I need to toss this situation around to get some feedback.....

I have been a member of Bella for over a year now, mostly posting on the relationships-married with no children threads. Some of you may remember that my husband divorced me because I did not want to have children. I was married for 16 years and with him for a total of 19 years. Anyway, I was divorced last spring, and at the time I met a very nice man quite unexpectantly. I had intended to move across the country to be with my family, but I fell in love with my boyfriend. I am almost 44 and he is 48. Maybe it was a rebound love, and I know I was craving attention after all the pain I was in, but I tried like heck to keep my eyes open and look for red flags. My boyfriend was consistently sweet and a perfect gentleman, and I was very drawn to him. There is nothing terrible I can say about him, but.....

This one issue has been bugging me for some time. My boyfriend claims he is not "in love" with me but loves me for the good person that I am. I do live with him now and for the most part I am happy sharing my life with him. Because of serious health issues he has had all of his life, I don't think he wants to be in love with anyone (he admitted he wasn't in love with his ex-wife that he was with for 13 yrs). Either that, or he was so hurt over a relationship that broke up in college that he does not want to love like that again. Who knows....

He was divorced for 5 years before meeting me, and having a healthy sexual appetite he went to online dating sites of all kinds and looked for partners to be intimate with and maybe have a relationship with. Some of these women went away after first dates, and some of them are still in his life. A few of them were never intimate with him but he has stayed in touch with them anyway. More than 4 of them did go to bed with him. He says they were his "friends with benefits". Some have moved on with other relationships but still keep in touch with my boyfriend, and some of them he stopped going to bed with long before he met me but he still remains friends with them. And there are a couple of women he went to bed with just before he and I became serious, and of course he still talks with them too. He says he is their "Dr. Phil" and they chat about life in general.

I find it highly inappropriate, as do some other women I have confided in about this, for him to keep in touch with these women now that he is in a committed relationship with me. Some of them he still wants to meet for lunch or coffee to chat, and he sends birthday cards to some of them too.

My boyfriend knows I don't like him talking on the phone, emailing, or live online chatting with these women, let alone him wanting to meet up with these women on occasion in person. He says my feelings are based on a lack of trust, and I tell him it is a matter of respect.

Another thing......he has no problem with going to local online chatrooms and jumping into a private chat with another woman who asks him to, a stranger looking for conversation or whatever. He says it is titillating. I caught him recently doing it and I got very upset with him so he stopped the conversation he was involved in, but I can't micro-manage the man and see all that he is doing online.

I told him that conversations like that, if continued, could lead to more arousing feelings to the point of wanting to meet with one of these unknown women. I don't think that is healthy for our relationship, if he indeed values it. I find it to be very inappropriate behavior.

I buried my head in the sand with my ex-husband, giving him freedom to do whatever he wanted to as a good wife, allowing him to be an individual with his own interests. I trusted him. That in part bit me right in the rump and was a part of what ended my marriage. All I know is that I don't want to go through this again with another man, where I don't feel confident with my relationship and I am always on edge and miserable. I thought about leaving my boyfriend several times very recently, but we seem to talk things out and he reassures me that he is not doing anything wrong.

All I know is that I just don't like it. It does not make me feel good, and if I knew that he was indeed "in love" with me then maybe him being in contact with past lovers, who he calls just "friends" now, would not be a big deal to me. But I don't have that reassurance.

Other than this issue of him needing to be there for his female friends, and needing online time with strange people, he is basically a wonderful person. Very giving, attentive, kind, funny, and a very caring intimate partner. I really love this man and I would really miss him terribly if I left him, but I don't want to be used as a doormat either. It seems that nothing I say will make him change his behavior. He can't just drop his "friends" because I say so.

What do you think?

Cassie, your boyfriend seems to be very honest with you. You say he has told you he is not "in love" with you. He apparently loves being with you and enjoys your relationship. However, my opinion is that because he refuses to give up these "friends" that are previous lovers shows that he wants to keep all these women close in case he needs to change relationships. This sounds harsh, but that is the way I see it.

You both want different things in life. He is happy the way things are (no serious commitment) and you want someone who will commit to a monogamous relationship with you. It is not easy to leave someone you really enjoy being with, but are you willing to spend time with this man when you could be looking for the one who will give you what you need in life? Would you be willing to become just another one of your current boyfriend's "friends", waiting for him to have fun with? It seems like the women he keeps as friends may be very willing to take up where they left off if he suggests it.

If it were me, I would wish him well, kiss him on the cheek, pack my bags and find my life elsewhere and not promise to remain "his friend". Stand strong in your own beliefs and moral standards.

Phyllis, thank you so much for responding. I have always found your posts to be very wise and sensible. I feel that I need to give a little more info about my boyfriend and myself.

As for him, he has basically always lived alone except when he was married. He always liked it that way. The fact that he is living with me is showing me that he has made a commitment to me and is willing to give our relationship a try. He is an only child living in an in-law apartment attached to his elderly parents' house. The apartment was built 3 yrs ago and nobody else has lived here with him. He is very close with his parents and almost always caters to his mother's wishes. She is sweet with old fashioned values. My boyfriend was very nervous for me to meet his parents, especially his mother who was not crazy about a strange woman possibly moving into "her" house. She was used to just walking into his apartment whenever she wanted to and it would now be awkward. Luckily his mother and I get along quite well, and we developed a nice relationship last fall when my boyfriend had a heart attack and was hospitalized for 6 1/2 weeks. Very often I would drive her to the hospital and we spent a lot of time together.

Back to the point, my boyfriend would not have just any one of his female friends live with him. He said there is something about each of these women that was not quite right for a long term relationship. He just could not make a deeper connection with them beyond friendship, and the sex was just a mutual agreement when it was convenient. His attitude about sex is very casual, that it is more about mutual pleasure and not necessarily because you love someone. He told me he has never told these woman things he has confided in me, and he never talked to them tenderly the way he does with me. There was not that connection with these other women that he feels with me as a girlfriend, and his ultimate goal was to find that ideal person that he feels comfortable with and who shares some common interests.

I have been to counseling to help deal with my failed marriage and other things, and my counselor suggests that perhaps my boyfiend does not allow himself to commit his entire heart because his health has been poor for most of his life and he has no idea how long he will live. When he was a child he had cancer. There is a lot of damage from the radiation that affects him now. Taking life easy and light has become my boyfriend's way of life, the way he deals with his body that won't always cooperate with him the way he'd like, and he does not feel healthy a lot of the time.

I know he loves me but he cannot force feelings that are not there. He is tender, sweet, and respectful, and that is something I cherish in a man. I have had to accept that he is loving me in the manner that he is able to, and I believe that love at any level is a beautiful thing.

He has a very loving extended family, many friends who love him, and he in return is kind and giving to everyone he comes in contact with. He is a man of great faith in God and it is his nature to care for people in general. "Love one another" is his motto. I almost never hear him utter an unkind word about anyone.

For me to walk away would be very painful. I really do love him deeply. I am still hurting over my marriage breaking up last year, and I do think that if it was not for my boyfriend I would be in a worse state of mind than I am now. He cannot be a replacement for what I have lost, but his gentle way is hard for me to resist, and I do know there is a lot of genuine caring on his part for me. On the surface it does seem like these other women are lying in the wings just in case, but I am not really sure that that is the truth of it.

I feel in my heart that this is the last man I want to be serious with for a very long time if ever again. I was married twice and now this relationship of course is serious for me. I love with my entire heart and at this time there is less of me to give than I gave my marriage. I am burned out emotionally and I can't go through another cycle of finding someone, falling in love, only to be subject to heartbreak again. I just can't. If my relationship with my boyfriend eventually ends I will accept it, but I am not going to be on the lookout for another man. I can't do it anymore. I think I'd rather be alone with my animals who love me unconditionally. My heart just can't handle any more devestation.

It sounds like I have defended my boyfriend in a way, but I am just stating it like I see it. Maybe I am just jealous like he says. I can't help it if I am, considering that I was replaced by another woman in my last relationship. I really don't think I will ever meet a man who will dote on me and cherish me the way I have always dreamed it should be. I think men like that are very few and far between. My "once in a lifetime" has already come and gone, after changing a lot of who he was that I fell in love with. Now in this new relationship I have to accept my boyfriend for who he is or move on.

What I am not defending at all is his online chatting with strange women. I am still having discussions with him about that. He knows that I don't like it and now I don't know if he will continue to do it even if I ask him not to. This is a trust issue, and I need some sort of reassurance that he will indeed stop that behavior. Without trust I don't have a relationship.

I will keep you posted.

Hello Cassie67,

You have been lucky enough to have really loved and lost. Lucky? Yes! Some people never ever find what you have had. But now it is time to be true to yourself.

You are much much stronger than you think and anyway I believe you have answered your own question.

That is what is so nice about Bellaonline - you need (one needs) to articulate your thoughts and feelings and beliefs and values well enough so that others understand what it is you want to say AND that you have done so very well.

It is for this reason that I say you may well have answered your own question. The man you love may be a very very nice person and the relationship for the most part that you have is a very good one. BUT. And it is this but that does not ring true with your own value system.

I had a very wise counsellor once who used to make me write down my thoughts (much like you have done now on this site) Only this was a long long time ago before the Internet and blogging were concepts much less words. She then made me put them away for a period of time. When I asked how long she would say as long as it takes. It didn't really make sense then but now it does. It took me around a month or so not to read what I had written. But tht did not mean I stopped thinking and feeling and all.

But then what I had to do was highlight or underline a life value in that writing. And not just any old life value that we are taught about (like loyalty, sincerity, tolerance) but a life value that was/is mine, one that I really felt as part of my being (like not being able to do without it ... heart liver kidneys values) In other words a life value that made me ... me.

I did this and started to smile. The most important thing I wanted was to be true to me, 'cos then I could be true to myself and my life and my friends and family and colleagues and workmates and, well the list just goes on.


What follows below is a selection of words and phrases taken from your introductory post. You wrote them about you. What do they say? To whom are they being true? Whose values are they portraying?

... There is nothing terrible I can say about him, but
... This one issue has been bugging me for some time
... My boyfriend claims he is not "in love" with me
... He says they were his "friends with benefits".
... I find it highly inappropriate ... for him to keep in touch with these women now that he is in a committed (?) relationship with me.
... My boyfriend knows I don't like him talking on the phone, emailing, or live online chatting with these women, let alone him wanting to meet up with these women on occasion in person.
... He says my feelings are based on a lack of trust,
... and I tell him it is a matter of respect.
... Another thing - he has no problem with going to local online chatrooms and jumping into a private chat with another woman who asks him to, a stranger looking for conversation or whatever. He says it is titillating.
... I caught him recently doing it and I got very upset with him so he stopped the conversation he was involved in,
... but I can't micro-manage the man and see all that he is doing online.
... wanting to meet with one of these unknown women.
... I don't think that is healthy for our relationship, if he indeed values it.
... I find it to be very inappropriate behavior.
... I buried my head in the sand with my ex-husband,
... All I know is that I don't want to go through this again with another man,
... where I don't feel confident with my relationship and I am always on edge and miserable.
... I thought about leaving my boyfriend several times very recently, but we seem to talk things out and
... he reassures me that he is not doing anything wrong. (?!)
... All I know is that I just don't like it
... It does not make me feel good,
... and if I knew that he was indeed "in love" with me then maybe him being in contact with past lovers, who he calls just "friends" now, would not be a big deal to me.
... But I don't have that reassurance.
... I really love this man and I would really miss him terribly if I left him,
... but I don't want to be used as a doormat either
... It seems that nothing I say will make him change his behavior.

What do you think?

I have an opinion that you will not want to read.

I think this man is a manipulator and I think you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, one of emotional blackmail and just as bad as a physically abusive one (especially the bit when you discuss it all and come to some sort of reassurance and you stay!) ... and I think you are being used, he will not change, he is living his values, fine, allow him to do so with someone else and I believe you should move on.

I wish you lots of love and luck with your decisions and exhort you to be true to yourself.

Best and warm regards

Hi Cassie - thank you for the compliment about my posts. That is very sweet of you.

I understand a bit more now about your relationship. It seems it is his inability to let go of a habit he has formed, which to him is not a negative thing and should not affect your relationship -- yet it does affect the relationship when seen from your own point of view.

The answer to your pondering is in your own heart. Stay or leave? Is he worth suffering the frustrations of a habit that may or may not diminish over time? Somewhere within you, you already know the answer and enlightenment will come to you when you are ready for it.

I wish you well and hope your life is always joyful and loving.

It seems that I have painted a picture of an ogre as my boyfriend, as is evident by the posts here. It is very hard to paint an accurate picture of someone by mere words, and often words can be taken more seriously than intended, or less seriously. With my second post I wanted to stress that the positive behavior of my boyfriend far outweighs the negative, but I failed to do that.

I am not blind to his faults or fooling myself with anything. I knew of his casual relationships with other women from day one, when I thought that all we would ever be was friends. My plan was to move out of state and he knew that. I was not manipulated or pressured into anything, and I don't feel that way now in our relationship. We have always been honest with each other, whether good or bad.

In spite of the picture I have painted of my boyfriend, most of my days with him are very happy. He puts my needs and wants first in a lot of aspects of our relationship. He is not a man of great monetary means, but he shows me all the time that he really cares about me with the little things he does for me every day.

I made it sound like I find him online with women on a daily basis. Not so. It is an infrequent thing and those are the times I get upset with him. As for the women friends he has chosen to keep, I have talked to a few of them myself on the phone when he was sick in the hospital, and I met one of them in person when she came to visit him once during that time. A few of them told me to call them if I needed anything when he was so sick. I truly think these women are just friends and the sexual part of the relationship is over.

I am not defending him, but just clarifying what I think was taken as behavior that occurs more often than it does. I know for a fact that he has not seen any of these women in person for several months except for the one friend who made one visit to him in the hospital when I was there along with his mother. I think where my conflict lies is that I am trying to make conventional rules fit an unconventional person. If I thought he was cheating on me I would be gone in a flash. I have enough self respect and self esteem to not stay with someone who is that selfish and disrespectful.

I have male friends and my boyfriend does not mind me staying in touch with these guys. My boyfriend has other female friends that he has never been intimate with....former schoolmates, former co-workers, wives of guy friends, women met through aquaintances. I don't have a problem with any of these women.

The fact that he went to bed with the other women I mentioned in my posts bothers me, but he has no current emotional relationship with them beyond friendship, and he says he never has. There was no connection there to take those relationships to another level. The sex part was a convenience because both parties wanted the experience and it was by mutual agreement, hence the friends with benefits situation that seems to be more popular these days. He told me before we ever got serious that if he met someone he wanted a romantic relationship with, he would discontinue the sex part of the female friends with benefits relationships he had. I stressed that he would have to do that before I became intimate with him, because I am not casual minded like he is. I am of the old school value system where I want to be intimate only with someone I care about deeply.

If my boyfriend is not in bed with these women because he is committed to me now, do I have a right to ask him to drop these friends he has known for 4 or 5 years, just because they are female and I know he went to bed with them at some point in the past? Is it possible for men to keep friends like this and it never goes any further?

I may be stereotyping here by thinking that these women should be gone from his life......period. Nobody is perfect, and men are men, but if he really is being truthful with me do I have a right to ask him to drop his friends and never speak to them again? I know he would not ask it of me, whether my friends are male or female.

Cassie,

Out of everything you have said, I think this statement actually clarified the issue for me the most. You said:

"I buried my head in the sand with my ex-husband, giving him freedom to do whatever he wanted to as a good wife, allowing him to be an individual with his own interests. I trusted him. That in part bit me right in the rump and was a part of what ended my marriage. All I know is that I don't want to go through this again with another man"

It seems to me that regardless of the specific circumstances, this is the issue- is he trustworthy? Is this relationship trustworthy? And how do you feel it or not when you both have different views on things and do things so differently?

I don't think you have the right to ask him not to speak these women even though it might make you feel a little more secure about the relationship. I say that because, it seems to be a part of who he is naturally, a man who likes relationships with different women for different things. For him to change for you or you for him (based on the others expectation of it) doesn't seem fair to either of you. Nor does he have the right to expect you to redefine what you think is appropriate and right for you in the relationship.

But again it seems to be about trust, how to validate that trust, and what type of commitment is expected (for either of you to fully trust and let go). Perhaps finding respectful, giving and enjoyable companionship is comforting on many levels. Perhaps a 'knowing' if this will work out or not could be comforting on a very deep level.

Trust your gut and voice whatever that is along the way. Keep writing it out like you are doing. This is not a black/white-right/wrong situation. I think you are really learning about yourself more through this... what you expect/need/want out of it. That is great! That right there is beautiful. You are validating the significance of your life- mind, body and emotion.

I do want to go back to one sentence of yours again,

"giving him freedom to do whatever he wanted to as a good wife"

I find that statement and this concern for maybe needing to control something in the new relationship- interesting, a conflictual thing. Just a thought.