Submitted by ellgautu t3_zzy5ph in relationship_advice
I honestly am starting to think that I’m crazy. I apologize for any spelling errors, I’m a native English speaker so it’s my own fault for typos.
My (20f) boyfriend (22m) have been dating for 6 months (close friends for a long time) and he is an amazing human being. He is kind, smart, caring, intelligent, I could go on and on about how great he is.
Here’s the issue: early on in our relationship, he and I were having a very candid conversation where I expressed how I found it hard to become jealous. Like, any interest I’ve ever had in a guy ever has never caused jealousy if they are looking at or for other people. I am just not a jealous person.
He apparently did not like that at all. With a deep fear of abandonment and want to be loved, he wanted me to get a little jealous over him. He wasn’t mean or malicious but he told me that he had to pick between me and another girl about who he was going to date/pursue. This was a girl he was still friends with and that would still come up in conversation a lot.
I was actually very upset to learn this and talked through the issue with 2 of our close male friends and they basically covered for him and said that I was the only one he was interested in and they don’t know where him saying that came from.
I talked to him about all of these things and what bothered me and he assured me that it was just surface-level infatuation (he actually said he didn’t categorize it as liking her because he didn’t think the feelings were deep enough to say that), he didn’t think she was right for him, he only saw her as a friend now, etc. He apparently also texted her once while we were dating to “tie up any loose ends” and catch up with her.
Fast forward to now: we’re on FaceTime last night and having a very casual conversation about sexual attraction to friends and she comes up. I think I asked about her but I’m not sure who brought her up.
He says that he’s masturbated to her multiple times and that he’s envisioned her doing all of these things to him. I am not the thought police, I know that he owed me nothing before we were exclusive. I honestly just feel lied to. I feel like I was led to believe that he didn’t actually think about her all that much and now I’m being told something completely different.
This devolved into him saying that whenever we were going through a rough patch or anything, he’d think “I wouldn’t be having to deal with this if I was dating her”, “maybe I should break up with OP and pursue her”, etc.
I’m not sure if I’m explaining this properly but basically I was told that his “slight” feelings for her weren’t a big deal after he said he picked me over her, and now I’m being told that he liked her a lot and he still thinks about her in rough patches.
Maybe my judgement is clouded on this but he gives a LOT of weight to sex (understandably so) and to hear that was very off-puting because he doesn’t see anything wrong with what he did (texting her despite knowing how he downplayed everything) and the fact that he can still interact with her normally despite this. Also, he hates the fact that I had sex with my ex before dating him and it’s something he struggles with due to my action, that’s why I mentioned that he gave sex a lot of weight.
Any advice would be appreciated, I don’t want to break up with him but I would like solid advice on how to move forward.
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