TLDR at the bottom
So I’ve(25M) been dating my girlfriend(24F) for the better part of 2023, so around a year now, weve been friends for 5 years and circumstances made us mutually fall in love with eachother, and shes been a wonderful girlfriend above all, very caring, loving, bubbly etc. But she has one big issue, which is her inability to stop talking to her “male friends” on instagram and snapchat. Most, if not all her male friends had at one point asked her out, and here’s where the trouble starts, she (before we got together) always used to make up excuses as to why she couldnt accept their love, and never “rejected” them outright (example: she said to one person that she cant be with him because of the distance), when I confronted her about this, she said that “its because if I reject them then they’d get aggressive and harras and dox me” (it happened once with one person, she still periodically talks to him), Im inclined to believe her but as you might’ve guessed im still very suspicious about that. All of them are online friends she met in various groupchats throughout the years.
She also doesnt stop talking or cut contact with any of those “male friends” of hers, and she even went and saw 3 of those male friends in person (they all came from different places across the world to see her as “friends”) and its incredibly sad seeing her text her online male friends sometimes when we’re out and about doing things. Every time I bring it up, she says that “its their choice for continuing talking to me after I rejected them”, and while that statement is true to some regard, I know that these people 9 times out of 10 even if she rejected them once they will still stick around to see if she will change her mind in the future, and I dont like having this constant thought at the back of my mind that all of my girlfriend’s “friends” have it out for me and actievly pray on my downfall and wait for their chance to get with her.
Now, biggest concern (as outlined above) is that these people have actively tried to shit talk me in the past, calling me a poor, uneducated, and various racial slurs (you can guess what these are) and some of them have actively tried to bring me down in her eyes simply so she can break up with me which will give them another chance with her, she has defended me all those times, but also never did anything after they did so. Its a shitty situation, seeing your girlfriend actively talk to the people that are praying for her (while she knows it)
So, Reddit, what can I do to stop all this, do I set a boundary, if yes, how should I put it? I’ve invested a little too much into this relationship and Im not ready to see it go.
TL;DR: My girlfriend wont stop talking to her “male friends” on the internet who have asked her out and still like her, saying that “its their choice for continuing talking to me after I rejected them”, I’m not stupid and I can tell what they are waiting to do, so how do I deal with this situation?
2 comments
You can’t stop all this, you either put up with it or not. She doesn’t have to stop talking to anyone she doesn’t want to, all you can say is…this isn’t working for me and I can’t be with someone who entertains all these friends who have been interested in her
Again, she can’t be forced or coerced into anything. At which point you go, or stay if you feel you’ve invested too much
Your girlfriend can be friends with whoever she wants, including people who asked her out in the past, and all you can do is decide whether you want to be with her on those terms or whether it’s a dealbreaker for you. There’s no boundary you can put in place where she stays with you but stops being friends with them, when she’s already told you she’s not going to do that.
But for what it’s worth, I think you’re asking the right thing but for the wrong reasons. Your girlfriend’s friends sound like terrible people. Your girlfriend likes to spend time with people who are classist, racist bullies and who even she believes would dox and harass her if she did something they didn’t like. They’re awful, and it says something pretty bad about her that she apparently likes them, doesn’t think they’re awful, and wants them in her life.
The fact that they may have asked her out in the past is basically a tiny footnote in the actual reasons that they suck, and if it were just that, I’d say you needed to move past it. But there are bigger issues here.