Broken Trust, Afraid of Becoming A Jealous Person

[FoueeinLove]

I will preface this by saying that my BF and I have never had any trust issues in our relationship. We have been through a lot together and I have always trusted him with other women. In fact, his best friend is a woman.

 

The only thing is that my BF has a child with a woman he had a one-night stand with. They both acknowledge that it was only one night and my BF does not think highly of this woman. I know he's not physically attracted to her, and that he thinks she's a bad mom and just not a very great person.

 

On the flipside, I think this woman feels like she loves my BF even though they never had a realtionship. She tried to get him to live with her under the guise of helping with their son. That didn't work out for her, but it still seems like she has this strong emotional attachment to him.

 

In the few years we've been together, she has made our lives miserable. I have asked him for the past two years to set up firm boundaries with this woman, but he only does to a point because she made him so afraid that he would never see his son again if he stood up to her.

 

She and I communicate because we care for his son 50/50, so we talk. Earlier in the year, she gave my SO a small present. She actually handed it to me to hand to him. I gave it to him because I was too shocked and am too polite to make a big deal, but I asked him to return it to her and he refused. He is the type who will take anything that's free.

 

I explained how much it hurt me and it fed on my insecurities. Even though logically I know he doesn't want this woman, I still know that they share a child together and we do not (and I would like a child, but he says no right now). I realize that this is MY issue and that, for all practical purposes, BF and I are a family and that he does not consider his baby-mama anything other than the mother of his child. He thought I was making a big deal out of nothing and said that he would never turn away anything free. I asked him to respect my feelings. That was the end of the conversation.

 

However, recently she came by our house (when I was home) to give him something else and so he could say hello to his son. The main purpose was to give this thing to my BF and not for him to say hi to his son because I didn't even notice that BF was really gone for any period of time.

 

Long story shorter, when I was picking up his son from baby-mama, she said something to me about dropping by on Sunday to give something to BF. She said it casually as if she expected I already knew (because generally my BF tells me everything). When I asked BF about it he admitted that, yes, she brought him something and that he didn't tell me because he knew I would get mad. So, of course, I am furious!

 

I feel like he has completely broken my trust and now it leaves room for my imagination to run wild and wonder what else he hasn't told me "because he knew I would get mad?"

 

I really am not angry about baby-mama giving him something as much as he felt like he had to hide it from me, and conciously knew that I would not approve and would be hurt by what he was doing, but he chose to do it anyway. How selfish is that? Had he just said, "look, baby-mama said she needs to drop something off to me and I'm going to say hi to my son," then I would've had the option to either be okay with it or not.

 

OR... had he told me afterwards, "I know you won't like this, but baby-mama said she wanted to drop something off and let me say hi to son, so I said okay and went outside, and I took it" even that would have been acceptable.

 

But, for him to have either snuck out of our home or gone outside under the guise of smoking, and then secretly going talking to baby-mama and taking something from her... that is just so shady!

 

I am not into being that jealous girlfriend. I don't believe in being with someone you can't trust. If you can't trust them, what's the point?

 

I don't really know what to do from here. He did tell me from the beginning that he wasn't saying no to anything free, but at the same time just being dishonest about it really doesn't sit well with me. At all. It sucks.

Edited December 3, 2010 by FoueeinLove
typos

[PegNosePete]

He definitely needs to set up some proper boundaries with baby-mama. She sounds a bit crazy, and very manipulative. Is there any formal access arrangement and maintenance payments for his son, or is it all just informal? If the latter then I would get it formalized ASAP, otherwise this woman will use access as a bargaining tool (ie. blackmail) forever. I think this would be a big step forward for you two. At the moment you are at her whim, if you don't accept her gifts and "friendship" then she withholds access. I don't condone your BF lying to you or lying through omission, but I can see it from his side, he feels he has to see her and take her cr@p because she has him over a barrel. It's likely she is trying to split you up, probably encouraging him not to tell you about their meetings and then letting on to you, to cause a fight. If you make access formal then you'll become independent of her, and your BF will be able to impose boundaries without fear of losing access.