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| Tue, 08-23-2005 - 10:40am |
Hi,
Been dating this guy for a little over a month and a half now. After about 2 weeks I told him I couldn't go on seeing him, that I wasn't sure what I wanted etc. Then a few weeks later we got back together.
The guy keeps telling me he loves me, he separated last year, says he dated a few women, but I'm the first one he introduced to his parents and his daughter. He is making plans for the future, is very present, is at my house almost every night and on weekends when he does not have his daughter his spends them with me.
Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who said she posted a profile on a dating site.. said she received a quick note from this guy, and after she gave me the description I realized it was my boyfriend. Mind you, in his profile it says interests: hangout.. and all he told her was: you sound very nice or nice profile or s'thing like that, no invitation to chat or email or anything (I've seen it).
I have discussed this with him, and at first he said he didn't see anything wrong with that, that he is a very social person, and that it was clear in his profile it was just for 'hangout'.. at the end he admitted that it was stupid and promised me it would never happen again, and that he would delete his profile, which he did, I saw last night it said: user deleted profile Aug. 22.. but this morning I do a search by username and nothing pops up, so I don't know if he created another profile and it's simply hidden so he can send out but cannot receive, or it's just a glitch in the system.
But that's another story. He did not try to deny it last night, and has been honest in his responses to my questions. Simply said he was a very social person, and liked to meet new people, but said that he absolutely wasn't trying to pick up another woman. He has been married 7 years, admitted that early on in his marriage he kissed another woman, but never ever repeated that mistake.
I really don't know how to react to all this, I would like to just let it go as he did not 'cheat' or anything, but I can't seem to shake it. Am I overreacting? Should I just let it go?

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This is one of those difficult situations where you really have to trust YOURSELF and your instincts and let them guide you. I can't tell you what the best thing to do is other then to trust instincts and share with you what happened to me.
When I first started dating the man I'm marrying in just over a month, we met online and he kept his profile up after we got serious, but that was only about six weeks in. I talked to him about it and he removed the profile. I checked up on him and I found another profile at the same site. I couldn't tell when it had last been active but I could see it had been there since two years earlier, so it wasn't like he took one down and immediately opened a new one. I asked him about it. He lied and said it wasn't him, but I just knew it was and yet my instincts told me not to worry about it, even my friends who had met him thought maybe it wasn't him and that I shouldn't worry about it.
So I tried not to. He also had a good female friend I was really insecure about. I have never met her but I knew she had a thing for him. Women who don't have a thing for a guy don't spend the night so they can work out early in the morning together (they hadn't done that for months when we started dating) and leave girly bathroom gear out to mark their territory or redecorate a bathroom as a birthday present.
The last big thing came right after we moved in together about four months after we started dating. He was helping a friend move and I got on his computer (which he told me I could do) so I could IM a friend. The IM program opened as soon as the computer was booted and he had offline messages that had come in from 3-4 other women (I could tell from the names). So I went into the archive and checked it out. Low and behold there were more IM conversations that were just a couple days old.
It all seemed pretty damning, but for some reason my instincts kept telling me I was making a big deal out of nothing and oddly my friends agreed, but I was absolutely TERRRIFIED I would end up being played for a fool. I'd end up one of those stories where the woman is just being willfully ignorant of the facts and has stuck her head in the sand so she could ignore her obviously cheating SO.
So after I found the IMs we ALMOST broke up. We fought at first and then we had several serious discussion and I did a lot of thinking and soul searching. First point in his favor, he didn't make excuses for his behavior. Like your bf he said that he really didn't see what the big deal was about a few IMS, but, now that he knew how I felt, it would stop. He even went online and deleted all of them from his buddy list in front of me.
I told him how scared I was and that while I wanted to respect his privacy, I couldn't help it I was going to be checking up on him and he gave me all his user IDs and passwords.
For a long time I'd check up on him and I'd find something once in a while that bothered me and I'd confront him about it and there was always a reasonable explanation. Eventually I realized that it is true that a person has to earn your trust but you also have to be willing to LET them earn your trust and once you feel they've earned it you have to GIVE it. There is no magically test or set of conditions to be met or time period for having "earned" trust. Ultimately, trusting someone is a leap of faith. You have to just finally decide you are going to.
About a week after the IM thing happened I decided I was going to trust him and I tried to, but it took time. It took time not because he wasn't trustworthy but becasue I was afraid to trust my instincts, so very afraid of being wrong and feeling like a fool. But I decided I was willing to make that leap of faith and love him and trust him. I decided the risk involved was worth what I believed I might get back in return for taking that chance. And so I worked on my fears and insecurities and I forced myself to be logical and reasonable about any percieved "evidence" of wrong doing INSTEAD of letting the fear and insecurity get the better of me and send me spiralling into panic that I would wind be up feeling like a fool.
It took a lot of time, a lot self-examiniation, and a lot of understanding on his part but I trust him 100% now. I'm over the insecurity and I've learned I CAN trust my instincts. I wouldn't be marrying him if I hadn't.
In hindsight it's easy to see I had LOTS of good reasons to believe in him and only a few not to and those were fueled by MY fear and MY insecurity. I'm certainly glad I decided to take the leap of faith and trust him and believe in myself.
Oh and I came on ivillage and went to about 3 different boards when this all first happened and they pretty much all told me to run and that I was a fool and that he was a liar and a cheater, etc. I decided it was smarter to trust myself and my friends who had met him instead of a bunch of people who didn't know either of us. Listen to your instincts. If they tell you that it is fear and insecurity driving your lack of trust and that it's okay to accept his explanation, my advice is listen to it. Think back to a time when your instincts told you to run and you didn't. Do you feel that way now or are your instincts saying stay while your brain and fear are saying go? Trust your gut. Trust yourself. Be honest with yorself. Don't let fear be the reason you turn away from love.
Don't be willfully ignorant either. Don't ignore REAL evidence of cheating. But don't feel bad in accepting his explanation if it really does seem reasonable and logical. Especially when like you said the profile said "hangout" and the message your friend got said NOTHING about meeting. As you suggested it's entirely possible that he was just feeling a little insecure about the relationship himself and left a couple of feelers out there just in case. That's what my guy was doing.
Broken hearts suck, but they mend, trust yourself and don't be afraid to make a leap of faith if that's what your gut tells you to do. You know better then we do whether he is worth taking a chance on.
Nick,
Your post really touched me deeply. You know why? Because I could see MYSELF in this situation like it was my own. That is exactly how I feel, and the situations are so similar.
I took a decision to trust my instinct too, that he is not out to cheat on me. I mean when you think about it, why would he want to cheat on someone he has only been seeing less than 2 months, doesn't make sense. Besides he is wondering the same about me, cuz he keeps saying that he is afraid I might find better, that his friends and family all tease him about 'how did you land that girl anyway' etc.
I too thought about the fact that people on messsage boards never met him, therefore I have to go with my gut feelings. Besides I'm not one to run or give up without solid facts that he would have any intentions of betraying me. Which I don't. The only friend that met him, told me at one point 'I really don't think you have to worry about this guy cheating on you'. That just comes from seeing the way he acts, and how he is with me. And members of my family who met him all like him, even my daughter. My mother has a knack for detecting losers, she didn't like my last boyfriend from the minute she met him, and he turned out to be a player too. But she likes this one. Mothers are pretty good at this huh? ha ha. And I guess his mother and family like me too. But I digress.
We had another conversation about that last night, (he must start to believe I'm worse than a rottweiler ha ha) and he understands that I have trust issues, and honestly is being very patient with me, as he insists there was nothing to it, and besides it has been verified, his profile was just active for a few days since we met (I know that for a fact too ;)) and now it has been deleted (verified as well). When he was fiddling to figure out how to delete his profile, he saw my friend's profile which was new on there, he saw she was from around here, and thought nothing of just saying 'you sound like a nice person'. And yes, maybe like you say 'he was just feeling a little insecure about the relationship himself and left a couple of feelers out there just in case'. I have been guilty of similar actions myself in my last relationship.
He has been burnt too, and says he just knows too damn well how it feels. I also know that he has strong feelings for me.. when I broke up w. him after two weeks, I could tell he took it hard. And if he didn't feel that strongly about me, he could have sent me to hell when I offered to get back together 'under my terms'. He even had nightmares of me telling him I thought this wasn't working out after all.
You said it soooo well.. my instincts tell me he is not someone who would cheat on me, but my fears and insecurities based on past experiences are terrifying me and making me overreact to every little thing. Like you I am terrified to be played for a fool. But I have decided that I really like/love this man, and all his qualities, and want to see by myself what kind of man he really is, give him a chance to show me he is trustworthy. I also decided to trust myself to be able to handle whatever could happen. There are no guarantees in life, but I have a good feeling about him. He has not tried to hide anything from me, or deny, or minimize, etc. He IMMEDIATELY deleted his profile as soon as he got back to work on the same day I confronted him with this. Not a minute later. And I checked other popular dating sites around and no sign of him there either.
I know he likes to chat, and he is an extremely sociable guy, which I'm not. He just loves to talk, and meeting new people. He's a real people person. And just to show how interested he is in me, his friends came down this week, and 2 nights in a row he opted to spend the evening with me. Even on one evening, friends went to a strip club, and he chose not to go with them, out of respect for me as he knew I'm not crazy about that idea. I never said anything about it, he just told me the next day that he was invited to go but declined as he knew I would not have been comfortable with it.
I will still be cautious as it's still early in the relationship, and I just believe in being on the safe side, without going overboard however. Taking my time, take things as they come and hope for the best.
Anyway bottom line is your post is bang on this morning, this is just what I needed to cement my resolve to trust my instincts about this guy & give him a chance to show me I can trust him. You have no idea what your post meant to me. They say everything happens for a reason, and the timing and wording of your post is so unbelievably bang on that it had to happen for a reason. It's like I had already decided that I would follow my gut feelings about this guy and give this relationship a fair chance, and you just helped cement my resolve. You made my day.
R
I'm glad it helped. Your situation sounds soooo much like my own it's almost scary. It's sounds to me like you're doing exactly what I did, which was go ahead and go for it but reserve finally judgement. I knew my instincts MIGHT be wrong, but in the past they were right and I wished I had listened, so I decided not to make that mistake again.
It definitely worked out well. I couldn't be any happier. I have a wonderful relationship with a wonderful man who I adore and who adores me. I'm really gald I didn't throw it away because I was scared. It was tough at times, in the begining I spent a lot of time forcing myself to be logical and not overeact, but it was soooo worth it and eventually I just stopped having those fears.
Good luck! I hope your story ends as happily as mine has.
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