Not exactly what I meant.
When I use my card, the resulting transaction- both on the paper statement and online- will show the date, amount of the charge, reference number, and the business name. So, for example, my lunch the other day would appear something like this:
I’m wondering how on earth a charge for Thai prostitutes shows up. I’m imagining something along the lines of this:
Which is completely cracking me up.
Just as the boyfriend may very well have owned up to his “silly prank email to Joe, since Joe always brags about his sexual exploits”.
Sailbunny, you indicate that you’re unsure and ambivalent at this point.
OK, it is good to recognize when you’re unsure and ambivalent. You’re going to have to sort out your feelings, attitudes, expectations, etc, first, rather than deciding upon a course of action. And since you are unsure and ambivalent, you’re probably going to want to talk with the dude and listen to what he has to say.
Without attempting to tell you what attitudes you should have, I’d like to offer the observation that in our culture we are taught to expect sexual exclusivity in relationships, to the point that it is considered demeaning to stay in a relationship with someone if that someone isn’t giving you sexual exclusivity.
I think because this attitude is taught and expected in our culture, most folks don’t independently think out whether that’s how they themselves personally feel about the matter.
Perhaps for you, even if it doesn’t elicit from you a mere shrug and an “OK, have fun, be careful with the hygiene part of it”, it turns out that it doesn’t quite constitute an automatic “OK, this relationship is therefore OVER” situation.
(Have the two of you ever discussed sexual exclusivity, in fact?)
There once was a guy from Nantucket
Who went on a junket to…
naah, fish in a barrel…
How about:
He didn’t start this thread. Besides, I would have thought my ‘crazy stalker’ comment would have elicited the sentiment well enough.
Dude. Holy shit. This isn’t some guy that screwed his secretary during his lunch break, or had a fling with some cute co-ed. People aren’t negatively responding to the boyfriend’s behavior because he went outside the normalized bounds of sexual exclusivity. They’re responding negatively because:
It is not the lack of exclusivity that is demeaning; it is the entire scenario, beginning to end, that is demeaning. Even betrayal can have levels of awfulness; for example, some women whose husbands have affairs are able to work through it by rationalizing “At least he did it away from the house…” This situation not only hits every single branch on the awful tree, it starts heading for the root system.
The OP would either have to be the most understanding, forgiving, sympathetic person in the world or knowingly in a non-exclusive, sexually open relationship that includes sex with prostitutes to not feel upset, demeaned, and motivated to get out of the relationship. While the former may be true, there is nothing in the OP or subsequent posts that make me think the latter is.
Reminds me of a friend whose boyfriend (whom she was living with and had just taken home to meet the family) had to 'fess up to having slept with another woman while he was on vacation in Europe. He only told her because he caught a (treatable, thankfully) STD. His excuse of course was that he was drunk. He was so sorry and went on to stalk her for a while after she dumped him.
As Tom said, this is my view of it, skewed as it is.
I hope you check back on this thread at least once more, since I’ve been through something similar. My girlfriend and I had trust issues, and because of them I felt it necessary to log in to her email and do some snooping. I found out she’d cheated on me a couple times with one of my best friends.
I was devastated, since this was obviously the end of my friendship with the guy in question. And as for the girl, we tried to work it out for the same reasons you list here. We’d been together for over a year, knew each other’s family, shared all the same friends, etc.
But living with this act of betrayal, from both sides, was more than we could take. I couldn’t tell my friends and family what she’d done to me, which made me absolutely miserable. We never got that trust back.
We broke up. I lost a lot in the break up… she’d been a friend of mine for a decade before we dated, and I lost all of that. I lost a 15 year friendship with the friend she cheated with. I lost her whole family, whom I was very close to and attended all of their family gatherings. And situations between my remaining friends is awkward at best, with them not particularly wanting to hear details about her betrayal and also not wanting both of us to show up at the same party at the same time because of the awkwardness between us.
But to be honest, it’s all been worth it. Life is so much better with her out of my life. I can move on without the restraints and depression I felt in the months that we were trying to work things out. I feel free. I feel great. Her absence and the weirdness that follows are fleeting bad feelings, but the good feelings that come along with standing up for yourself and not allowing yourself to be treated like that will last forever.
And don’t feel bad telling mutual friends what you did, and what he did. This is his bed, and he’s got to sleep in it. Don’t ever put yourself in the position that you have to cover up what someone else did. It’s not worth it.
Thanks everyone, all this advice has really helped me to think about the situation.
Mom says tryyy to work it out because all men cheat (thanks mom).
Sister says don’t ever speak to him again,
I wrote him a long email concerning the need for a break. I outlined all of the emotions I was feeling, and even placed some of the blame on myself for the snooping. I think I have emerged from the shocked/sad stage to the reallllly pissed stage. And theres no way this will be resolved through email or skype. So regardless, I’m going to take a break, a breath of fresh air and keep on keepin’ on. I’ve decided to remain in the city of my school and take classes here this summer instead of returning home as I had originally planned (no job there). I think that this was a smart move regardless of whatever comes of the relationship.
He thinks everything is ok right now, because he caught me at a really vulnerable moment when i was just beginning to grasp the implications of being single. Hasnt seen the email yet. So I suppose the best thing to do at this point is to drop it. Im not even sure if I want to continue correspondence while he’s away.
Again, I wanted to thank everyone for all their good advice, and providing me an outlet so my friends did not de-friend me for talking about it all the time.
Fuck that. I don’t know your mom, but that’s stupid. Jayzus! All men cheat?!?! Sorry, some men prefer to have a clean conscience.
Great to hear you’re doing better. The time off will be a great time to do that. Also not going home will be a good thing too. But don’t take him back. He seems like a dishonest liar. I don’t care if people in your hometown agree with him. I don’t care if nobody back home does anything else. Screw him, he cheated on you with whores. I don’t like his story one bit. He had time to make up some bullshit.
I get the feeling that you will look back on it as a good thing in very short time. Plus he’s not around to try to persuade you either.
First, most men do not cheat. Second, those who do are usually in relationships that are not salvageable. Third, when those men cheat, is rarely with a prostitute. Fourth, it takes two to tango, so whatever cheating there is, is also done by women.
Personally, I’d rather my SO screw around with a prostitute than with a friend of mine or even some random guy picked up at a bar (provided the prostitute is from a government-regulated brothel).
But that’s neither here nor there. If he really did cheat on you and spent $700 for a couple of hookers in Thailand, he’s neither nice nor smart. Personally, I would consider it a forgivable offense chalked up to blatant stupidity.
I must travel in different crowds, though, as I’d say probably 20% of the guys I know well enough to know these things have solicited the company of prostitutes at some point in their lives. And these are not ugly men, some are well-to-do, and from varied backgrounds. These are all guys who can pick up a girl at a bar if they wanted to. Sometimes, they just don’t want to. So, for me, it’s hardly a moral outrage that a guy went to visit a hooker once. It is morally questionable that he did it while in a relationship, though. Although I’m still not convinced this scenario even happened.
Well, that’s not true. Despite my intricate knowledge of the local industry, I certainly don’t. I know some who do, but I know plenty of others I’d be surprised if I learned they did. To each his own I say, but saying all men do is not true, no disrespect to your mother. Even the bar owners I know generally keep it in their pants if they’re in a relationship (there’s quite the tradition of angry lovers slicing it off while you sleep here in Thailand).
No, not all men cheat, and I’d say give your guy a second chance if you’re leaning that way.
As for the question of how these things turn up on credit-card statements, there’s usually an innocuous-sounding company name that appears. If it were otherwise, very few would be using credit cards for this sort of thing, not to mention for ordering porn online in the US.
It’s easy to call this guy stupid, but if it IS true that he was scammed, well I know how persuasive the conmen here are. You just don’t know how persuasive these people can be. I’ve seen others who were scammed. You hear their story, and you think they should have known better, but at the time it’s happening, they don’t see the big picture of what’s being done to them. It’s a series of little events, each one innocuous in itself but which all lead up to something big very suddenly, and you can’t see it coming. You think back on it afterward and realize what a doofus you must have been not to have seen that coming, but really, these people are true professionals. In many if not most cases, they’ll actually make the victim believe like the whole thing was his idea to begin with.
I just can’t describe it well enough in words myself, but believe me when I say these scammers are very, VERY good, so I would not be TOO hard on the guy if it’s true. Like I said before, Thailand is so much safer compared with other neighboring countries that tourists often let their guard down. The general rules here are: 1. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is; and 2. Any person appearing out of thin air and trying to befriend you suddenly and quickly is more than likely operating from a hidden agenda, NOT from the goodness of his heart.
I can believe it. I lived in Hungary for 5 years, and the scam artists out there were pretty damn persuasive, too. I’ve never really had any problems (except being fleeced once for $50 in exchange for nearly worthless Romanian lei in an on-street currency exchange), but a number of visiting friends, despite me telling them to be wary of supposedly friendly strangers have gotten conned. The most famous typical scam is the girl who come on to you, she takes you to a bar, you don’t look at a menu, pay for her drinks, only to find out the drinks are a hundred bucks a piece or something. Big ol’ mafioso follows you to the ATM, and there’s really not a hell of a whole lot you can do about it.
Did you change your passwords yet?
Good for you. I think it’s important to know you can be on your own and be happy, and that then a relationship would only add to that. Pursuing school or work and your own goals is a great plan, putting yourself first and not making plans based on a compromise for a relationship.
I don’t mean it’s never right to compromise, just that this might be a good time to be on your own for a while.
:eek: I’m guessing she probably hasn’t had the best luck with men in her life, eh?
I think your plan to take a break and try to focus on yourself for a while is a good one. If you want to get more opinions on how to heal from this kind of heartbreak, there’s a pretty active forum dealing with breakup issues over at Forums - eNotAlone that I found pretty helpful when I was nursing my last broken heart. All the best to you.
It probably shows up as as charge to the bar. Then the bar owner pays her like an employee/contractor.