I (25M) and my girlfriend (24F) have been together for a year. Long story short, we had some issues at the 8 months mark, where I was wrong in many aspects, and that led to us breaking up and her losing feelings for me. After about a month or so, we rekindled our relationship when I visited my home country where she is (we are mostly long-distance as I work in another country than where we are both from).
Now to preface the next part, her and this male friend have been close friends for years, since high-school and I was made aware early on in the relationship that she has a weird dynamic with him, they constantly joke about getting married and compliment each other a ton, and honestly, I don’t view this as okay, so through our relationship she stopped this dynamic with him and distanced herself. They had 1 event in the past where he kissed her (before our relationship of course), she kissed him back but that was it as they agreed to just be friends.
Onto the problem: when we broke up for these couple of months, she needed a friend and he was there for her, they went back into their dynamic I just mentioned, and when I was there with her, I saw their chat and saw that they were back to joking about getting married and all that. I was not aware she was back to being close with him and having this dynamic and I felt betrayed. We had a fight, I saw the regret in her eyes and she begged me to stay. She was going to send him a message explaining that what they did was wrong and she wants to stop it but before that he blocked her because of a problem they were having and that was that.
It’s been months, and I still feel betrayed when I remember the texts they used to send each other while I was literally there next to her. How do I deal with this?
TLDR: My gf has a close male friend where they constantly compliment each other and joke about getting married, yet they had a moment where they kissed before I even met her but agreed to stay friends. She kept that dynamic after we got back together from a break, and hid it from me, but then heavily regretted it. I can’t help but feel betrayed.
Edit: fixed formatting, sorry I am using a phone.
Comments
Move on, this isnt worth your time at all. Long distance relationships rarely work out as is, you dont need to deal with messy stuff like this on top of it. Youre still really young, just date women that you can actually be with physically more often.
You keep on saying in your post about how you have been “betrayed” and how she has “betrayed” you but the only person here who has done anything wrong is you OP. You’re the one who is in the wrong here.
She has had this male close friend of hers for years and they have had their friendship with each other for years. You OP are the last person in the door here when you arrived on the scene and started a romantic relationship with her a year ago now, so when you started this romantic relationship with her then you have to accept all of those people who are in her life from her family to her friends and to her close friends including her close friend who is a male.
When people are in a romantic relationship with each other and one of the partners doesn’t like one of their partners close friends, it’s ALWAYS going to end one way and that is always that the close friend will always be there and they will happily offload their partner and choose their close friend over their partner if they are either given an ultimatum and made to choose between both people or they will choose the friend over their partner when that partner begins to try and control them and put pressure on them to do things like not seeing their close friend anymore or to stop calling and messaging their close friend anymore.
Which is exactly what you are doing to her at the moment by telling her that you don’t like the dynamics that they have in their friendship so you have told her to stop the dynamics and to distance herself from her close friend.
You HAVE ABSOLUTELY No right whatsoever to do this to her and to get her to change her friendship with her friend and to get her to distance herself from him. You don’t like their friendship dynamics then that’s your problem and your issue and it’s not her problem or his problem. You have to deal with it.
What you have done here is abuse plain and simple, it’s manipulative, it’s controlling, it’s emotional abuse and it’s coercive.
It’s also very clear and obvious that you have huge insecurities and massive trust issues, that’s evident from the fact that you’ve already asked her all about her history with this male close friend that you know everything from what they have and haven’t done together, that he has kissed her once before and she kissed him back.
It’s completely irrelevant what they have done or haven’t done before because it’s in the past and it’s none of your business and you have no right or entitlement to know about any of this stuff but I know for certain that you hounded her with loads of questions about them both.
The other thing that indicates you have huge insecurities and massive trust issues is what you said in your post that you saw their chat messages between each other and the messages were the type of their old dynamics with each other. I am 100% confident that she didn’t just show you her phone and show you all of their messages between one another, it’s the insecurities that bring the snooping again something that you have no right doing.
You also said that when you both got back together after you had split up for a couple of months, that you wasn’t aware that they had resumed their close friendship with each other and you said they were back in their old dynamics with one another. You said this OP like she has to ask you for your permission to resume their close friendship with each other BUT SHE doesn’t have to get your permission, you also said that they had gotten back into their old dynamics, in the context that she is not allowed to have those dynamics with him anymore because you have already told her she can’t.
It’s all just further proof of your insecurities and trust issues which are both your problems and not gets or her friends and they are for you to deal with and manage and not her and also bot for you to project them onto her to do things like ending her friendships to help make you feel less insecure and untrusting.
You need to have a good look in the mirror at yourself and to fix your problems before you end up with destroying her life with your abusive behaviour and before you also destroy all of her friendships with other people because of your insecurities
What would a satisfactory resolution to this even look like to you? Is there a path forward where you two are happy together, without resentment regarding her ongoing attraction to this friend of hers?
A relationship where you’re mostly living in different countries is going to be nearly impossible to work at the best of times, and ongoing resentment will kill even the strongest relationships.
What would actually make you happy here?