I (23F) am struggling to trust my boyfriend (25M) after some issues. Am I being crazy?

So I’ll start off with an apology- I’m on mobile and my formatting will be pretty crap, and it might get a bit long. Sorry, guys.

I (23F) have been with my current boyfriend (25M) now for almost 2 years. It is not the first time we have been in a relationship. We dated for a year back in high school, and have since reconnected. From my perspective, our relationship has been pretty good up until about 6 months ago. A few things have gone wrong and I am really struggling to gain a clear perspective on what I’m feeling and what I should do. I’ll try and cut the details down as much as possible. If anything is confusing, please let me know so I can clarify. Okay. Here goes.

About a year into our current relationship, I noticed he was extremely weird about his phone. He would take it with him no matter where he went. If he ever placed it down on something, he would place it screen-down and jump like something bit him if it went off. He would basically snap his arms off trying to get to it and get it out of my sightline so he could respond. He’s always been an extremely flirtatious person and I didn’t really mind, because I thought it was relatively harmless and I thought he would always be faithful to me. I felt like he worshipped me and I was very trusting of him. Things started to degrade because I think I started to get worried about who he was speaking to. I noticed this one particular woman that would always leave really flirty comments on everything he did on social media and I just had this... feeling. I’ve had this “feeling” since we met but because I am aware of my own trust issues, I completely ignored it and just went about life. I was extremely busy back then and completely consumed by my job. One day, something overtook me and the feeling felt like it was going to send me into cardiac arrest. Something in me was telling me he’s suss, and I’m ignoring it because I’ve been in love with him half of my life. So, I did something I will always be ashamed of. I went through his phone. What I found pretty much broke my heart. He was having very intense conversations with the woman I mentioned just before, as well as several others. Complimenting them, flirting with them, making pretty inappropriate comments about their appearances and their bodies. Being sleazy, to be honest. A few of the women just ignored him, because he was being pretty pathetic. A few of them were definitely into it, though. When confronted, he completely denied it and wouldn’t come over for a while, and when he did, he would be in his phone most of the time anyway. It ended up getting a bit better, and he managed to ease my suspicions and we moved in together. I left a great apartment I shared with my best friend in order to be able to live with him. He was still living at home with his parents and wanted to get out desperately. We used my rental history to get a house an hour away from where I was, because that is what he could afford to split with me. He has a six year old son, and I started spending more and more time with them both on weekends (he only has him on weekends, Friday evening through til Sunday morning). One day, when out with them both, he passed me his phone to take a photo of them both with a huge poster of Bumblebee from Transformers. When I unlocked the screen, there was a screenshot he’d taken of a Snapchat he had received from some girl I didn’t know. It was her premium Snapchat account. I felt like I was gutted, because we were (seemingly) doing so well and he was still being a sleaze. Now, I feel as though I should say that I don’t give a fuck about him looking at porn and looking at other women and stuff. I don’t care- I look at women and other men, I look at porn, it’s whatever. It’s the personalisation that really gets to me. It’s the flirting and the sleaziness with “friends” of his and now he was asking for nudes from this other girl, basically. I handed his phone back to him, gave his son a huge cuddle and said I had to run, and took the bus home. I cried the whole way, and he called me as I was walking back through the door. He was back at his parents house, where he stays with his kid on weekends. He completely denied it, said it was an accident, that he would never do such a thing, and he’s never seen it before. He then absolutely berrated me for even suggesting it was iffy of him to behave like that. We had a bad fight. He ended up kinda convincing me it was an accident. He was so convincing. He told me he wanted to marry me and he only has eyes for me, and that I am being paranoid and crazy. Fast forward three months, and I haven’t been able to let it go. I packed all my shit, and told him I was leaving him. He then came clean and admitted it was true all along. I was right. And he had held me while I cried for weeks. While I doubted myself. While I felt ugly and unlovable and disgusting. He would get angry at my inability to trust him. He would get dramatic and stop eating and drinking and lie on the floor and not speak to me when I was angry at him, and he felt so “guilty”. His reasoning behind all of his shitty behaviour is that when I get depressed, which is admittedly fairly often, as I have medicated and well managed bipolar disorder that is kind of getting worse, I’m not there for him enough and he was so lonely and just desperately needed to feel less alone. He never spoke to me about his feelings and just pretended everything was okay. Now, my question. Am I being mental for not being able to trust him still? Am I being unreasonable? Am I being crazy? Do I have the right to feel like this? Please help me. Any thoughts, advice or literally anything will help me more than I can explain. I have no one to go to with this, as all of my friends and family just tell me to fucking break it off already and they’re tired of hearing me complain. Thank you so much in advance.

TL;DR- boyfriend of almost 2 years has been acting shady and I can’t seem to get over it and feel safe and comfortable. I am struggling with what to do about it and whether I am being reasonable or not.

Submitted May 10, 2019 at 06:24AM

So I’ll start off with an apology- I’m on mobile and my formatting will be pretty crap, and it might get a bit long. Sorry, guys.I (23F) have been with my current boyfriend (25M) now for almost 2 years. It is not the first time we have been in a relationship. We dated for a year back in high school, and have since reconnected. From my perspective, our relationship has been pretty good up until about 6 months ago. A few things have gone wrong and I am really struggling to gain a clear perspective on what I’m feeling and what I should do. I’ll try and cut the details down as much as possible. If anything is confusing, please let me know so I can clarify. Okay. Here goes.About a year into our current relationship, I noticed he was extremely weird about his phone. He would take it with him no matter where he went. If he ever placed it down on something, he would place it screen-down and jump like something bit him if it went off. He would basically snap his arms off trying to get to it and get it out of my sightline so he could respond. He’s always been an extremely flirtatious person and I didn’t really mind, because I thought it was relatively harmless and I thought he would always be faithful to me. I felt like he worshipped me and I was very trusting of him. Things started to degrade because I think I started to get worried about who he was speaking to. I noticed this one particular woman that would always leave really flirty comments on everything he did on social media and I just had this... feeling. I’ve had this “feeling” since we met but because I am aware of my own trust issues, I completely ignored it and just went about life. I was extremely busy back then and completely consumed by my job. One day, something overtook me and the feeling felt like it was going to send me into cardiac arrest. Something in me was telling me he’s suss, and I’m ignoring it because I’ve been in love with him half of my life. So, I did something I will always be ashamed of. I went through his phone. What I found pretty much broke my heart. He was having very intense conversations with the woman I mentioned just before, as well as several others. Complimenting them, flirting with them, making pretty inappropriate comments about their appearances and their bodies. Being sleazy, to be honest. A few of the women just ignored him, because he was being pretty pathetic. A few of them were definitely into it, though. When confronted, he completely denied it and wouldn’t come over for a while, and when he did, he would be in his phone most of the time anyway. It ended up getting a bit better, and he managed to ease my suspicions and we moved in together. I left a great apartment I shared with my best friend in order to be able to live with him. He was still living at home with his parents and wanted to get out desperately. We used my rental history to get a house an hour away from where I was, because that is what he could afford to split with me. He has a six year old son, and I started spending more and more time with them both on weekends (he only has him on weekends, Friday evening through til Sunday morning). One day, when out with them both, he passed me his phone to take a photo of them both with a huge poster of Bumblebee from Transformers. When I unlocked the screen, there was a screenshot he’d taken of a Snapchat he had received from some girl I didn’t know. It was her premium Snapchat account. I felt like I was gutted, because we were (seemingly) doing so well and he was still being a sleaze. Now, I feel as though I should say that I don’t give a fuck about him looking at porn and looking at other women and stuff. I don’t care- I look at women and other men, I look at porn, it’s whatever. It’s the personalisation that really gets to me. It’s the flirting and the sleaziness with “friends” of his and now he was asking for nudes from this other girl, basically. I handed his phone back to him, gave his son a huge cuddle and said I had to run, and took the bus home. I cried the whole way, and he called me as I was walking back through the door. He was back at his parents house, where he stays with his kid on weekends. He completely denied it, said it was an accident, that he would never do such a thing, and he’s never seen it before. He then absolutely berrated me for even suggesting it was iffy of him to behave like that. We had a bad fight. He ended up kinda convincing me it was an accident. He was so convincing. He told me he wanted to marry me and he only has eyes for me, and that I am being paranoid and crazy. Fast forward three months, and I haven’t been able to let it go. I packed all my shit, and told him I was leaving him. He then came clean and admitted it was true all along. I was right. And he had held me while I cried for weeks. While I doubted myself. While I felt ugly and unlovable and disgusting. He would get angry at my inability to trust him. He would get dramatic and stop eating and drinking and lie on the floor and not speak to me when I was angry at him, and he felt so “guilty”. His reasoning behind all of his shitty behaviour is that when I get depressed, which is admittedly fairly often, as I have medicated and well managed bipolar disorder that is kind of getting worse, I’m not there for him enough and he was so lonely and just desperately needed to feel less alone. He never spoke to me about his feelings and just pretended everything was okay. Now, my question. Am I being mental for not being able to trust him still? Am I being unreasonable? Am I being crazy? Do I have the right to feel like this? Please help me. Any thoughts, advice or literally anything will help me more than I can explain. I have no one to go to with this, as all of my friends and family just tell me to fucking break it off already and they’re tired of hearing me complain. Thank you so much in advance.TL;DR- boyfriend of almost 2 years has been acting shady and I can’t seem to get over it and feel safe and comfortable. I am struggling with what to do about it and whether I am being reasonable or not.