Me (31M) and my girlfriend (27F) have been dating for around 4 months and it’s been going well – however my girlfriend has some major trauma from her past relationship where her ex was extremely emotionally abusive and ended up cheating on her. As such she has a lot of insecurities about friends of the opposite gender.
I have one close female friend who I’ve known for 15 years. I met this friend back in high school, and we’ve remained friends even though we now live in separate countries. My girlfriend really doesn’t like this friendship – she treated it as suspicious almost immediately, however this escalated when she heard part of a voice note my friend left me on my birthday, which essentially just boiled down to “happy birthday, missing you and thinking of you”. I stopped playing part way through when she was around however, as I wanted to listen to it later and this really set my gf off as she felt I might be worried that the content was inappropriate/I was hiding something.
This escalated her into point blank asking me to end the friendship. I told her frankly that I wasn’t going to end a 15 year friendship unless me and my friend were genuinely doing something wrong. I also ended up not only playing the voice message in full to her, but also showed her all of my messages with said friend over the last two years. She still felt that she didn’t like the “tone” of the message, and that I was protecting her/giving her special treatment compared to my male friends. When I asked her to elaborate, she wasn’t able to actually justify these assertions other than it being a “gut feeling”.
I did however feel bad for her knowing what she’d been through, and that her feelings were still painful regardless of whether they were based on anything real or not, so I initially agreed to let her continuously check my messages with her, and to gradually distance myself from my friend.
However, after a few weeks reflecting on it, I felt like doing this a) wasn’t actually helping her with ultimately overcoming her trauma and insecurities and b) was creating an unhealthy dynamic between us. I also couldn’t bring myself to end a friendship that genuinely meant a lot to me, especially given that I don’t make friends easily.
I eventually raised this and after a squabble where she was initially super defensive and upset, she begrudgingly accepted my position, given that I promised I’d be as transparent as possible about my interactions with the friend so long as they don’t cross any boundaries relating to my privacy.
Recently however, I’ve been noticing that she’s pretty inconsistent with regard to her own interactions with male friends. She maintains that she doesn’t have any close male friends any more, because despite having very close male friendships in uni, these friends are now married and they don’t talk as often.
More concerningly however, during our last discussion surrounding my friend she asked me if me and my friend ever had feelings at any point for each other, which I told her wasn’t the case. When I asked her if this was true for any of her friendships, she mentioned that some of these friends told her that they used to be attracted to her. When I told her I found this concerning she kinda brushed this off, saying that it wasn’t a problem as they’re married now. I didn’t push it any further, but on reflection I don’t even know who these friends are or what the dynamic of her friendship is with these people are currently.
I also personally struggle to imagine in what context someone would admit to the other person that they used to like them without at best having poor boundaries and at worst trying to see if they might still have a shot.
She also has a friend she sees regularly, often to get food – usually I’ll only find out about these meet-ups last minute or after the fact. I’m a bit confused as to how she doesn’t consider this friendship “close”. What’s more, I’ve noticed she always talks about this friend with her other friends, however she basically never brings him up around me. This friend is gay and has a boyfriend, so I’m not concerned about any funny business on his part, but the lack of mutual transparency really bothers me.
Am I being just being jealous/insecure myself, or is there a major double standard going on here? I can’t imagine my gf ever being ok with me being friends with a girl who used to have feelings for me, regardless of the nature of the friendship now, or going out for dinner with a female friend and only telling her after the fact. To be clear, it’s not her having male friends that bothers me, rather it’s the inconsistent standards and expectations that seem to be applied to both of us.
I’d appreciate a sanity check and any advice as to how to handle this – also aside from this issue things with her are great so I really want to make things work!
EDIT 1: Thanks for the replies so far – just to clarify again that I’m really not worried about her male friends, rather I’m bothered by the double standard that seems to be applied to me when I feel that she would take issue with the dynamics of her own friendships if the roles were reversed.
EDIT 2: I have suggested therapy, and she said she’d consider it but I’ve seen no follow up on it. I don’t feel like I can force her to go unless she actually wants it. The problem is that she see’s her actions as a rational response to her past experiences and dealing with potential threats – it’s hard to get across how much this ends up affecting me.
There’s no way I’d give up a 15 year friendship over a 4 month relationship.
Exactly this, and gender is irrelevant.
Deep, long-lasting friendship might have phases of feelings that come and go.
(I’m bi, so I don’t have a sharp natural distinction between the Possible Romance Gender and the Platonic Only Gender, so take that into account.)
But to me a mature friendship (15+ years WOW), regardless of gender, is a precious treasure in its own right that should never be discarded just because a relatively recent partner insists on it. To me, that is a control/isolation tactic and a big red flag to me.
It is a double standard but also her past trauma is influencing her suspicions. I would absolutely make therapy, couples and/or for her, a necessary part of moving the relationship forward.
For context on trauma, my fiancee lied to me for 3.5 years about a male friend of hers, someone she repeatedly referred to as her best friend and like a brother. She always claimed they met on bumble BFF, and were nothing but friends. Even over the course of our relationship where I admittedly grew more suspicious of their background/history she started to claim that I was being too controlling, and that we should do couples therapy to help me overcome my unwarranted jealousy.
Well long story short I did eventually discover proof that they had a months long sexual relationship before we met and everything she ever said to me about their history was a lie, and everything she accused me of was just manipulation to allow her to continue their current friendship unabated. Cue the meltdown, the broken trust, the therapy and so forth.
I’m not saying that’s you situation with your friend, but if your gf has gone through something like I have you can imagine the emotions she must be going through. That being said it’s on her to deal with.
I’m fortunate enough to have never been cheated on so I can only imagine how much damage something like that would do to someone’s ability to trust. I’m trying really hard to be as supportive as I can, but ending my friendship is a step too far unless boundaries are genuinely being crossed in that friendship.
It doesn’t help as well that her ex was incredibly manipulative and had a habit of lovebombing and gaslighting the hell out of her – she’s hyper vigilant because of it, but I’m not sure what the best way to deal with her problems is other than therapy and time I guess?
I have definitely been on the gf’s end with past relationship abuse and trauma before. It really does warp reality, but the huge difference is that I know my trust issues are now solely my responsibility to handle. It’s unfair to bring that into the next relationship and make your new partner pay for the ex’s mistakes. It’s a cold harsh truth but she does need to fully accept that she’s bringing former problems into this new relationship. You are a different person from this ex, you have different friendship dynamics, and you have different boundaries. She needs to respect and understand that. Communicate all of this to her. If she refuses to see eye to eye, or does not try to understand and work with you, that is a snippet of how your relationship will work, just keep that in mind.
There’s no magical combination of gender and relationship status that immunizes someone against being involved in infidelity. She could start cheating in an hour, you could cheat tonight – and with anyone that either of you know. It takes a very, very short period of time to find out that someone’s definitely-absolutely-totally gay friend is anything except, and that one’s fifteen-year, rock-solid friendship had some hidden elements.
It comes down to trust – if you trust each other, that’s awesome.
If one of you doesn’t trust the other – it’s over already.
Trust is binary and not conditional; it’s not complicated.
If you aren’t being trusted, what are you trying to preserve?
Because your gf had a lot of past relationship trauma around her bf being friends with a woman (from being cheated on which makes sense) your seeing her discomfort around it and what she is doing to not be put in that situation again regardless of how much sense it makes. Thats because its a trauma response those rarely are fully rational.
It is definitely something that if she is able to she should talk to a therapist about it because it is gotten to a point where it has started to impact your relationship. A professional will be able to help her best deconstruct those fears and trauma responses.
You should not get rid of a 15 year friendship. That will only reinforce her trauma response as the correct course of action which will lead to a lot of resentment and other problems later. It will also make it harder for her to deconstruct.
As for why she is so relaxed about telling you when she goes out with a guy friend I can only speculate, and that is not productive. It sounds like her response to your female best friend has caused you to adopt a similar point of mind with her guy friends.
What you can do is have a conversation with her (this will likely be multiple conversations and a conversation with a few breaks in between) she is going to be getting old wounds triggered so she will not be able to think fully clearly so you will have to keep an eye out for if she goes into fight or flight and give her time and help her to calm down center herself and continue the conversation (grounding techniques, breathing exercises, taking a quick walk) use “I” statements when you talk to her about how you are feeling. It sounds like you will both need to agree on how you interact with friends of the opposite sex and just have one set of rules that you both follow.
That’s *a lot* of head ache for a 4 month relationship.
She might be so insecure about your friend because she is projecting her own shadiness onto you when interacting with her male friends.
Married men cheat too. Her excuse is invalid.
Gay men still sleep with women sometimes. Everyone loves boobs and in college I’ve seen them turn even the gayest gay man straight for a little while.
You’re right to feel the way you do. Have a talk with her that respect and transparency goes both ways or not at all.
I find it interesting that she doesn’t see her male friends now because they’re married.
Don’t let someone weaponize their trauma against you when you aren’t doing anything wrong. Your friend is completely platonic, lives in another country with 0 history between you and her.
Its your gf responsibility to heal her trauma so at least when she has a problem that you 2 can discuss it.
If she hasn’t attempted to heal, then she is giving up opportunities to create trust between with you.
If she continues I think i’d be extremely worried her isolating you unnecessarily in excuse of her not healing. There is going to be a lot more problems down the road if you can’t even talk about the easy cases.
This has all the makings of a toxic relationship. I had a friend once whose girlfriend had past trauma and it made her nervous about every longstanding female friend he had (including me). Unfortunately, he also capitulated and things escalated to the point that he wasn’t allowed to go out to see any friends when there would be a female in attendance – this had a knock on effect because some of his guy friends had girlfriends.
Your girlfriend gets upset at shadows and you start to modify normal behaviours (like reporting all your innocent interactions with your old friend) in order to avoid the stress of dealing with her reactions. So in this way, she can exert control. Yes, it’s pretty normal for guys to take a few steps back from female (and often male) friends when they get into a serious relationship but your friend is far away already – so this is a bit more than that.
Her distrust is now catching and you are starting to question her friendships too – even with a gay guy.
You’re 30, so you’ve most likely had a few relationships before. What did you feel like in those
relationships at 4 months – relaxed or anxious? Happy or worried?
One should get over her issues BEFORE starting a new relationship, not take them out on the next partner who had nothing to do with them.