Either you’re just one of the world’s unfortunate paranoiacs, or your GF is giving you every reason to be suspicious of her actions.
Here’s what I suggest: Ask yourself if this is how all your relationships (romantic and platonic) go. Are you typically a suspicious person in your interactions with others, or is there something about this relationship that is making you un-characteristically suspicious? Be honest with yourself about your answers.
If you determine that this relationship is unique (among all others) with respect to making you feel insecure or question your own sanity, then I’d say there is a very high likelyhood that your suspicions about your GF are correct. i.e. Smoke, fire, etc…
Be prepared that you may never get the validation you seek about your suspicions. You’ll have to reconcile yourself to that uncertainty. The hardest thing however, will be deciding - Are you better off with, or without her?
Or perhaps she is a regular lie that regularly cheats, and so she can’t trust anyone with that and so it doesn’t reflect on me. Or maybe she trusts me (and even is innocent) but acts in a way where most people would not trust her. There are such bird: innocent people that just naturally act shady.
Or there is no absolutely no reason to cheat on someone.
I live and breath honor.
I do not cheat.
I break up with someone and then seek other partners.
Larger problems are just words for some meta- problem that is so female-centered in its understanding that only the love child of oprah and dr. phil could possibly parse its deep emotional subtly.
In other words, as soon as a whiff of cheating became not the cheater’s problem but the relationships or my problem…you just lost me. I bet in other circles you avoid victim blaming. But I’m a dude…so ya know.
My guess is that the trust is already gone int his relationship - if the red flags keep popping up, then it’s not the right relationships for you, and you as much as it will stink, you probably need to end things… especially if you feel that you cannot talk to her about what is going on.
if it’s a relationship you feel is worth saving, talking with her rationally (not accusingly) is going to have to be the way to go. Putting her on the defensive is going to only end in an argument. But if you don’t have basic trust… and you don’t feel comfortable talking about the fact that you don’t have basic trust, then I don’t see how it will have any other end.
This is not my first serious relationship, but the only one with these trust issues. Before, I was always with women that naturally fit my moral compass in general.
I never am paranoid. I have no other paranoia in my life, aside from this relationship.
Family and friends that I speak to about this state “I’ve never seen you like this”.
My brother yesterday got very forceful in stating “you are not crazy, but this girl always makes you feel and act crazy”.
Well then I guess there’s no more for me to say. Good luck with your relationship, may it bring you joy.
For what it may be worth, my POV is from 30 years spent with the same man, starting as a Freshman in college. We’ve had our differences but we trust 100%. Always have, always will. I couldn’t live in a climate of suspicion and fear.
There you go. What more can a bunch of complete strangers on a message board tell you that you’ve not already heard from people who know you best and have your best interests at heart?
This probably isn’t a good forum for that. These kind of threads pop up from time to time and the answer to “hey, I’m concerned about the stability of my relationship; what’s going on?” is pretty universally “it’s over.”
We may be a bunch of biased, jaded, bitter, broken people. So, this:
No. This is not a reasonable question. You are being unreasonable, and that’s just not a good way to re-start a relationship. Cool your jets and let things happen and see where the two of you are a few months from now, or call it quits now. Don’t make her the sole bad guy; there’s plenty of room for two.
You are very strongly reminding me of this article.
I don’t know you in real life, but you sound very controlling - analysing her need for lip salve and eye drops, and extrapolating an affair from them? Dude, they probably just turned up the air-con in her office.
You’ve said it yourself. You don’t trust her. Do yourself a favour, and break up with her and find someone else who doesn’t make you paranoid and obsessive.
I think she might be cheating. Her behavior that of someone that is cheating. But her perspectives are so off that she might be innocent and her innate privacy chip on the shoulder is helping my suspicion along.
At this point, I’d have to monitor her in the relationship for a time and see that she no longer does/says things that are just “off”. She would have to begin acting like GFs in the past that earned my trust.
She was raised in a controlling and very dysfunctional household and so small lies are very natural to her. I don’t think she even thinks that something is a small lie before she states it. She speaks of lying to others all the time and shows no guilt. In fact, I can’t remember a sincere display of guilt or shame on her part, even when speaking of the past.
So, I’d have to instruct her in the ways of transparency and then hope it takes.
Heaven forbid I restart an exclusive relationship with the expectation of exclusivity and that she is not entertaining guys from the break up period.
I’m totally shocked that: “hey, did you start talking to guys that want to bang you and so should probably cool them off just like you probably should have at the start of our exclusivity” is a crazy question/statement. Seriously.
This perspective just makes no sense to me. Sorry.
It is no different really than at the very start of an exclusive relationship stating: “hey we are exclusive now, as you agreed, so you should not be chatting up guys that you know only want to bang you and that you met under those definite pretenses”.
Shakes head…
Is this just an absolute trust thing or a privacy thing or I am just a guy and she’s a goddess thing or something else?
There’s not a lot of gray area here. Either you’re comfortable that you’re in an exclusive relationship, or you aren’t. If not, then you need to talk to her about it, using pretty much those exact words. She can either say “yes” or “no”.
I am baffled that you feel confident (or felt confident) that you are/were in an exclusive relationship with this woman. Why, exactly, was that?
I don’t think you know what windburn is. Please explain a scenario where someone in an office gets windburn, chapped, and scorched eyes all in one day without ever experiencing those things before…and to the point that they complained of these maladies. Please explain how a motorbike can do this with 100% regularity and why the things that could do it with 1% regularity are more likely in this case and so I am off the rails
Please show where I tried to control her. I suppose I should be an oblivious person that does not see any potential patterns at all and is just happy and really trusting? Total trust in relationships, when you see otherwise and understand human nature,is overrated.
What she did when she wasn’t with you is none of your damn business.
What you did when she wasn’t with you is none of her damn business.
What she did before she met you isn’t any of your damn business.
What you did before you met her isn’t any of her damn business.
What she does after you break up is none of your damn business.
What you do after you break up is none of her damn business.
You should not be asking her those questions and she should decline to answer them. Whether she sat for two weeks crying her eyes out, was out screwing a different man every night, or any combination thereof, it’s none of your business.
No answer she gives will satisfy you anyway.
You don’t own her, you broke up with her, she doesn’t owe you shit.
Don’t go poking your nose in where it doesn’t belong and you’ll be a lot happier for it.