What's new

Trust issues?

orkie123

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Feb 21, 2023
Messages
222
5 months since meeting a girl and about 2 months since becoming exclusive with her, I have my first doubt on whether she lied to me about something.

Context is that when we started seeing eachother, she thought I was a player who was going to use her. I wasnt totally innocent as I was indeed acting as if it was a fwb situation as I wasnt sure I wanted a relationship.

Because of this, sometimes she would tell me when other guys flirt with her. While she probably did hope to make me a little jealous, it wasnt totally malicious as I usually encourage girls to tell me stories like that as I find it makes fwb last longer.

Anyhow, the other day I was at her apartment and she was telling me some funny story about her friend grp that includes a guy who had tried it with her. I got curious and asked if he had tried something recently and she said she hadnt spoken or chatted to him in ages.

The problem comes a bit later when she is showing me something on her phone and at one point she was responding to a female friend's text, but when she pressed back to go the list of msgs, i'm 95% sure I saw the guy's name, not in a grp chat, being near the top.

I really couldnt care if she did text him as this grp is one of her few friend grps in a new city for her. I've also met him once and he is one of those nice guys that tries to win girls by buying them gifts etc...

What does bother me is if she lied about the texting, regardless if it was innocent or not.

I make it very clear whenever I get into an exclusive relationship that if I catch a good friend or a girlfriend lying to me about something other than white lies, I almost never give second chances. I also tell them that the majortiy of the time, the lie hurts me more than the action, as everyone can make mistakes, but betrayal via lies is a choice, not a mistake.

In my last long term relationship, I learned to also add that if someone admits to lying to me before I find out, It's much more likely I will forgive. Otherwise, girls tend to become better at lying rather than more honest lol.


I did ask her about it, and she said he had just msged in a grp chat. Offered me her phone to check and also gave me her pin code. The thing is, she is smart and knows me well enough that I would decline. For me, if I have to look through a gf's phone, trust is already broken.

I highly doubt she has cheated on me purely because we are both really busy and when we are not, we are together. She is also putting in a lot of effort in the relationship to risk it for that guy. He had no game.

Maybe she felt a bit cornered and got into a lying spiral but for me, that's still not something I can be bothered to deal with, esp it coming so early into the relationship.

The reason Im revisiting it today is that after the whole ordeal, she told me that someone from the grp asked her if she was going to some event. That sounded exactly like the guy as this was the kind of thing my gf would share with me when we were not exclusive so I asked if it was him. She said no, and told me the guy's name.

Today, I felt a little uneasy about it and tried to see if someone from her followers had that name. Turns out the first guy has that name as his surname lol. It is a common first name as well, esp in the country he is from, and she did say both are from there, but what are the chances...


I do have some trust insecurities but I don't think I show them much to her and I also have never made a fuss about her speaking to guys or whatever.

The problem is that now that this has gotten into my head, it's super distracting. It's like a puzzle that I cannot stop thinking about (partially why I hate when people lie to me, I start playing chess with the lies and I have horrible memory that doesnt help).

Im super busy starting my own business and I just cannot have this distracting me, but it wont leave my mind now until I figure it out. If she did lie to me, I would break up. But I dont want to go through her phone, asking her about it again seems weak, and I will struggle to forget about it.

So question is - any advice on what I should do?
 

Chase

Chieftan
Staff member
tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
6,348
@orkie123,

Lying is common. But different girls do it in different amounts.

Lying to cover up says "I'm afraid how you'll react if you find out." So what you will see is that more fearful girls lie more.

The fearfulness doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you. It's often a more general "lie to any guy in that situation" deal.

However: "Has he tried something recently?" is the kind of question that'll trigger a fear response in a more skittish kind of girl. She knows you're not asking as idle chitchat. You are checking for infidelity risks. The "safe" answer is "just tell him you haven't talked to him."

Next time be more chill in how you check on that sort of thing. Better just to be like, "So how's that dude been with you recently?" and leave it more open-ended just to see what she says.

Also -- you gotta be quick on the draw when you catch stuff you want answers on. When you see the guy's name in the phone, that's when you go, "Oh, lol, thought you guys hadn't talked in ages. Started back up again, huh?" Then you watch her response.

You can't really do it days/weeks later. Just looks weak. Why didn't you say anything when you saw it? Have you really been sitting there feeling insecure for weeks now? Uncool...

Anyway:

  1. Girls will keep nice guy orbiters around when they're not 100% sure you're 100% committed and not going anywhere.

  2. Fearful girls will try to cover that up if they know/suspect you are not going to like it.

Only two ways to avoid it are either to give her total commitment, or date a confident, non-fearful girl who will tell you the truth.

Chase
 
you miss 100% of the shots you don't take

orkie123

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Feb 21, 2023
Messages
222
@orkie123,

Lying is common. But different girls do it in different amounts.

Lying to cover up says "I'm afraid how you'll react if you find out." So what you will see is that more fearful girls lie more.

The fearfulness doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you. It's often a more general "lie to any guy in that situation" deal.

However: "Has he tried something recently?" is the kind of question that'll trigger a fear response in a more skittish kind of girl. She knows you're not asking as idle chitchat. You are checking for infidelity risks. The "safe" answer is "just tell him you haven't talked to him."

Next time be more chill in how you check on that sort of thing. Better just to be like, "So how's that dude been with you recently?" and leave it more open-ended just to see what she says.

Also -- you gotta be quick on the draw when you catch stuff you want answers on. When you see the guy's name in the phone, that's when you go, "Oh, lol, thought you guys hadn't talked in ages. Started back up again, huh?" Then you watch her response.

You can't really do it days/weeks later. Just looks weak. Why didn't you say anything when you saw it? Have you really been sitting there feeling insecure for weeks now? Uncool...

Anyway:

  1. Girls will keep nice guy orbiters around when they're not 100% sure you're 100% committed and not going anywhere.

  2. Fearful girls will try to cover that up if they know/suspect you are not going to like it.

Only two ways to avoid it are either to give her total commitment, or date a confident, non-fearful girl who will tell you the truth.

Chase
Thanks for the advice Chase.

I have an update and some clarification.

I did tell her I saw his name straight after. Though, the order of my questions wasnt ideal as by that time she had already lied so she continued by saying it must have been a grp chat.

Anyhow, things turn a little bit more sinister. She hid another, unrelated thing from me which I caught on and used that as an excuse to push her to show me that it was the group chat.

Ofc it wasn't in the group chat, and she had even changed his name to his surname (as if I wouldnt recognise his profile pic given that ive met him lol)


But worse thing is she continued to entertain him when she told me she would stop talking to other guys and focus on me. We were not yet exclusive, but she herself said she was no longer going to see other guys.

Based on his msgs, they didnt have sex (he sent a long ass paragraph after the 2-3 times they met up using astrology and some weird shit to why they should have sex the next time - im tempted to private dm him this site 😂) but they did kiss when she had told me she wouldnt even be dating anyone else.

My question is how much was I to blame for the situation?

The timeline is as follows

- She asks for more
- I tell her I need more time
- She goes to a grp event, meets this guy, and they had a vibe within the grp so they started chatting. She told me about it openly at the time
- She wanted to do more relationshipy dates with me and said she wouldnt date anyone else and would wait for me to make a decision
- she herself invites the other guy and they kiss. Based on how detailed his msgs were on wanting to come up to her apartment, I dont think they did more. Esp since I went to hers on a booty call later that night.

-He invites her to cook her dinner, she tells me about it at the time (without telling me they had met up just the 2 of them and kissed). I tell her to cancel it and she does, and she showed me the text exchange without me asking.

- we go on a trip together and I tell her that Im ready and we can be exclusive

- she stops responding to him, and he saw us together randomly once so he stops texting her

- 2.5 mths later, is the now with the lying that he had. The msg he sent was innocent and so was her replies, it didnt need to be hidden - it was just about some gossip within the grp they are in.

- the other day, she tells me that a guy she had dated for a few weeks before we even met had told her he is coming back to our city soon. She had told me about him, and he had msged her a few times before, she showed me each time on her own and never responded.

- This time, she again opened the chat infront of me because she got a notification of a reaction. He responded to her story, but it was her that asked him when he was coming back. It was dry, not flirty, but the lie was too much for me so I asked her to show me the chat with the other guy, found out about those lies and told her she's been silly to 1) be so bad at lying, 2) lose my trust over stupid things that she could have admitted and I may have been upset but would have gotten over super quickly.

I went on a walk after and said that if she wants to continue dating, I want a one sided open relationship for a while. She was not happy but agreed. That was the only thing I could think of that would maybe make it worth continuing to date her given that im gonna look like an idiot for not leaving after she broke my boundary.

Maybe I didnt handle the whole situation well, but I had made it super clear to her before we became exclusive that I dont entertain any lies and that I rather be hurt than lied to. She was very open about everything, even a bit more than I would have expected which was a big green flag for me.

What do people think? Too strict? Not enough? I caused the situation?

Her response since then has been good - remorseful, not once did she get defensive or angry or try to turn it on me. She also blocked the 2 guys.
 

Chase

Chieftan
Staff member
tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
6,348
@orkie123,

Seems like making a mountain out of a molehill to me.

Women keep backup options. That is just female nature. They all do it.

The less stable the relationship, the more aggressively they pursue their backup options.

Just because you switch to stable does not mean the girl is instantly assured of stability. It usually takes time.

This girl asked you to be exclusive, and you told her you would not give her that. She said she wouldn't date anyone else, then ended up kissing a dude, while you were still telling her it was a non-exclusive relationship.

You can do one-sided monogamy, but it needs to be framed correctly. You did not frame this as one-sided monogamy, and it doesn't seem like you stressed to her in any way that you had an expectation of her being exclusive to you while you were "still needing more time" with her.

So yeah, I mean, she said "I won't date anyone" but what does she owe you at that point? You're just some dude she's banging, non-exclusively. Were there rules for "total transparency about our dating lives / inviolable laws of truth-telling"? People lie. Women lie. Especially about things where you have not stressed to them that you want them to do a certain thing or that total transparency on whatever it is is essential.

Keep in mind: most guys who don't want to go exclusive with a girl (e.g., FWBs) don't care what she's doing with other guys... when you tell her "I need more time" the message she gets from you is "I don't really care what you do. I don't want you enough to want a sexual monopoly over you." For her, this is VERY FAR from a sure thing, so she had better cultivate other options before she finds herself out in the cold because you ended up meeting some other girl you liked better than her.

Gotta say, I feel a bit bad for this girl.

I get the impression you don't really know what you want with her.

I strongly suggest figuring out end goals for your relationships from the get-go. They will help you avoid situations like this.

Like with this girl, the end goal should've been either:

  • "I don't want exclusivity, so I don't care who she's dating or banging."

  • "I want one-sided monogamy, so I'm going to make that clear to her and make sure she understand the rules."

  • "I want her as my committed girlfriend, so as soon as she's ready for that I'll give her the green light to move into that."

Women require leadership from men.

In the absence of that, they flail around and pursue their other options, searching for a man who WILL lead.

Always ask yourself, "Am I leading this girl clearly and setting unmistakable conditions for her, or am I leaving her adrift to forge her own path?"

If it's the latter, you cannot blame her for doing so.

Chase
 

Kaida

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Jul 6, 2020
Messages
648
You can do one-sided monogamy, but it needs to be framed correctly. You did not frame this as one-sided monogamy, and it doesn't seem like you stressed to her in any way that you had an expectation of her being exclusive to you while you were "still needing more time" with her.

How would you frame this then in order to get her to accept one sided-monogamy? (and eventually turn it into normal monogamy if she behaves good. I like that relationship path)
 

Chase

Chieftan
Staff member
tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
6,348
How would you frame this then in order to get her to accept one sided-monogamy? (and eventually turn it into normal monogamy if she behaves good. I like that relationship path)

It is a fun question!

But not one I generally teach. And especially not publicly.

This is just one of those techs it is too easy for guys to do damage with... and guys who get it typically use it like kids in candy stores.

-C
 

orkie123

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Feb 21, 2023
Messages
222
@orkie123,

Seems like making a mountain out of a molehill to me.

Women keep backup options. That is just female nature. They all do it.

The less stable the relationship, the more aggressively they pursue their backup options.

Just because you switch to stable does not mean the girl is instantly assured of stability. It usually takes time.

This girl asked you to be exclusive, and you told her you would not give her that. She said she wouldn't date anyone else, then ended up kissing a dude, while you were still telling her it was a non-exclusive relationship.

You can do one-sided monogamy, but it needs to be framed correctly. You did not frame this as one-sided monogamy, and it doesn't seem like you stressed to her in any way that you had an expectation of her being exclusive to you while you were "still needing more time" with her.

So yeah, I mean, she said "I won't date anyone" but what does she owe you at that point? You're just some dude she's banging, non-exclusively. Were there rules for "total transparency about our dating lives / inviolable laws of truth-telling"? People lie. Women lie. Especially about things where you have not stressed to them that you want them to do a certain thing or that total transparency on whatever it is is essential.

Keep in mind: most guys who don't want to go exclusive with a girl (e.g., FWBs) don't care what she's doing with other guys... when you tell her "I need more time" the message she gets from you is "I don't really care what you do. I don't want you enough to want a sexual monopoly over you." For her, this is VERY FAR from a sure thing, so she had better cultivate other options before she finds herself out in the cold because you ended up meeting some other girl you liked better than her.

Gotta say, I feel a bit bad for this girl.

I get the impression you don't really know what you want with her.

I strongly suggest figuring out end goals for your relationships from the get-go. They will help you avoid situations like this.

Like with this girl, the end goal should've been either:

  • "I don't want exclusivity, so I don't care who she's dating or banging."

  • "I want one-sided monogamy, so I'm going to make that clear to her and make sure she understand the rules."

  • "I want her as my committed girlfriend, so as soon as she's ready for that I'll give her the green light to move into that."

Women require leadership from men.

In the absence of that, they flail around and pursue their other options, searching for a man who WILL lead.

Always ask yourself, "Am I leading this girl clearly and setting unmistakable conditions for her, or am I leaving her adrift to forge her own path?"

If it's the latter, you cannot blame her for doing so.

Chase
Hey Chase, appreciate your views on this.

A few things I forgot to add - when she told me about the guy initially, the reason she told me she wasn't going to do anything with anyone else was because I told her that:

She is free to do whatever she wants, but if she does want our thing to have a chance to develop into an exclusive relationship, then I want a 1 sided monogamy until around the time of our trip. I explained to her that the reason I want this is because I want to choose to be in a relationship with her rather than her giving me an ultimatum.

I had also told her explicitly that lying for me is worse than the action for most if not all things. If she had told me about the thing, I wouldnt have cared. But if Im going to have kids (and I only get in relationship if I feel it can lead to that), then I want someone who as best as possible shows their trustworthiness.

Before she mentioned wanting a relationship, she was openly telling me she went on a few dates with some guys and I even encouraged it. It was only when she started saying that she wants a relationship did I change my stance.

Normally, I would lead a girl to the relationship type I want. There were reasons why I thought this girl wouldnt want one herself, but they are too specitic for me to share. Either way, I do appreciate that I should take some responsibility in what happened and that I still should have led better.

We are still together and things are going good. Im not sure the best way out of the 1 sided monogamy that she now accepts but clearly doesnt like. I dont even have time to make use of it but feel like that if I tell her I no longer need it, it will break my frame
 

Chase

Chieftan
Staff member
tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
6,348
I told her that:

She is free to do whatever she wants, but if she does want our thing to have a chance to develop into an exclusive relationship, then I want a 1 sided monogamy until around the time of our trip. I explained to her that the reason I want this is because I want to choose to be in a relationship with her rather than her giving me an ultimatum.

Hmm, okay. That is a bit of unusual framing for OSM, where it is "I may give you exclusivity later, but first we're doing OSM."

Feels a bit manipulative? Sort of like dangling the carrot of "you might get what you want, but first you have to agree to this thing you may not want."

Be careful with that. Could very easily lead to some resentment.

Normally, I would lead a girl to the relationship type I want. There were reasons why I thought this girl wouldnt want one herself, but they are too specitic for me to share. Either way, I do appreciate that I should take some responsibility in what happened and that I still should have led better.

Interesting. All right, well sounds like a unique case then.

We are still together and things are going good. Im not sure the best way out of the 1 sided monogamy that she now accepts but clearly doesnt like. I dont even have time to make use of it but feel like that if I tell her I no longer need it, it will break my frame

You don't need to officially "end" it.

Just treat her like a fully monogamous girlfriend.

At some point she will either assume you are monogamous to her, or if she is the neurotic or conscientious type, she will ask or probe: "You're not still dating other girls, are you?" etc.

At which point you can just casually tell her, "Nah, I quit that months/years ago. I'm all yours, baby. So long as you treat me right 😉"

Chase
 

orkie123

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Feb 21, 2023
Messages
222
Hmm, okay. That is a bit of unusual framing for OSM, where it is "I may give you exclusivity later, but first we're doing OSM."

Feels a bit manipulative? Sort of like dangling the carrot of "you might get what you want, but first you have to agree to this thing you may not want."

Be careful with that. Could very easily lead to some resentment.



Interesting. All right, well sounds like a unique case then.



You don't need to officially "end" it.

Just treat her like a fully monogamous girlfriend.

At some point she will either assume you are monogamous to her, or if she is the neurotic or conscientious type, she will ask or probe: "You're not still dating other girls, are you?" etc.

At which point you can just casually tell her, "Nah, I quit that months/years ago. I'm all yours, baby. So long as you treat me right 😉"

Chase
Thanks will do that.

She's now pushing the idea of a FFM threesome as well, probably won't happen as I think she is only saying it as some female strategy but hey ho whatever happens happens
 
Top