My (27m) boyfriend and I (25f), been together for 2 years now. I’m from the USA and moved to an Eastern European country to study and met my boyfriend who is from the country I moved to. My boyfriend speaks English and his native language and I only speak English. The past couple years have been rocky filled with extreme highs and extreme lows. We talked a lot about getting married and staying together for the rest of our lives but for the past year I have huge doubts. He believes that if we break up, he gives up on relationships, I’m his last hope. There are several issues we have in our relationship.
- We have had the same argument about emotional cheating for the past 1.5 years of our relationship. When we first got into a relationship, he shared his opinions about how friends from the opposite sex cannot just be friends without the other person wanting something more. Which from my personal experience, I could agree with. So because I wanted to make this relationship work, I decided to keep my male friends at a slight distance which was not much of a problem since I wasn’t close with them.
When my partner and I officially became a couple, he started a new remote job. I would spend time with him while he was at work. I noticed one of his female colleagues he would spend a lot of time talking with during his break. I did not make a big deal out of it but kept a mental note. Fast forward to a couple of months from then. We had a date night and watched a movie until 11pm. I noticed that during the movie that a woman kept messaging him on Facebook and I got anxious and a bit insecure about it resulting in me being quiet and distant. He asked me what was wrong and I told him that I was feeling a bit insecure and I did not want to project my feelings onto him because he had a female friend who was messaging him. He assured me that they were just friends and I was relieved.
A month later after that conversation, I was on his P.C. While his father and him went outside to do something. A FBM from the same woman popped up while I was on. I had a gut feeling to open the message. It turned out the colleague from work mentioned earlier was the same woman who was messaging him while we were at the movies. (I had to translate the messages to English). A lot of it consisted of them calling each affectionate pet names like king, love, etc. they would speak about their interior design preferences (My boyfriend and I had the same conversation because we planned on have a house together). They would exchange photos of each other (same photos he would also send me, but not nudes) and they would have pretty raunchy conversations about sex. When it got too hot, they would both agree it’s getting too hot, they both have partners they love dearly so they would stop it but then a few days later it would start all over again. I saw that he even offered her to come to one of his trailers during the summer so they could finally meet, but ended up canceling because he was worried something might happen between them. She also sent his photos of skimpy lingerie she was planning on getting.
After reading all this, my heart was broken, my gut was telling me to pack my things and catch a taxi home but I stayed. We spoke about it for hours and he kept saying they were close friends and joking around. He said he would stop talking to her and blocked her (he’s own choice). I still felt uncomfortable about it but stayed in the relationship.
A few weeks later he started to message a new female colleague from work who was much older than him. At this point this was becoming a pattern which I told him, we got into a huge argument. A year later after we moved in together, I found out they were also sending each other photos and saying raunchy things. Side note, while he was having conversations with her, he got extremely upset when I was had an internship in a different country for the summer and made a new male friend at my work site. Our friendship was completely platonic and my friend was just kind. My BF called me names and we essentially broke up for a few days then got back together. By this time, I started being distant with my friend.
During that time I had no idea about the conversation my BF was having with his colleague until we moved in together. Maybe two months ago. Once I confronted him, he kept using the excuse that they were just joking and this is how he is with his friends.
The most recent thing which led to him moving out. He was messaging a gamer on discord, I asked who he was he taking to, he said he was talking to some guy and his girlfriend was his profile picture which I actually thought was so cute. A few days later, I made a comment like “that’s a lot of laughing emojis” when I say there chat (I was low key sus about it) he got extremely defensive and I ended up walking away. Two days later, my gut was talking to me again, I was on his P.C and I tried to search for the chat and it wasn’t in his inbox, but found the profile in his friends list. Turned out he lied, it was a female gamer, he hid and muted the conversation so it wouldn’t appear in his DMs. When I read, I found majority of it was about LOL and there was parts where he was actively pursuing her especially when she did not appear to be interested. But he asked to follow her on IG made some jokes about he appearance saying she better not be fat and ugly, requesting a handmade nude body sized item for exchange of his digital service. When the topic of relationship came up after he found her boyfriends account and told her he was also in a relationship, she was shocked and confused because of the things he would say earlier in the conversation. When she asked if i played video games he said no because I was a “pleb”, when I looked up the meaning ( an ordinary person, especially one from the lower social classes.) I was sooo hurt. When I spoke to him about it, he again said he was forced into lying about it because he knew how I would react, that it was just a joke and how he talks like that with everyone including his mom which I found wild and unsure since again I don’t speak their language. When I asked about pleb he said it was an ordinary person who doesn’t play video games ( I am not in the gaming community, so I don’t know if it’s true). I told him I do not seeing my life partner behaving and acting like this which led to him moving out.
I told him that what he had been doing with these conversations with other women was a form of emotional cheating which he does not believe emotional cheating exists.
- My partner is addicted to the P.C, he is a straight up homebody who spends an average of 18 hours on the P.C either working or playing video games. It’s completely different than me because I love being outside and spending quality time with my loved ones, engaged in deep to fun conversations. I’m spontaneous about activities, I really do go with the flow. I brought it up several times that we should spend quality time together like working out (which he constantly says he would do but never does), go to the park, for coffee, or for a walk. It’s like pulling teeth honestly but when we actually do it, he is not completely there and is just extremely quite, he said because he has a lot on his mind. I try to joke around or talking about random things to get his attention which is honestly exhausting because it’s a one way street. I even ask to see if we could just go to sleep together and we put on a movie, I fall asleep pretty fast and he remains up which could largely do with him have ADHD though not prescribed but he shows symptoms. He doesn’t like when I’m being to demanding of attention and requesting to sleep together because I end up falling asleep quickly.
- We recently got into another argument because we are on a small holiday that we planned on going earlier in the summer but never happened. He invited me to go, though I thought it would be just him and I but we went with his mom(whom I adore) and his moms friends. I thought we could spend time just talking which we did for 2 hours year, and got into the initial argument because I told him one Reddit story that is similar to our situation because to get his input and Reddit has become my new interest. Later we are talking about the current holiday location we are on, he said he doesn’t like it because it too crowded and it’s not how it use to be. I said how I like going on trips with him because there are no distractions. I made a slight joke about how sometimes it feels that I am competing with the P.C. He said since I am not a gamer, I don’t understand. At that point I went silent. I guess I was expecting a cute joke back or reassurance I guess. The key points of the argument was how I ask for too much, I’m never satisfied, we keep arguing about the same issue etc. I told him I don’t want to argue, I just wanted to express that I enjoy our time together.
Today, I thought it was going to be different after the argument yesterday, that we would talk more but during the group lunch, I was the only English speaker so I couldn’t engage in the conversation, I decided to leave, to watch a movie. I thought eventually he would join me. Eventually everyone started to head off to do there own things except my boyfriend and his mom friend who talked for almost 3 hours. However when her husband came, he left about 10 minutes later. I guess to see him engage with other women makes me sad and insecure because we don’t have that in our relationship.
There are other issues in the relationship but this post is much longer than I expected. I honestly do not know if there is much hope for us, whether I am being to demanding, victimizing, or overreacting/ overthinking which I’ve been told I tend to do it. Or maybe we are not right for each other and it time to go our separate ways. Any honest advice is much appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read my post/ dissertation lol.