[relationshipa1]

I am 39 years old and have been with my boyfriend, who is 38, for 6 months now and everything has been great so far, but lately I have noticed that he gets calls on his cell that he does not answer around me. I am not sure if it is a woman or business. He owns his own business. I am also not sure how to go about asking him about it or even if I should ask him. He has been such a great guy so far that I would hate to just be feeling some type of insecurity or fear based on past experience. He has all the signs, based on what your website says, of a guy who is ready to marry. He doesn’t go out to clubs that much, he has talked to me about marriage and says that he wants me to be his wife, he has told my parents and friends and his friends that he is going to make me his wife, we have both introduced each other to our kids, we do things with other couples, he spends lots of quality time with me, he has recently moved out of his bachelor pad into a house because I said I was not comfortable visiting him there and enjoys having me over often, he tells me he loves me all the time and makes future plans with me. Even though all of these things are great, my intuition is killing me! I am really worried about being hurt and also am not interested in wasting time with a guy that’s not sincere or trustworthy. I am not dating anyone but him right now.

The other night I snuck and looked at his text messages and there were provocative messages from other women, at least 3, on his phone. Some said, “I miss you”, “I love you” and another was an invitation for him to come and have sex with her. There was only one outgoing message on his phone and that said “I want to see you tonight”. Now I am not stupid, these are all very incriminating things, but I got the info the wrong way and now don’t know what to do with it. I wanted to confront him right then, but I felt guilty for invading his privacy, so I said nothing. Now, I don’t know what to do or say. Please advise.

[April Masini]

You already know what to do, but you’re afraid of what you’re going to learn. 🙁 My advice is to muster your courage and face the music, whatever the tune will be.

Your intuition is telling you that your boyfriend has other girlfriends he’s dating besides you, in spite of the fact that you’ve decided he’s Mr. Right and want to marry him. You snuck in and checked his text messages because you don’t believe he’s being faithful to you, and what you found on his phone is pretty incriminating. It would have been better if you’d asked him about your concerns first, before covertly checking his text messages, but you didn’t, so let’s just go from here.

It’s now time to ask him what’s going on. See if you can do this without being angry which may make him feel defensive and lie. The truth is you really want to find out if he’s dating other people, and if so, you want to be able to make a genuine decision on how you want to proceed with your own life, given that you’re 39 years old, probably with a biologically ticking clock, and after 6 months of dating him, with marriage on your mind, you’d like to know whether you should stay or go.

What I’d advise you to avoid is blaming him. He’s not proposed marriage to you, and you’re not living together, so technically, he’s entitled to date whomever he wants whenever he wants. Bear that in mind. In fact, you can tell him that you do understand that, but that if he is, you’d like to move on in your life without him, because you’re not willing to share him any more. If this sounds at all like an ultimatum, you didn’t do it right. You want it to sound like a reasonable question given what you’ve seen and read. He hasn’t been able to come to you and tell you he wants to date other women (if that is what he’s doing), and you haven’t been able to come to him and ask him if he’s dating other women — up until now. Put the question on the table in high-road fashion.

Let me know if that helps, and how things go.

Good luck! 🙂

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