What is happening? What should I do?

r/

I (25 M) have been with my partner (32 F) almost 2 years now. I can’t tell if I’m the problem. When we started dating everything seemed perfectly fine and as if we both understood what it took to make and maintain a healthy relationship. Now after months and months of unhealthy and toxic arguments, I’m lost on what to do and question if I’m the problem or not constantly. I want to make my relationship work but I’m unsure if I’m just wasting my time. I feel emotional abused but I keep questioning myself. Most of these situations I agree with her feelings on them, I just had a problem with the behavior associated with the feelings. I’ll give a few of the main ones because there really is too many to name them all.

One of them had to do with my Instagram following towards the beginning. She had noticed a couple months in that there was still some random women that followed me and I was still following random women. She accused me of still following them for intentional purpose of “keeping doors open” or still being interested in other women. I simply told her that’s not the case I just haven’t thoroughly gone through my following to unfollow people and that I didn’t even realize I did. Then proceeded to say that if that makes her uncomfortable and that there was anyone in specific as well that I’d unfollow them for her to make her feel more safe. I also apologized and said that’s my fault I could’ve done my due diligence to make sure I wasn’t following anyone that I use to associate with or that they didn’t follow me. Even after this apology and taking accountability I still to this day get accused of doing it on purpose and that it was my intent to keep doors open. This situation also continues to be brought up and punished for it. Even though currently my instagram is deleted because she brought up how it makes her uncomfortable and uneasy, now I also agreed to delete it because I didn’t really see a benefit to having instagram anyways so that was no problem.

Now I use to be a personal trainer before my current job and I took my job very seriously and was always professional. I never crossed personal lines not even when clients tried to cross those lines. I never crossed my work life with my personal. In my years of being a personal training, it’s a fact that women are more likely to get a personal trainer than men. Due to men’s pride they usually feel like they don’t need it. 1 year after I had quit personal training, a random number had texted me asking if I still did personal training my response was simply “ I no longer work at __ and I’m not a personal trainer anymore “. My partner had asked who it was I told her I don’t know but I just said that I didn’t do training anymore. She then took my phone called the number a women picked up then she instantly got upset, cursed the woman out and started accusing me of cheating on her with this women. It escalates into an even bigger argument because being accused of something I wasn’t doing I went to the defense of course. That also still gets held against me to this day.

Another one was when I got a text from a random number not saved in my phone again but this time it said “ Hey this is the only contact in my phone with no name, who is this 🙂 “ I instantly blocked and deleted this. I knew that there’s no way that’s not a woman and I’m not entertaining that at all. I didn’t think to say anything since I just instantly blocked and deleted it. A few weeks go by and my partner wishes to go through my phone, I said go ahead because I know I’m not hiding anything. She’s going through and eventually says “ Why is there nothing?” like confused and my response was “ bc I’m not pos and I’m loyal” she smiles then she ends up finding that message I deleted but again I blocked and deleted it so I didn’t even respond to it. She then asks me who’s this and I said I don’t know I just blocked and deleted it bc I didn’t care to find out or entertain it. Then she’s visibly mad, she then goes to reverse search the number and finds out it’s a girl I talked to for a month about 2 and half years ago and that had blocked me after sending a lengthy message to me. Then she starts accusing me of talking to her and leaving doors open because I didn’t handle it properly. Which lead again to the same type of argument. Threatening to leave me, accusing me with no evidence of anything just her assumptions, saying I was hiding the message from her, calling me all types of degrading names and screaming at me to apologize to her and take accountability for things I didn’t do.

Our latest argument was because a woman was looking at me. My partner noticed a woman staring at me and she goes “ is that the girl that opened the door for you at school “ ( I go to trade school and I didn’t have my keycard one day and I was standing outside getting ready to ask a guy if he could let me in and instead this girl that was nearby asked if I needed a keycard and I just nodded my head yes. My partner saw the whole thing and thinks I was flirting with her.) I said “ Idk i don’t care if it is though” and ignored it. She then got upset because I was “ suppose to claim her in front of the woman staring “ and then said “ I can get her number for you if you’d like?”. I told her there’s no reason that you couldn’t have also grabbed my arm or hand or even said “ I don’t feel secure right now could you hold me or kiss me “ but she said no that’s my job and I should’ve known. Then later in the night tells me to leave and pack my bags and when I said okay if that’s you want. She wouldn’t get in the car after storming off and she told me multiple times to leave and she’d go find a ride herself. When I decided to leave to go someplace close for when she had calmed down she started crying and screaming how could I do that. Even though she told me multiple times and had asked her to come with me.

TL;DR; I 25M feel emotional manipulated by my partner 32F of 2 years. Constantly accused of things I didn’t do and made to think I’m lesser than because of my past. I act with emotional maturity and look for healthy communication but am met with contempt and accusations. What should I do?

Comments

  1. haunted_vcr Avatar

    This sounds exhausting. Unless you’ve actually given her reason to be this insecure, leave for your own sake.

  2. Alternative-Lock-295 Avatar

    I should mention that I’ve brought up this feeling of being emotionally manipulated or abused and get told that’s not what she’s doing. It’s because I triggered her or what I did triggered her and that’s what made her act the way she did due to her trauma.

  3. msbunbury Avatar

    My dude, this is so far from okay. In all honesty you have fucked up by pandering to this bullshit to the level you already have, but realistically your options now are either accept that you’re with a person who is controlling and that you will never achieve sufficient pandering to actually stop the drama, or end it. You won’t talk sense into her about this.