Would you be cool with your partner still meeting up with a married person they had an affair with, or would you think this is crossing a line?
This 30-year-old man really wants you to know that he’s normally not a jealous kind of person, especially when it comes to his relationships.
It truly doesn’t upset him if his girlfriend has male companions or is still friendly with her exes. He thinks it’s positive, actually, as it means her breakups have been on good terms. It also wouldn’t upset him if his girlfriend grabbed dinner or a drink with an ex.
He does currently have a 35-year-old girlfriend, whom he’s been dating for the last seven months, but they did not know one another prior to their first date, so she’s relatively new to him still.
His girlfriend was engaged before she met him, but she called off her wedding 10 months before they met one another. It turns out his girlfriend had an affair with a 60-year-old married man, and that’s why she broke up with her fiancé.
Five months before he began dating his girlfriend, her fling ended with the married man, who did not end up leaving his wife, by the way.
His girlfriend’s affair partner no longer lives in the same city that they do, but he does travel there for work on occasion, and his girlfriend meets up with him for lunch and coffee.
His girlfriend has always been upfront with him about how she is in contact with her affair partner and had informed him before she met up with him.
A week ago, his girlfriend met her affair partner for dinner at 8 o’clock in the evening, and she told him about it before heading out.
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He figured his girlfriend wouldn’t be out past 11 p.m. at the latest, but that wasn’t something they talked about (they do not live together, in case you were wondering).
At midnight, his girlfriend texted him to say she was still out with her affair partner, but that everything was fine. At 1:30 in the morning, she called him in her cab ride home, and she had clearly had a ton to drink.
The following morning, she called him and revealed that she and her affair partner had six Negronis each and then split a bottle of wine.
“I also discovered that the man was her former boss…which makes me even more uncomfortable. Because it means there was an even more specific and involved dynamic between them; they traveled for work together; he is still a person who can provide her with opportunities in the future, or connections,” he explained.
“And, TBH, I felt really weird about it. And I feel uncomfortable with my own discomfort because this is not who I want to be in a relationship dynamic.”
He does not think that his girlfriend having dinner with her affair partner is normal, since their previous connection was built on lies and secrecy.
It wasn’t the dinner itself that bothered him; it was the amount of alcohol his girlfriend and her affair partner consumed, coupled with the hours on end that they spent together.
He questioned his girlfriend about what time she left the restaurant, and she claimed it was until she climbed into her cab. But he checked with the restaurant and determined that they close at midnight, meaning his girlfriend was somewhere else for an hour and a half.
He pointed this out to his girlfriend, who wasted no time being defensive. She argued the bar was open later than 12 for them and said she couldn’t remember a lot because of how many drinks she had.
But then, she said, she changed her story to say that she and her affair partner left the restaurant to find a subway station before sitting down on a bench to talk while she called for a cab.
“While I am not even saying that is implausible, I don’t know why she wouldn’t have said that from the off. I don’t really think anything happened, but the whole dynamic and vibe sit really weird with me, and it feels like it is crossing a line,” he added.
He did express how hurt he felt to his girlfriend before asking for a couple of days to consider everything. It’s been two days since then, and his girlfriend did say sorry at first, but now she’s saying he’s making her suffer when she wasn’t in the wrong.
Later on, his girlfriend sent him a list of everything he’s done so far to make her feel like she’s not important to him. Some of the highlights include how his wife’s friend is friends with his ex, and how he didn’t refer to his girlfriend by that label for the first six months of their relationship (they were exclusive, he just didn’t use the term).
His girlfriend concluded her message by saying she deserves more than him and his disrespect. He’s worried that she’s trying to twist things around because she was inappropriate with her affair partner at dinner.
“Am I being overreactive? Am I unreasonable? Am I fooling myself into thinking I am more tolerant and understanding than I am, or am I being controlling?” he wondered.
“Or…are my instincts telling me to run a mile and that this person is either a) emotionally immature, b) emotionally manipulative, c) a narcissist, or d) self-occupied and with a victim-complex, correct?”
“I will be honest and say what started as pretty acute discomfort and anger earlier this week has been propelled, by her response to my emotions, to a point where I am 80% of the way towards saying this just isn’t going to work for me if this is how conflict is handled.”
Let’s call this what it actually is here: his girlfriend went on a literal date with the man she had an affair with, and that’s unacceptable. I wonder if they slept together in that hour and a half that was unaccounted for, and which she lied about.
She’s absolutely trying to distort the truth and make him feel bad when she was in the wrong, not him. He should just dump her, and then he won’t have to worry about what’s going on with her and her affair partner.
He also needs to stop being so chill, because as soon as this girl told him she still meets up with the married man she had an affair with, he should have run for the hills.
What advice do you have for him?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
