Am I jealous, or justified?

[EnigmaMan]

I need advice. My gf is in her mid-20s. I’m 30. We have been dating for 6 months.

Is this incident just bad timing and I’m reading way too much into it, or is it a red flag of something bad?

Friday night we watched an early movie at my place and had sex. We were tired and she was about to have a shower and get ready for bed and then suddenly asks if I would mind if she “meets some friends for a drink” at a nearby coffee shop.

She was vague about it. I said I didn’t mind but just found it strange since we were already almost asleep. She said she was sorry and didn’t mean to be ditching me. I was tired from studying all day (have a professional exam coming up) and from the sex but tried to seem interested in going out for a quick beer. She seemed awkward about it (me coming). I assumed at the time it was because I was tired and she didn’t want to drag me out for a drink.

Anyway we get there first and the “friends” that show up are only one guy (a former college classmate of hers who lives in a different city and was in town for the weekend). Apparently he texted her and asked if she wanted to meet for a drink. We hang out and chat and share a couple beers together. I don’t really know if he was hanging out with more friends before he met us at the coffee shop (i.e. I don’t know if she intended to misrepresent him being “friends”).

As we leave I assume we’d walk back down the street to my condo and him to his car, but on her lead she asks where he parked and all three of us walk to where his car is parked. On the way she asks him “Do you have keys to your place?” and he says no (“his place” is his parents house, where he lived while going to college).
So then she says “OK you can sleep on my couch”. She explains this to me semi-privately in more detail as we’re getting in the car and asks if I’m ok with it. I said something to the effect it seems weird he doesn’t have keys to his own place but of course that’s fine with me.

She had left her purse (with her apartment keys) at my place so he parks in my building’s loading zone, her and I go up to my suite and she gets her keys. We both go down and then she starts to say good night to me but I act like I’m getting into the car. She then says “oh, you’re coming?” and I say “yes, of course.”

We arrive at her apartment in 5 minutes (she lives very close to me). We all hang out on the sofa and chat for a few minutes. And then he says something to effect “don’t let me keep you two up if you’re tired”. It was about 12:30am now. I say something to the effect that it’s late and we should go to bed soon. I ask him if he would like a blanket or something for the sofa and he says no he’s fine, which I thought was strange (who likes to sleep without a blanket?)

During the conversation we talk about a downtown farmer’s market that is nearby and we’ve been planning to go for a while now. I suggest her and I should go there tomorrow morning. She agrees and asks if I would like to meet her at about 8-9am tomorrow to go to it. I don’t really respond since to me it seems ridiculous I would leave at this point in the night.

I take off my jacket and hang it on a chair in the kitchen, get a drink of water for each of us, and then say goodnight to the guy and then walk into her bedroom. She then gets him a blanket and gives it to him on the couch, and comes to her room a minute later.

At this point I confront her and say I think she is acting weird and making me feel uncomfortable. She seems genuinely confused and contends there is no issue. I disagree and say, “no, this is weird.”

We then have a soft-spoken and direct conversation in bed about it. Not a loud fight or anything. I tell her the whole thing just seems so ridiculous. I say it was like as soon as this guy wanted to meet for a drink to catch up (they haven’t seen each other in about a year), it was like she just wanted to go without telling me much of anything about it, and then seemed to be trying to get rid of me at the end of the night. I said to me it seemed really ridiculous that she would expect me to leave and walk back to my place almost immediately after the three of us went to hers. There would be no logical reason why I would do that. She responded that she didn’t know if I would feel comfortable staying over in this situation. We talked it through and she basically admitted that it was reasonable for me to feel weird given how vague she was being about the situation and agreed that we should just communicate better to prevent those sorts of feelings from brewing. I basically told her what would be wrong with her saying, “hey a former classmate just texted me and is town tonight. I haven’t seen him for a year and really want to meet for a beer and see how he’s doing. Do you want to come for a quick one? Or do you mind if I go quickly by myself?” And she agreed that would have been much better. My basic take on this whole night is that I felt like I was forced into suspicion or at least asking questions because she was cutting me out of the loop.

I told her I trusted her and don’t think she would ever do something like that (she is rather conservative socially and I can tell that in bed she is a little inexperienced). I think generally speaking she is shy about her personal life and she has told me other friends and colleagues have said she’s quite private about her different groups of friends. In other words, he work friends have no idea who her friends from school are, and vice versa.

Is this just a case of her being shy and private (and maybe uncomfortable having me sleep in her bed with her friend/colleague in the next room, and so wanted me to go, but didn’t want to tell me to go)? Or is this a warning sign that she’s interested in this guy or is the type of person who cheats? I asked her if her and this guy used to date and she didn’t really answer. I suspect she liked him when they went to school together. Either way I feel like I need to lay down some boundaries about how she can interact with me. I feel like I need to be assertive. I just don’t want to be the jealous boyfriend and drive her away, because I see a lot of potential with our relationship. We recently met each other’s parents and everything went well. That’s part of the reason why I am so confused by how she acted this night.

[kitkat620]

hi. there seems to be many times throughout the evening that she tried to be alone with this guy.
first off, she didn’t ask you to come along for a drink, you went uninvited. second, why doesn’t this guy have keys to his parents house (where he supposedly stays when he’s in town), and even if he doesn’t have keys, couldn’t he just call them to let him in? and again, she didn’t invite you back to her place, you assumed you were going and went. then she acts surprised when you say you’re staying? come on. it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she wanted to be alone with the other man. could be they just had a lot to catch up on, which maybe she thought you would find boring, or could be something else.
i could be totally off base with my observances, you do, of course, know her, and i do not. I’m just saying, if i put myself in your position, i would definitely think something was awry.

[April Masini]

[quote]Is this just a case of her being shy and private (and maybe uncomfortable having me sleep in her bed with her friend/colleague in the next room, and so wanted me to go, but didn’t want to tell me to go)? Or is this a warning sign that she’s interested in this guy or is the type of person who cheats?[/quote]

This is a warning sign that she’s not as interested in monogamy with you as you are with her. Instead of putting down boundaries, as you mentioned, my advice is to understand that your trying to keep her within bounds isn’t the problem. The problem is that she’s looking elsewhere for sex, romance and companionship. Don’t try to give her boundaries. Instead, decide whether or not you want to compete for her — or let go and move on.

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[EnigmaMan]

Thanks for the reply.

While your advice would make sense for a generalized situation like this I don’t think it applies to her and this situation. I think you would agree if you knew all the information I now know about it.

Her and I talked about this further over the past weekend and she said he was having some personal problems he wanted to talk about and get advice from her on (they were close friends in school). He had texted her earlier in the day and said he needed to talk about his issues and would be in town this weekend. It was shortly before she brought up going out for a drink that he texted her and said he was in our city and asked if she was free to meet. She said she didn’t feel comfortable telling me much more than she wanted to meet “a friend/friends” for a beer because she didn’t feel right about betraying her friend’s trust and sharing his private problems with someone he’s never met. She said she just didn’t know how to deal with the situation, and so she just tried (obviously, and clumsily) to be alone with him without letting me know why.

She got emotional and upset when we discussed this, which to me makes sense because she would feel like I was being really overbearing and controlling given that she just wanted to go talk to her friend about his problems. She was between a rock and a hard place of either sharing her friends secrets against his will (or at least telling me he “has issues”) or leaving me out of the loop.

I don’t think it’s really a situation where I need to decide if I want to compete for her. I think it’s more I need to decide if I can trust her. Since I have judged her to be of very good character and maturity (definitely better than myself), especially for her age, I think I can.

In hindsight it seems preposterous she would attempt to do something underhanded right in front of my face. She is very smart and I’m sure if she wanted to do something on the down low she would not go about it in such a clumsy, obvious way. Her claim of her friend having private personal problems they wanted to discuss makes much more sense. We did have a talk though that acting this way basically forces distrust and suspicion into our relationship, so we’re both going to be more communicative going forward. She’s shy and a little socially inexperienced so she also said she’s cool with it if I ask her questions about stuff if I feel like I’m being left out of the loop.

[April Masini]

I’m glad you figured things out. 😀

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