just revealed he's essentially using it to track you, because he does not trust you. He had you convinced it would be fun, and you bought it. It's not a fun game for him, though; it's a way to control you. If it weren't, he wouldn't have cared if you'd been on airplane mode or silent or turned the darn thing off for a while. He'd respect that you were being honest. On that note, you're underestimating the disrespect he's shown you by assuming you are the type of girl who fools around on her boyfriend; let that sink in. He evidently doesn't think you're above that and doesn't think you really have a moral compass.

 

I wouldn't suggest taking off location-sharing. I would just go ahead and do it, and explain that you aren't going to enable his insecurity anymore. Then I would take some time with yourself trying to understand why you have permitted yourself to be under this thumb this way at all until now.

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MissCanuck Grand Master

MissCanuck

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Posted
From your last post about him, over a year ago, it sounded like getting engaged and being married were things he was trying to distance himself from, since you were not a "10" (like his ex) but an "8." Has he since decided you are a 10, or found comfort in an 8? Do you feel like a 10, next to him, as people generally like to feel in relationships? Or is moving away, and then living apart in the same city, another way to explore and maybe bridge that stubborn 2-point gap?.

 

Oh, dear. Good catch, blue.

 

OP, this thread and the previous one here, https://www.enotalone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=550481, tell the story of a woman with not a lot of self-worth, and a guy she tries to jump through hoops for. He evidently keeps moving the hoops around and holding them at different angles, and you you have so far just kept jumping.

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Hollyj Grand Master

Hollyj

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Oh, dear. Good catch, blue.

 

OP, this thread and the previous one here, https://www.enotalone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=550481, tell the story of a woman with not a lot of self-worth, and a guy she tries to jump through hoops for. He evidently keeps moving the hoops around and holding them at different angles, and you you have so far just kept jumping.

 

Yikes! Oh, OP! You really need to address your self worth. Kick this controlling creep to the curb and consider some counselling for your self esteem.

 

Why did you not leave when he compared you to his ex, and called you an 8? You should have been done.

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bluecastle Grand Master

bluecastle

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Oh, dear. Good catch, blue.

 

I was reluctant to bring up that past thread, though when I read it after this one I felt a pang of sadness. So many carrots on so many sticks. So much jumping, which is not the same thing as growing. Can feel like it, save the part where jumping is draining while growing is strengthening.

 

In 2017, OP, you went to Venice where you thought you were about to be engaged. No dice. Sigh. A year later there was the question of whether there was enough "passion," for him, to press the nuptial button. Sigh. And here we are three sneezes from 2020 and engagement is now predicated on first living in separate cities, then living in the same city, but no longer together. Sigh.

 

Relationships do not grow in a straight line, I get it. But all that looks less like a quirky, unconventional path to marriage, let alone romantic harmony, than like a circle, or a spiral, or perhaps a hoop that may, per clever but astute Camber, be set on fire come 2021.

 

I'm sure this guy has all sorts of fine qualities and that you guys have shared some epic and rewarding times, but I also think you see some kind of nobility in him, some idea that if this can work then it means whatever chapters came before him weren't "spotty," but were stepping stones to, well, this. Atonement. Salvation. To which I want to say to you: they were never spotty, whatever they were, and no man worth his salt would make you feel bad for who you are and where you've been. And to which I want to say to him: shame on you for making her think they were, for years.

 

And, I'm sorry, but I think he's smart enough to know what he's doing, and smart enough to hate himself, a bit, for doing it, since it runs counter to some of those good qualities. But the little explosion of angst triggered by the switch to airplane mode? It's not really about your location or your relationship or even you. It's that self-hate being weaponized and redirected at you.

 

There might be a woman out there who finds that straight-up laughable, and metabolizes it the way I feel after getting shot by a squirt gun by a toddler. And in that moment his ridiculousness is reflected back on him, by someone he admires, and he grows a few millimeters and stops being a fool. That is how growth, alongside another, happens. It's not a series of therapeutic conversations or emotional advanced yoga poses, but an extension of chemistry.

 

But I don't think you've been that woman, and that's okay. Not okay is someone who causes you to continually question your self-worth. It's precious stuff, that, and questioning it is how it get depleted. Not okay is when someone is given a front row seat to our most fragile corners—which is what a partner gets—and pokes at them instead of respecting and cherishing them, so your self-worth is not depleted but stays level, maybe even rises.

 

When someone is commanding you to stop enabling them it means, really, that they like you enabling them. They're refusing to give you the steering wheel, or, at best, letting you rest your hand on it while they steer, like an adult putting a kid in his lap while driving. The child thinks he is controlling the vehicle, but it's an illusion that is only seductive and convincing for so long.

 

You're not going to end a nearly 4 year relationship tomorrow because some pixilated straw people like myself got on the bullhorn. I get that. Don't blame you. But it does seem, with him soon to move away, that you have been presented with a fortuitous moment for reflection. You are 35 and are still having to litigate chapters from your 20s in order to soothe a man who didn't know you then. This is a good time to ask if that's how you want to continue spending your time, if there is still growth there and if this is a person you are still able to genuinely grow alongside.

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