We weren't monogamous, but I feel led on and lied to. He's acting like I'm off base. What do you think?
Last fall, I began a long distance, flirty friendship with a guy who was clear, initially, that he didn't want a long distance relationship.
We started talking for hours a day, for months. He began to tell me he was infatuated with me. After three months of that, he took a week-long trip here in December. We were intimate. He told me he was crazy about me. While he was here, he said again that he wasn't ready for an LDR/to be monogamous, but that if we lived in the same city, he'd want to be together. We agreed, then, that I'd come spend the summer with him.
He went home, and everything continued as before. Two weeks later, after he had gone home, he started talking about his feelings more directly than he had before. He asked me if I knew how badly he was into me, and said that, really, it was "a lot more." He asked me if I was "for real" and when I said I was, he said it made him extremely happy. He asked me what I was looking for in a relationship, and said that I could imagine why he was asking. He said he was obsessed with me and couldn't stop thinking about me. He said that what he wanted in life was to love, and be loved. He said he wanted to be exactly who he was with me and not hide anything. And then he asked me, if he were to move to my city, if it would be "too much, too soon." I said it wouldn't be. He went on to talk about the process he'd have to go through to move, and the timetable it would be on. We planned to see each other again in March.
Exactly a week after this conversation, apparently, he flew cross country to meet/"assess chemistry" with another girl, with whom he was having a similar kind of "relationship," unbeknownst to me. He told me an imaginative and detailed lie about what he was doing that weekend.
Everything continued as before, for the rest of January and February. We had many more conversations about the details of his moving to my city- when he would start a serious job search, where he would apply, where in the city he'd want to live. And we talked almost daily about how crazy we were about each other, how much we missed each other, and how excited we were for his March visit and for the summer. Early in February, he started telling people that he was falling in love with me. Soon after, he wrote me a letter saying again that he wanted to become more serious with me, and expressing hope that we could find a way to make it work.
About two weeks after that, apparently, he told the other girl, while he was drunk, that she should "give serious thought to being in a relationship with him." Later, she asked him if he had meant it, and he confirmed that he did in the days and weeks afterwards.
He continued everything as before, with me. Soon afterwards, a week and a half before he was set to come here for his March visit, he suggested to the other girl that the two of them should move to be together, and that he was start looking for jobs in *her* city.
*FOUR DAYS* after he suggested that to her, he told me directly that he was falling in love with me for the first time. I said it was mutual, and that I couldn't wait for us to be able to start something in my city. He said, "Let's do it. I'm ready to step up." He started talking about how it was only a week until his trip to me, only a month until we could be together, in the summer, and after that, hopefully very little time until we could live in the same city and be together for good. He said I was his primary focus from then out.
The next week, he came for his trip to me. (He told the other girl that he was "going underground" to study for exams.)
A few days after he left, I discovered the situation with the other girl. I found out that she was flying out to visit him two weeks later. And I was scheduled for arrive for the summer about a week after she was scheduled to leave.
When I found out, he canceled her trip, refunded her ticket money, asked me to be monogamous with him starting from then, and told her things were over between them. He apologized to both of us. The next day, he told her he couldn't talk to her anymore at all. He's been swearing up and down that I'm the one he wants to be with, he's sure of it, and he never had "chemistry" with her.
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I'd like your opinions. I obviously have my own opinions on this, but I'm conflicted. A big part of me is clinging on to this thing I had for all these months, that was such a huge part of my life and so important to me. I had allowed myself to become extremely, extremely attached to him.
To be honest, what I want the most is to somehow feel completely okay about this, so that maybe I won't have to give this up. If that's not possible, I want to be so, so convinced that it was so messed up that I just want out. That's why I'm seeking our your perspectives.
This is the first question.
He's apologized to both of us, for hurting us. But I still have the sense that he doesn't think anything he did was really wrong. His justification seems to be that both she and I knew that we weren't monogamous. And that the two of us were misinterpreting him/misunderstanding the situation, making assumptions, and making more out of it than it was.
I find it insane for him to think either she or I were delusional/off-base in expecting that he was going to move to be with us; that we were headed for a serious relationship and in the process of making that happen. But what do you think? Did he lead us on?
Second question:
After I found out about everything, I told him one of the scariest things for me was that he had told her he'd move to be with her *so* recently. He said his feelings for me had changed/grown immensely in the past month. Looking at the timeline, and how nothing he had *said* to me had changed immensely in the past month, how likely do you think that really is?
My biggest worry there is that, really, he was hoping to create a bigger spark with her, and that he wanted her to visit him before I came to see if that would happen (apparently he knew she wasn't quite as into him as I was).
I feel like I still don't know what he was really hoping/planning.
Third question:
Can I ever trust him?
He says being in a monogamous relationship with me will be different. That he'll be completely transparent, open, etc.
But first of all, I think I have no idea what his definition of honesty is. I worry he's operating under some bizarre definition of honesty that allows him to lie frequently and feel justified and okay about it, and like he's still completely honest. That scares me.
All of his arguments about "technicalities" make me wonder if I can trust him at all, if he'll always be able to rationalize away everything he does.
I worry that like every time I ask him something, or he and I agree to something, I'll have to agonize over semantics and whether there were any loopholes in what we said.
Also, even while we were having that conversation, he was still stretching the truth. I had asked him if what the other girl told me was true, that he asked her to think about being in a serious relationship. He told me he said it once, while he was really drunk, and any talk of it after that was generated by her. Then I found out the truth, that weeks after that, while he was sober, he suggested moving to her city. When I asked him about it again, he said he couldn't remember what he said.
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I talked to him about this for a really long time, over the course of a few days, and at the end, I felt that I had said my piece and was satisfied by what he said, and was ready to put the issue to rest.
But I'm finding it's hard to do that completely, in just a few days. The issues kept popping up in my head all last night. I hate to start rehashing the topic with him yet again, after I already said I was ready to put it to rest.
I've tried to be completely earnest and sincere here, so while I appreciate the effort of anyone who takes the time to read and reply, please go easy on snarkiness.
posted by anonymous to human relations (82 comments total)
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posted by electroboy at 7:49 PM on April 9 [14 favorites]