Last night at midnight my boyfriend gets a phone call. I figure it’s one of his buddies, who is at a bar/party in the neighborhood and is inviting us to join, because who calls at midnight on a Saturday night? He chats for a few minutes, and I start to get annoyed, because we had been spending a quiet evening at home together. I can deduce from the conversation that (1) it’s a woman, (2) she is returning his phone call, (3) they haven’t spoken very recently, (4) he quite fond of her, and (5) she lives in the same city. After about 15 minutes, he gets a sudden craving for ice cream and announces he’ll be back in 10 minutes (which is how long it should take to go to the store). He returns 45 minutes later, still talking on the phone. I finally say, “Jesus, do you realize you’ve been on the phone for an hour?” (Long phone conversations are unusual for him.) So he winds up the conversation. I let him know I’m annoyed about him interrupting our evening for an hour to take this call, and about taking 45 minutes to run to the store. Of course, part of me is annoyed that I got stuck watching bad TV by myself when I wanted to be hanging out with him, part is annoyed about him being rude, and part is suspicious and jealous of this mystery woman he seems so interested in. I expect him to placate the first two emotions with a simple “I’m sorry” and the last one with something like, “That was so-and-so - I’ve told you about her - the one I went to school with?” Instead, he just says that she is a “very close friend” who he hasn’t spoke to in a year. Then he goes on the counterattack, complaining that I “always” hassle him about being on the phone. (Twice in our relationship I have gotten on his case about some extremely rude phone behavior.)
I find it is strange and unacceptable that he has “very close friends,” especially female ones, who I don’t know about after five months together, and who he apparently has no intention of telling me about, much less meeting. I understand that he is entitled to some privacy - he might need to talk about me to his friends without me present - but given the totality of the circumstances this feels more like “secrecy” than “privacy.” I find it troubling that he wishes to keep this woman’s identity a secret. I don’t actually believe he is trying to cheat on me, but the fact is that if he insists on behaving secretively, I’m not going to feel I can completely trust him. And not trusting the person you’re with can be as destructive to a relationship as actually cheating.
Does my explanation about secrecy and trust make sense? Or am I trying to rationalize my irrational jealousy, while depriving him of his need for privacy?
My recommendation is that you trust him. You’ll drive yourself crazy wondering he’s thinking and what he’s doing.
You’re living together after five months? He might really feel like he needs privacy. Especially if you get so upset about him spending an hour on the phone and making you watch TV by yourself. Sorry, but that sounds really co-dependant. What if one of your friends called, or a parent or sibling? Would you say, gotta go, I’m watching television with my boyfriend? I had a boyfriend freak out on me when I spent an hour chatting with an old guy friend when I thought the boyfriend was asleep. He thought it was rude that I was on the phone while he was in my house. Then, not two weeks later, an old girlfriend called him and he paused the movie we were watching to talk to her for a long time. When I pointed out that it was odd that he was allowed to chat with exes while I was there, but I couldn’t speak to old high school friends while he was asleep, he freaked out on me again. He was a jealous psycho.
I’m NOT calling you psycho, for the record. My situation was extreme. But, if it’s really your opinion that not being able to trust someone is the same as them cheating on you… I’m baffled by that. Trust is faith, and faith requires effort from you as well as trustworthy behavior from him. Try to give him some privacy. I know from personal experience that it’s hard to trust people, and I too am a bit co-dependant. But if you give him space, he’ll really appreciate it, and he’ll do good by you.
Or you can do what I do. Xanax!
Don’t worry, okay? Trust him unless he gives you a good reason, or LOTS of tiny reasons, not to.
Did you hear him speak of you to the girl on the phone? You should have. Especialy if it’s an “old close friend” that he hasn’t talked to in a while.
I’ll probably get my man card revolked for this, but that whole bit about him leaving while on the phone with her is high cause for suspicion… imo (I hate to say this but this is especialy true if you two happen to be a young couple.)
Bottom line is if something is bothering you; you need to talk about it, end of story.
I feel a little bad; I’ve been thinking about it and my post was a little rude. What your going through is a very familiar situation for me. In my current relationship I had a lot of jealousy and trust issues, but, as it turns out, I had no reason to be so worried. I’ve finally, after three years, relized that I wasted a lot of time and energy being suspicious, and I wish I didn’t. Sure, learning experience, whatever, but I was kinda a bitch to my boyfriend, and he didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Everything’s okay now.
I really hope I didn’t insult you. So sorry if I did.
However (and this is probably dependent on the type of person you are), I don’t think that 5 months is very long. Maybe you could give it some time. If you had told us that you were married for 12 years, then I’d be saying, “Bring out the skewers and the meat cleaver”
It was probably a little rude of him to leave you alone for an hour while he chatted away, but I think you should just let that slide.
While his leaving for forty-five minutes when he said he’d be gone for ten is a little suspect and I can understand your jealousy and suspicion, I still don’t think it’s fair or warranted.
You even said yourself that you don’t think he is or will cheat on you so what is the issue? That he has a life apart from you? Some people are just like that and he might be one of them in which case, like it or not, you’ll have to accept it to be with him.
Well, guys tend to have a pretty weird definition of “very close friend.” Dr.J invited a very old, very close friend to our wedding whom a)he had not seen in seven years, b) I had never heard of in 8 years of coupledom, and c)had no clue when or where we were getting married until it was mentioned offhand by a third party. I shit you not. So that part of the story doesn’t blip on my radar at all. It’s just one of those guy definitions specially designed to drive us nuts.
The other stuff, though…that tosses up some red flags. His sudden need for ice cream out of the clear blue, his being gone far above and beyond what it could have conceivably have taken to get ice cream, even if he was piddling along, his getting all defensive afterwards, his not telling you anything about this person at all, that would concern me. It would concern me quite a bit, frankly.
The ice cream comes across as a fairly lame excuse to talk to this woman away from you. While wanting privacy for a phone call is certainly reasonable, it should be sufficient to say, “Hey, baby, I’m gonna take this in the other room.” Feeling the need to leave the house altogether suggests that he either doesn’t trust you to respect his privacy (which is a big issue in and of itself, if it’s the case) or that he’s hiding something. The fact that he was gone such a ridiculously long time on this errand just reinforces that impression.
Him refusing to tell you anything about this person other than that “she’s a very close friend” smacks of trouble, too. The only reason I can think of, other than him being up to no good with her, for him to not tell you about her is if she’s an old lover and he thinks you’ll fly off the handle over him talking to her. And frankly, that scenario doesn’t say much for his opinion of you and your emotional maturity. Whether it’s an innocent relationship and he doesn’t trust you to act like an adult, or it’s a not-so-innocent relationship, it spells trouble for you two.
The thing that really sets off the sirens for me, though, is him going on the offense about you harassing him for being on the phone. Going on the offensive about something tangential is a classic distraction method the guilty use when they’re busted. It’s exactly what my dad used to do back when he was screwing around. Of course, it’s also a classic method for avoiding an argument when you know you’re on shaky ground, so he might have just been trying to skirt the whole rudeness issue.
Also, ZJ, I don’t think she was saying that not trusting someone was just exactly the same as them screwing around. More that wondering if you can trust someone can erode a relationship just as surely as knowing you can’t trust them.
I’ve known my son’s father for nearly a decade. I was in a relationship with him for over half of that time and I still don’t know everyone he knows. It’s “unacceptable” for him to have friends (love the “especially female” bit) if you don’t know them? “Strange”? WTH?
If you really think that, if not trusting the person you’re with is really that devastating to your relationships, you might as well end it right now because clearly you don’t trust this person. And really, why should you? After all, it’s been five whole months and even still, you don’t know every single person he’s ever known. To be quite honest, I don’t know how you’ve put up with it for so long. :rolleyes:
“I start to get annoyed, because we had been spending a quiet evening at home together”
"I let him know I’m annoyed about him interrupting our evening for an hour to take this call, and about taking 45 minutes to run to the store. "
“Of course, part of me is annoyed that I got stuck watching bad TV by myself when I wanted to be hanging out with him,”
"I find it is strange and unacceptable that he has “very close friends,” especially female ones, who I don’t know about after five months together, and who he apparently has no intention of telling me about, much less meeting. "
It sounds like you might be a little on the possessive side. It sounds like you resent the fact that he is going off and doing stuff that doesn’t include you. I have had the same conversation countless times with my girlfriend. “Why can’t I come out with you and your guy friends?”. Well, it’s not Dudes Night Out if you bring your girlfriend for too many reasons to explain. And I can tell you this…nothing makes a guy want to break up with a girl more than a girlfriend who acts suspicious all the time. “Who’s so and so?” “Why did you go there?” “I thought you would be here at x:00!”. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
The more you interrogate a guy, the more he will keep his activities secret in order to avoid revealing something that sets you off.
Now on the one hand, his activities sound suspicious too. Quite often a female “friend” is a girl a guy might be considering dating on the side or leaving you for. They aren’t going out on dates or anything that couldn’t be explained away be being “just friends”, but he could be seeing how they get along and if the possibility is there. In other words, he’s not going to break up with you unless he has another girl to start up with.
On the other hand, he may just want to get out of the house to avoid being hen-pecked while talking to his friend. I don’t think he’s running down the street to get a blowjob or anything (although that would be ballsy).
In many ways a relationship, for men, is like a job. It’s a tedious demand on our time, everyone’s job looks better, and we would rather be doing somthing else, but we are more miserable when we don’t have a job at all.
As others have said, the “ice cream” thing is obviously bullshit. He wanted to talk on the phone without you listening. My guess is he knows you well enough to know that he’s not going to be able to talk openly without you listening and/or getting mad.
I think this is a problem, but I think the problem is mostly on your end. Your behavior during his phone call sounds very clingy and possessive, and is much more damaging to a trusting relationship than keeping a phone call to yourself. If he took a one-hour phone call when you guys were out to dinner, or having sex, you’d have a right to be mad. Taking a phone call when you’re hanging around the house is normal. Getting angry at your boyfriend for talking on the phone longer than you think he should is not normal. Being jealous and suspicious without any evidence of wrongdoing is a big red flag.
I disagree that this is your problem. Privacy and the right to lead his own life is one thing, which you seem to recognize he needs. His right to lie to you, get on the defensive and keep secrets is another thing.
Why in the world would he not tell her who was on the phone?
I think we might be missing a big piece of information that could make quite a difference here. Chula, do you and your boyfriend live together or was he hanging out and your house (or you at his?). Because if it’s the former, I’d say you’re going overboard with the jealously. Like Giraffe said, it’s totally normal to take phone calls when you’re just laying around the house watching bad TV. Can you think of a better time to take a phone call? If he felt the need to hide who he was talking to in that scenerio, I think it’s a reflection on how he feels you’re going to react, and his obvious feelings aren’t reflecting positively on you. If it’s the latter, then I’d think his behavior was pretty rude and you have a right to be upset. It’s just not polite to take an hour long call when you either have a guest over or are a guest at someone else’s home. As for him feeling the need to leave the house in order to have some privacy? I’m afraid that also doesn’t reflect too positively on you. Has he ever done that kind of thing before?
Forgot to add: about you thinking it’s strange that you have never heard of this “close friend” after having been together with your boyfriend for 5 months. That’s not at all strange, unless your boyfriend currently hangs out with every close friend he’s ever had in his life. One of my best and oldest friends I see maybe once every 6 months or so (and no, she doesn’t live that far away), we’re just both busy people. I don’t really mention her to other friends (or boyfriends when I’ve had those around) unless I was heading out to visit her or she was coming to visit me or something. And I’m female. Male’s, IMHO, are more likely to have “close friends” that they rarely speak to/of.
It’s really not all that strange. I myself would feel really uncomforatable if my boyfriend of 5 months got all pissy because he didn’t know every last one of my friends. That seems pretty possesive.
I have a theory. If it’s an old friend he hasn’t spoken to in more than 5 months, it’s possible the woman may remember him having a different girlfriend and he wanted some privacy to fill her in on the breakup and its messy details, which he might have been uncomfortable with his current girlfriend hearing.
It doesn’t mean he’s hiding anything. After all, when I first met my girlfriend, I didn’t ask her to tell me why she’s single and whatever happened to her last boyfriend. But someone who knew her back then might, simply because they remember meeting the guy.
Thanks for the thoughtful responses, guys. What I was looking for in part was someone to tell me I was out of line (and I knew at least one person would!) before I talked to him about it last night, so that I might tone things down. I think some of you are projecting your personal experiences on me, but that’s understandable, since you don’t know me and your impressions of the way people act are based on your experiences. Thanks, CrazyCatLady – you seemed to understand my feelings exactly and explained it better than I did.
The other main reason why I posted here first is that I wanted to try to explain some subtle distinctions I was making before I tried to explain them to him. I don’t believe he is cheating on me, but that doesn’t mean I have complete faith that he never will. The fact is that cheating is very common, and anyone is capable of making a mistake, even a really stupid one. I think believing it could never happen to you is not trust, it’s denial. Certain kinds of behavior are bound to raise flags, and if that happens enough, I will become geniunely suspicious. Privacy only raises flags among the paranoid, but secrecy is truly suspicious. The distinction I’m making is that while it’s OK to choose not to share information, deliberately hiding information is often a sign the person is up to no good. Secrecy is not as bad as flat-out deceit, but it’s in the neighborhood. It seems like men often keeps secrets because they believe their SO is going to blow up when what they’re doing is totally innocent, as some of you suggested might be the case here. Such behavior doesn’t bode well for the relationship, as some of you also pointed out. If you feel your SO is unreasonable, paranoid, and/or intrusive, you’d better talk to her about why you feel that way. Maybe it’s her baggage that’s making her paranoid, but just as often it’s the guy bringing his baggage to the relationship, assuming that his current SO will not be able to deal with something because his previous one overreacted. Giving her justifications for her paranoia is not an acceptable response.
No, I don’t complain when he takes phone calls. It was just the circumstances of this one – a late night call from an unidentified woman who he wants to speak to in private. And it’s unusual for him to be less than entirely forthcoming with information about his life.
That’s exactly my problem here. This is the second time he’s been secretive about something for no apparent reason, and if these tiny reasons keep building up it’s going to erode my trust.
No, it’s not having friends who I don’t know that bothers me. It’s having “very close friends” who I’ve never heard of that bothers me. I think of “very close friends” as a very select group of maybe one to five people. I’ve met at least 100 of his friends and family members, so the idea that I wouldn’t have even heard about a “very close friend” boggles my mind. It wouldn’t necessarily expect to know all a boyfriend’s close friends after five months, but I really thought I had met all of them by now, except for one who lives in another state. I think CrazyCatLady hit it on the head on this one – he’s definition of “very close friend” is much more expansive than mine.
You don’t think it’s normal to be a wee bit suspicious of friends of the opposite sex? As msmith pointed out, “friends” can cover a lot of territory. And even in entirely platonic relationships, there is inevitably some amount of sexual tension between friends of the opposite sex (unless one or both is gay, of course). I have a lot of male friends, and I try to make my boyfriends feel comfortable that said tension has definitively been resolved. But that’s really a topic for another thread.
Nah, not me. I’ve been especially careful to give him his space, because things progressed so quickly between us, and he has never been in a serious relationship before. Our schedules are busy enough that he has plenty of free time away from me. He almost always invites me to come along with his friends, but if he calls and says he’ll be out, I just ask him when I should expect to see him. To cite an example, there have been a couple of nights when he said he’d be home at 11 and showed up after 4 a.m. (!), but since his explanation made sense, I had nothing to say about it. So I swear that’s not me! The problem is that if he keeps engaging in behavior that sends up flags, then I’m going to turn into the suspicious detective girlfriend, and I know things will go downhill if that happens.
This has been a source of conflict. I have more own apartment where I pay the rent, and he has his own place. But the reality is that he hasn’t slept at his place in months. Ever since I gave him my spare keys months ago, he has been behaving as if he lived here, and I have had to remind him that he doesn’t. I told him repeatedly that I want him to behave like a guest when he’s here, and he should not come over unless he is actually interested in spending time with me. My apartment is better than his and is much closer to his job, and I suspect that some nights he wants to be doing his own thing but comes over because of the convenience (which he strongly denies). I’ve relaxed my attitude and let him act like he lives here because I guess we’re stuck with this situation for the time being, because neither one of us is ready to give up the security of him having a place to fall back on. (We live in NYC and affordable apartments are hard to come by.)
And watching bad TV with him is one of my favorite ways to spend an evening. Watching TV by myself sucks. Having someone to watch bad TV with is one of the main benefits of a relationship, isn’t it?
Anyway, I talked to him, and after a few minutes of yelling at each other and him telling me I was being crazy and paranoid, he finally conceded I might have a point. Basically, he thought I was just annoyed that he was ignoring me when I wanted him to pay attention to me, so he thought all he would need to do to resolve the matter was to pay a little extra attention to me. (As I admitted, that was part of my annoyance, and I furthermore admit that I might demand perhaps too much attention from a boyfriend, but he accepts that about me so it doesn’t matter what you all think about it. :)) He didn’t realize why his behavior seemed suspicious from my point of view so it didn’t occur to him that a little explanation might be in order. It was someone he used to be pretty good friends with, and he wanted to be able to talk about his great new girlfriend without being embarrassed if I overheard. So he retains his status as the sweetest boyfriend ever, and all is well in chulaland.
Well, that was a lot about my personal life. Thanks again for helping me think through this! You can always count on people here to come up with interesting opinions.
Geez, are you me? I’ve been in that relationship. I had to have the “you don’t LIVE here remember?” talk after I saw his computer had magically appeared in my apartment. Why don’t you just pee all over the couch and completely mark your territory? And I lived right down the street from a house a bunch of his friends lived in, so there were many occasions I felt like another stop on his evening schedule. Ugh.
But I digress.
I’m glad things worked out for you and that you were able to communicate what was was bothering you in a way that didn’t start a knock-down drag out brawl. After reading your post I have a much clearer idea of where you’re coming from and the fact that the two of you were able to talk it out speaks very highly of your relationship.
