Hi Everyone,
Long time lurker! First time poster. I'll get straight to the point. Thanks in advance for reading.
I've been dating this girl, lets call her Kay, for a month and half, it's been serious (exclusive) for about a month. It's my first real relationship in about four years. I was cheated on in my last relationship and it left me with some pretty damaging trust issues.
I like Kay because she seems so kind and trustworthy and overall like a good person. We also have tons of fun together, enjoy good sex life, and work as a team real well. Overall solid relationship so far.
Here's the story:
So Kay has this friend, lets call him Paul. They've been friends for about two years, really good friends for about a year. Paul has been going through tough times, what sounds like pretty severe depression. Kay has been really trying to help Paul out, letting him know that someone cares, asking him how he's doing, trying to get him to open up, getting him to come out to events, etc. You know, normal friends stuff. I can see Kay cares a lot about Paul's well being, and after seeing some of the stuff that Paul texts her, I can also see that Paul needs it (no friends, tough childhood, got dealt kind of a bad hand in life it seems like). I like that Kay is a caring person overall, always going above and beyond to help her friends (both male and female if that matters).
So Paul invites Kay to his parent's house for thanksgiving. Kay asks me if that's okay and I'm like "Yeah cool! It sounds like Paul's breaking down some walls, go ahead", I'm glad he's making some positive steps in his life and that she gets to be a part of it.
A couple weeks later, her and Paul are talking and she casually reveals that she's dating someone. Paul abruptly ends the friendship, citing that their closeness is "emotional cheating" and that they can't be close like that. It's a whole thing . She shows me his texts and I think "Okay, that seems like an overreaction. It seems like Paul has some warped assumptions about how male-female friendships work, but y'know you can't change the way he sees the world." It sucks for Kay since their such good friends, but she gets over it with time. Obviously, she's not going to his house anymore for thanksgiving.
Here is where things get tough:
Some nights ago, we're talking about past relationships. I ask Kay about past crushes, she revealed to me that during the summer she had a crush (which is a big deal, since she really doesn't develop feelings for people very often) on Paul. Furthermore, that she and him hooked up a few times over the summer.
This hurts and feels like a big betrayal. She knows that I have trust issues. That's why she asked how I felt about it and asked for my permission, but she did this under completely false pretenses about their relationship. Normally, that type of relationship is something she would tell me immediately and be upfront about, but she actively construed it to make it seem like something else. From my perspective at the time, they were close friends. When in reality, he was a past crush and a past partner. She claims she doesn't have feelings for him anymore, but it's hard to believe because she kept their past a secret. Furthermore, she was going to this guy's house for thanksgiving (what the fuck!?). It also makes their falling out make more sense, he thought their relationship was close enough to "emotional cheating" that he felt like he needed to end their friendship/relationship or whatever you want to call it.
I asked her for more information. She liked him, but he ended things early for trivial reasons. She claims that after that, they became closer because they could be 'just friends', and that she gradually lost feelings for him when we started dating, (this makes sense, she was averse to commitment with me near the beginning, which I totally get so we took it slow). He also hit on her a couple times while we were dating, straight up propositioning for sex. She showed me the texts, the first time, she turned him down, claiming she didn't want to get emotionally attached (this was after we decided to be exclusive - no mention of me). The second time, she mentioned that she wouldn't because she was 'semi-dating' the guy (again, after we decided to be exclusive), that second text is what spurred Paul to end the friendship.
ERAnts, I don't know what to do. I feel so distraught over this. I don't think she physically cheated on me (after seeing that she turned him down), but it's definitely a violation of boundaries we set once we started getting serious (we talked about being upfront and honest about these types of things to mitigate my trust issues) - And at multiple points she disregarded our relationship when talking to him. She says that she felt like, based on my trust issues, her relationship with me and her friendship with him are incompatible, and she wanted to have both so she hid their past from me. That's also why she hid the fact that we were dating from him because she knew it would effect the friendship too.
What do? I understand why she did everything she did. She fucked up big time but I think it's something I can forgive. However, I'm not sure I can trust her again, or if I can, how long it will take... Or am I just overreacting to this whole thing!?
