staticline Posted July 27, 2011 Posted July 27, 2011 I am a 23 year old woman and my boyfriend is 25. We have been together for two years, and since I am currently a hard up student nurse we each live seperately with our parents. For the large part we have a good and happy relationship. I have one problem - my boyfriend is very secretive by nature and he hides things from me. I think this is more intrinsic to his character than a specific problem with our relationship - he is a very comfort seeking individual and tends to plod along trying to avoid conflicts and upsets and keeps himself to himself. He is not very good at handling emotive situations, just tries to keep the status quo. Although I tend to be a little more straight talking and prefer to deal with things head on I try to accept him as he is and give him plenty of space to be just that. However.. Recently I attended a work funtion with him at the races. Some of his friends from work were also there with thier girlfriends. I was chatting with these women when my boyfriend approached, and one of the girls latched on to him immediately; "We had a great time when we went out clubbing before didn't we? We should definately do it again!" Since he'd never mentioned this girl and I didn't know they had a prior association, I looked at him puzzled. I ignored it and continued to socialise with the group. Clearly, my boyfriend had realised I had noticed this and kept bugging me "what's wrong?!", "Talk to me?!" even though I showed no signs of upset and had no intention of discussing until there was an appropriate moment, we had both had a little to drink throughout the day. Eventually I said "Look, it just bothered me a bit that you'd never mentioned socialising with those other girls or going out on those nights at all" Quite innapropriately defensive and accusing at this point, he told me that he had covered it up because he thought I might be upset. I'll make it clear at this point that I have never had any problems with him having nights out with the guys or whoever - it had just never been an issue for me. At points I have even encouraged him to get out and do it since I'd noticed he hadn't for a while! Yet he'd aniticapated it might upset me and went quite out of his way to hide it from me. He also said that he often lied to me about how much he had to drink on nights out. For a long time he's been telling me that he seems to have a bad reaction to alcohol after "just a few pints at the most..", and in my concern I've nursed him through many a horrible hangover. I've never had a problem with his drinking either, and drink plenty myself - especially on a night out. I felt wounded and humiliated and accused. Wounded to have been lied to and not trusted to be understanding or accommodating of his social needs. Humiliated to be finding out from other people. Accused of holding him to standards I've never held or expressed - of unreasonable reactions I've never had. If he had been open with me it would have been fine, but now I feel as if my trust has been broken and I am now questioning the motives for his cover ups. Could it be he's covering these things up because he's up to no good? Something about the way the girl was talking to him made me think this might be the case. Is he covering up how much he drinks because he thinks I don't trust him to be responsible, or because he really isn't responsible? He says that he didn't tell me because he thought that I would over-react. I have given him no reason to think this, but if he has somehow arrived at this belief I suppose we can work on that and all will be well - hopefully he will see that the path of least resistance isn't always the best one and that lies and coverups however big or small only sevre to make bigger problems and break trust. I want to believe in him. However, I can't somehow tune out to my other suspicions. Does anybody have any advice for me on this situation? Are these red flags not to be ignored, or am I blowing this out of proportion in my upset? Please help!!
Tech_E Posted July 27, 2011 Posted July 27, 2011 No kids, not married, already questions of his honesty? Why bother? Move on.
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